Joanne Nova emails Skeptico

Here's a claim that literally has no empirical evidence, and I really mean no empirical evidence:

'$50 BILLION SPENT ON GLOBUL WARMIN ALARMIZM OH NOEZ!!!!!!!!!!!'

But maybe JoNova knows the source of this figure but isn't going to do our research for us. Or maybe she's a 'skeptic' so she doesn't have to offer any evidence for anything. Or maybe it's just Socratic irony.

I hate to keep harping this point, but AGW deniers sure sound a lot like creationists. The same tactics, the same belief that a single authority can refute years of careful study. It's really too bad humans are such emotional beings.

pretty funny. the "handbook" actually is scary and needs debunking. as much as it can get.

but a crazy author is perhaps the best debunking that can be done.

thanks Joanne.

That's because they are the same people.

sod,

Desmogblog already had a series on Joanne Nova's handbook.

http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-handbook-carbon-dioxide-climate-chan… and two more parts.

Doesn't dig too deep. Then again, people who don't see the problems with the handbook need an explanation on a basic level anyway, certainly as it seems to be aiming a very young audience.

Good link - denialism nicely boiled down. But can we have a new Global Warming Bingo as well, since it made much more fun otherwise depressing denialist rants?

A new space for Bingo:

Jackson man discovers primary cause of global warming.

MSNBC picked this up. If the media were any dumber they'd be the right wing media.

The comments in the thread at the online Jackson Hole site are remarkably reasonable for the most part, given that I'm used to seeing a 10:1 flood of "climate science is a commie fraud and we're actually experiencing global cooling" comments at most news sites.

Of course Jackson Hole is not a cheap place to live, so perhaps the level of education there is a bit higher among those posting there compared to, say, Watts' blog.

In the book of Hebrews the writer says: "..faith is things hoped for but not yet seen."

Pretty much sums up Evans, Nova and their ilk.

ATTN: Deltoid Dingo Dogs!
RE : Simple Falsification of AGW Hypothesis.

GO: http://www.John-Daly.com. On the homepage, scroll down and click on "Station Temperature Data", then click on "Death Valley" to bring up the temperature-time plot for this remote, arid region.

A desert is an arid region with low relative humidity, a low level of vegation and a cloudless sky. After sunrise the air heats rapidly because sunlight heats the ground surface, and most all of this heat is carried away by conduction-convection.

After sunset, the air cools rapidly because the bulk of the heat is carried away by conduction-convection and there are no clouds to trap the rising vertical column of warm air. Some of the heat, however, will escapes from the surface as OLR, and a portion of this will be absorped by CO2 resulting in the slight warmnig of the night air.

If CO2 makes any significant contribution to warming of the air, we would expect a slow increase in the mean annual temperature over time and this increase should correlate with the increase of CO2 in the air. No such increase is seen in any of the plots, and in particular the plot for the winter interval.

In winter the temperature falls below O deg C at night and the absolute amount of CO2 per unit volume of the air increases above that as determined by analysis of the atmosphere at various sites suchas Mauna Loa. Thus, we would expect a even greater increase of mean annual temperature over time as compared to the spring, summer, and fall sample intervals.

Since no such increase is observed, we must concluded that the greenhouse gas CO2 has no effect on warming the air at this site.

In a desert, Tmin usually occurs just before sunrise and any warming due to CO2 would have the greatest effect on this metric. Shown below is a multi-decadal analysis of Tmax and Tmin on Aug 1 of the station records from the weather station at Osoyoos, BC. One day was used for this analysis so that the amount of sumlight is kept constant.

Interval Tmax Tmin.

1950-09- 27---- 13.

1960-09- 28---- 14.

1970-79- 28---- 14.

1980-89- 29---- 14.

1990-09- 30---- 14.

2000-07- 31---- 13.

Tmin is constant as expected. The apparent increase in Tmax is a result of the use of two station records at slightly different sites. I had to use two station records for this analysis because no station had a continuous record since 1950. From 1950 to 1989 Tmax and Tmin were constant at the first station.

I wanted to do this analysis for Alice Springs, whose station record starts before 1900, but the scrooges at the BMO wanted $30 to access the record.

Howard Pierce Jr - absolutely hilarious. Your analysis "proves" that there is no warming - except that it shows warming, as you recognise: "The apparent increase in Tmax". But of course this is not what you want, so you ignore it.

You cannot falsify warming using data that shows warming.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0009-2541(98)00061-8

http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliRECt.pl?cadeat

Daily Records for station 042319 DEATH VALLEY state: ca

For temperature and precipitation, multi-day accumulations
are not considered either for records or averages.
The year given is the year of latest occurrence.

Period requested -- Begin : 1/ 1/1890 -- End : 12/31/2005
Period used -- Begin : 4/ 1/1961 -- End : 12/31/2005

Harold "Al Gore is Fat!" Pierce says:

> ATTN: Deltoid Dingo Dogs!

That's off to a very good start, eh...

> If CO2 makes any significant contribution to warming of the air, we would expect a slow increase in the mean annual temperature over time and this increase should correlate with the increase of CO2 in the air.

It's "mean annual temperature", which is different from "min. [i.e. minimum] annual temperature", but I guess you're too busy fantasizing about your dream limousine to tell the difference.

ATTN: TFD

I have not visited Osoyoos so I don't know the exact location of the weather instruments. However, bias of temperature measurements due to poor siting is well-known problem as Anthony Watts and others has shown. The slighly higher values for Tmax may be due site bias such as the instruments being located near a parking lot. Nevertheless, the Tmax data does not invalidate my conclusions.

Harold "Al Gore is Fat!" Pierce Jr.:

> Nevertheless, the Tmax data does not invalidate my conclusions.

Conclusions? What conclusions?

* * *

I said:

> It's "mean annual temperature", which is different from "min. [i.e. minimum] annual temperature", but I guess you're too busy fantasizing about your dream limousine to tell the difference.

And to further underscore this point, I'll just repeat a story told by the Internet Oracle (not to be confused with the Internet Goracle):

> The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> > Oh magnificent Oracle, who always has the best Halloween costume:

> > Who is the Greenwich, and why do we allow her to keep the world's time?

> And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

> > The Greenwich is the consort of the Green Man, a nature spirit from the Celtic mythology of the British isles. So the story goes, way back in the mists of history, the Time Being decided to delegate some of his authority by appointing one of the many wiches who existed back then, as guardian for the world's time. The choice eventually came down to three wiches: The Sandwich, the Norwich, and the Greenwich. Each of them was asked to demonstrate her qualifications for the job.

> > The Sandwich worked day and night for a month, and fused sand into an hourglass the likes of which the world had never seen, one hundred ells high and fifty broad, which would keep time precisely, down to the smallest part of a second.

> > The Norwich was determined to do even better. She set all the stars in their courses to revolving around her favorite (the North Star), in perfect lock-step synchronization, forming a precision clock the size of the entire cosmos. The stars continue in these circular paths to this day.

> > The Greenwich, seeing what the other two had done, calmly raised her hand and called upon the forces of nature, and the Sandwich and the Norwich were immediately whisked away by an immense storm, never to be heard from again.

> > Thus, the Greenwich was appointed as the guardian of earthly time for the simple reason that she can be really mean when she doesn't get her way. Hence the term "Greenwich Mean Time".

> > You owe the Oracle a propitiation, for the Time Being.

So yeah, Harold, if you ever have trouble recalling what the "mean annual temperature" is, just remember that it's the measurements that can be really, really mean to you.

ATTN: TFD

BTE,I was not obligated to post the Tmax data. If I had only posted the Tmin data, what would you have said?

Shorter Harold Pierce Jr.:

I'M NOT LISTENING!!!! I'M NOT LISTENING!!!! I'M NOT LISTENING!!!!

ATTN: Hank

FYI, The late John Daly only used the data from Furnace Creek for his plot. Go read his essay "Bad Water"

"Uh, oh, they're on to Joann at Deltoid. Who's available?"

"Send Harold in, he can take over any topic for days on end."

Wait a minute Harold...
Isn't Osoyoos the cherry you've been picking for quite some time?
The numbers you just presented suggest that it's warming, but then you say it "may be due site bias such as the instruments being located near a parking lot."
Are they located near a parking lot?
How long has the parking lot been there?
59 years? 49 years? 7 years?
If it's a faulty location...why are you using it?

Harold writes:

Nevertheless, the Tmax data does not invalidate my conclusions.

Harold, if the minimum stays the same and the maximum is increasing, then the mean is increasing as well. Do you know how to calculate a mean?

You can't prove a lack of warming from data that show warming.

Why are we expending valuable cerebral energy on a man who is obviously off his meds?

Best,

D

Attn: BPL

If CO2 causes warming of the air as proposed in the AGW, then both metrics should show an increase that should correlate with the increase of CO2 over the sampling interval. For these types of studies, you have keep separate Tmax and Tmin because these might be measures of two different types of air as proposed by Roger Sr. Keep in mind for this particular analysis, sunlight is kept constant. And this quite important for these field measurements.

As I mentioned, as the temperature drops during the night the absolute amount of CO2 per unit volume increases until Tmin is reached since the air becomes denser. During the daytime the opposite occurs, the air become less dense and the absolute amount of the gases per unit volume decreases.

The conc of CO2 in the air is 385 ppmv. This is the value for conc of CO2 in Standard Dry Air which is local purified air containing nitrogen, oxygen, the inert gases, and CO2 (i.e., the fixed gases) and is at STP. The conc of CO2 in real air or local air is always site specific and is never this value since local air is never at STP and always contains water vapor and clouds, the climatologist's worst nightmares. SDA has 385 ml of pure CO2 or 17.2 mmoles per cu meter.

If SDA is heated to 30 deg C, the absolute amount of CO2 declines to about 15.5 mmoles per cu meter but the conc is still 385 ppmv. There is just less CO2 per ml as is for the other fixed gases. With repect to absorption of OLR, it is the absolute amount of CO2 per unit volume that counts.

According to Roger Sr, the mean annual temp metric is not useful for climate studies. So I don't use it.

Who is this Joanne person, and who are the people who care what she believes? Never heard of her til this thread.

PS, thanks for the killfile, wonderful tool.

HPJ.

You stubbornly refuse to learn, don't you? How are your t-tests progressing, btw?

Anyway, you don't need to pay $30 for the Alice Springs trends, because the BoM has already done it for you, gratis, at their [climate trends page](http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/extreme_trendmaps.cgi).

Strange, though, because they are showing increases in all types of temperature metrics, in far greater excess than occur decreases in similar metrics.

What on earth can than mean?

Perhaps that you are Wrong...

Harold "Al Gore is Fat!" Pierce Jr.:

> If CO2 makes any significant contribution to warming of the air, we would expect a slow increase in the mean annual temperature over time and this increase should correlate with the increase of CO2 in the air.

Harold Pierce Jr., later:

> According to Roger Sr, the mean annual temp metric is not useful for climate studies. So I don't use it.

In other words, Harold `falsifies' his version of the AGW hypothesis by wishing the hypothesis away. Comedic gold.

Harold....it's a thermometer.
It records the temperatures in which we live.
It doesn't care if the local air is purified, or even if it's putrid.
Your baffle-gab about "Standard Dry Air" is meaningless.

Mean annual temp is not useful for climate studies?
How very interesting....not.

I'm with Dano. Find your meds.

I hope Harold gets paid enough to buy those meds in the first place.

Hank: re: Joanne: this is especially sad because she's had a career teaching children about science, a Good Thing...

Back to the subject at hand...

Is this J Nova a real person...or is she aka David Evans?

oops...
I've just spotted John's post @ #29.

Scratch my dumb question...

> who are the people who care what she believes?

Tom Harris's International Climate 'Science' Coalition?

Then again, the ICSC cares about everyone who hates Al Gore.

RE: #25

Stop buggin' me, Bernard or ask the Gov-Gen to send animal conrol to put you down. The method of analysis I use is a modification of that A. Marterman employed for his analysis of the CET. GO:

http://www.usefulinfo.co.uk/climate-change-global-warming.php.

NB: change "-" to "_" or the link won't work.

Note that for most months the mean temp has remained unchanged for 300 years, except for the fall months which showed a warming trend. It would be of interest to redo the analysis for Tmax and Tmin to determine which metrics is actually changing.

The warming trends you cite is due to poor siting of the weather instruments, most of which are now at airports. Go check this out.

I use only March, June, Sept, and Dec, and the sample interval is 11 days centered on the equinox and the soltice. The change in sunlight over sample interval is about 30 min. I also compute the classical average deviation (AD) since it is direct of measure of the variation of the mean due to local weather. Remarkably, for multi-decadal analyses of 100 years of temperature data the AD is always 1.5 K.

I sent an email to BoM re access to their data base for individual station records because annual trends are not useful, and they told me the access fee is $30 per station since I'm not a citizen of the Land of Oz. They are very customer friendly, however, and take certified cheques, bank drafts, money orders, and Diner cards but no Visa or Mastercard. They even take personal cheques but you don't get the access code until the cheques clears.

BTW, Don Al Gore, head of the Gore Crime family, is FAT! Don Al hired James "Jimmy the Enforcer" Hansen because he required some scientific muscle to help carry his shakedown and ripoff of the guillible public of their hard earned cash. Jimmy the Enforcer is aka Jimmy the Sandwich Man and he works out his deli in NYC. Don Al arranged a payment of 250,000 cans of Heinz beans to Jimmy the Enforcer for his services.

BTW, Old Weird Harold is never, ever wrong! I always get it right!

RE: #26 This was in ref to JD's Death Valley plot

harold, every single thing that you ever wrote is false.

it simply doesn t make any sense to start to deconstruct the nonsense you are writing.

the starting picture on the john daly site that you linked to, is a good indicator for your approach:

the claim that a visible old sea level benchmark is telling us anything about climate is about as absurd as everything that you wrote.

ps: you might want to tell the australians about your theories... was january among those months that got warmer?

It's amazing.

All the serious climate blogs are awash with discussion about about the shortcomings of Steig et al's paper on Antarctic warming - and before that Santer et al and Mann's PNAS paper- and all this blog can talk about is other antipodean personalities.

No science required here!

Harold blathers on:

As I mentioned, as the temperature drops during the night the absolute amount of CO2 per unit volume increases until Tmin is reached since the air becomes denser. During the daytime the opposite occurs, the air become less dense and the absolute amount of the gases per unit volume decreases.

Harold, the column amount of a greenhouse gas stays the same whether it's day or night. The density changes, but so does the volume, which means the path length also changes. Optical thickness is

tau = k rho ds

where k is the absorption coefficient (I'm ignoring scattering), rho the density and ds the path length. Rho and ds change in opposite directions by complimentary amounts, Harold. Their product remains the same, which is why another, exactly equivalent expression for optical thickness is

tau = k SM

where SM is the specific mass (mass of absorber per unit area). Note that SM has the same units as rho x ds.

The conc of CO2 in real air or local air is always site specific and is never this value since local air is never at STP and always contains water vapor and clouds, the climatologist's worst nightmares.

Over any significant area, carbon dioxide is a well-mixed gas, and the variation is not going to be more than a few percent unless you're standing right next to a bonfire or an industrial stack.

And water vapor averages 0.4% of the volume and is never more than about 4%.

If SDA is heated to 30 deg C, the absolute amount of CO2 declines to about 15.5 mmoles per cu meter but the conc is still 385 ppmv. There is just less CO2 per ml as is for the other fixed gases. With repect to absorption of OLR, it is the absolute amount of CO2 per unit volume that counts.

No, it is not. It is the absolute column amount. See the equations above. Try working some examples.

According to Roger Sr, the mean annual temp metric is not useful for climate studies. So I don't use it.

If Roger Sr said that, Roger Sr is a flaming ignorant ass. Are you quite sure that's what he said?

BPL:

From the
[horse's](http://climatesci.org/2008/12/10/comments-on-the-nasa-giss-website-qa-g…) mouth:

'...The admission that there is no âuniversally accepted correct answerâ demonstrates again how poor this temperature metric is as a measure of global warming and cooling....The admission by GISS that the one temperature âhas certainly nothing to do with the true regional SATâ is remarkable! This spatially non-representative temperature and its anomaly cannot used to construct a quantitatively accurate global average...'

I find his rantings sad. His total ignorance of urban canopy layer theory in Pielke and Matsui (2005) and Xin et al. (2007) is shocking and renders his group's analysis moot. He should just stick to regional climate modeling IMO.

Maybe it is because we are both from Perth Western Australia but I take an interest in Jo Nova. She used to host a kids science TV show a number of years back, and has filled in on JJJ's science show when the great Dr Karl Krusilnisky (SP?) was away (which is the national youth radio network non-commercial radio station so indie cred etc).

From what I believe she also used to run Australia's #1 University (ANU)'s Science education roadshow (Questacon Science Circus I think)...

She is a great public speaker and makes her quid doing science lectures/expos for corporations etc amongst other things.

For the life of me all I can see is a genuine science person who has looked at all the facts and just come up with a different conclusion - one which I think is wrong btw.

you should have a look at her site and some of the threads... she asks for JUST ONE peer reviewed article that genuinely gives evidence of CO2 causing global warming... and no one has one it seems:) Of course what would she accept as evidence is the key point, as she dismisses models, and the earth warming (as anyting could cause the warming where is the EVIDENCE linking to CO2).

I've said it before... underestimate a well credentialled science communicator who is an attractive blonde at our peril! She is not some sort of Monckton crank. She is also presenting at Heartland (for what it is worth).

Just my 2c worth.

you should have a look at her site and some of the threads... she asks for JUST ONE peer reviewed article that genuinely gives evidence of CO2 causing global warming... and no one has one it seems:)

Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis uses exactly the same tactic in order to deny that HIV causes AIDS.

The basic pattern is:

Denialist: Show me the paper that proves that HIV causes AIDS.

Me: Try this paper.

Denialist: That paper just uses surrogate markers. How do we know that it is really HIV.

Me: Look at this paper.

Denialist: That paper just assumes that HIV exists. How do we know that HIV has been isolated.

Me: Look at this paper

Denialist: But that paper doesn't show that HIV causes AIDS.

ad infinitum

Note, âno empirical evidenceâ, not âI disagree with the evidenceâ, or âthere is contrary evidenceâ â but there is no evidence. None!

HIV Denialists also commonly deny that there is any evidence that HIV causes AIDS. Not that there is evidence but that they and others find it unconvincing. They say that there is no evidence at all. This is simply a lie.

All the serious climate blogs are awash with discussion about about the shortcomings of Steig et al's paper on Antarctic warming - and before that Santer et al and Mann's PNAS paper- and all this blog can talk about is other antipodean personalities.

Of course, there aren't any significant shortcomings about either of these excellent papers, there's just the usual denialist bullshit which will never see the light of day in a scientific journal.

No science required here!

No science exists at WUWT or CA. The first is run by a science illiterate, the second by someone who believes that finding a minor typo in a paper and a minor error in a dataset not used in the central argument of a paper somehow proves "fraud! fraud! fraud!"

Look I agree Chris - but I guess be careful when you say "proves" not "evidence"... Jo kindly does not ask anyone to prove the CO2 link;) AGW aside... she seems to be good at selling a product... every day I probably buy things that are not the best relative to their competitors because of good marketing strategies. Having the best product is no guarentee of good sales! And a manufacturer ignores a competitor with a lousy product but a great marketing strategy at its peril:)

MattB:

"For the life of me all I can see is a genuine science person who has looked at all the facts and just come up with a different conclusion - one which I think is wrong btw."

Do you think there is zero influence from her partner David Evans? [I have no firsthand knowledge, but when someone who seemed like a reasonable communicator of mainline science suddenly goes off onto such a track, there's often a reason that is extra-science.]

But indeed, she would be a popular spokesperson, somewhat akin to the use of Kristen Byrnes a while back, and indeed, one ignores marketing at one's peril.

John... who knows... but David Evans is hardly Darth Vader. Nova does not come across as the kind of lady who lives at her fellah's beck and call though:) Evan's Australian Greenhouse Office past makes a good headline even though he was not actually a climate guy, but I doubt an out and out denier would choose to work at the AGO on carbon accounting models just so in 10 years time he could use it as propaganda (hmm actually that would be a pretty nifty strategy - I may try and get a job with Morano).

I do like to point out sometimes that Evans worked for the AGO giving our skeptical ex-PM John Howard the model that let him meet his Kyoto targets by doing practically nothing... so maybe the AGO at the time was a great please for a skeptic. But that is really all beside the scientific point.

This trophosphere hot-spot is their key... and as she shows on her site the responses to it are inconsistent. Hot spot is there, does not matter if hot spot is not there, hot spot is not the signature, hot spot is the signature just hidden in noise. At least one of those responses HAS to be wrong doesn't it?

For mine the highest quality science rebuttal is Santer's analysis - see http://joannenova.com.au/2008/10/30/not-found-the-hot-spot/ seriously, and I'm not an active climate researcher clearly, science either has a decent answer or it needs to work on one:) http://joannenova.com.au/2009/01/03/reply-to-deltoid/ is also an interesting thread (apologies to Tim as it has a dig at him and I enjoy Deltoid alot).

To me the genuine scientific response is "interesting, lets do some reaserch and get stuff peer reviewed and published"... from both sides of the debate. Not "lets point out she is married to Evans", and not "I'll produce a skeptics guide and head off to Heartland and team up with totally lunatic deniers."

But look I'm the token warmist on Nova's site:) The fact I'm out of my depth does not mean that AGW is false of course - but if some clued in scientist could back me up it would be appreciated;)

RE: #27 ATTN: TomG.

Standard Dry Air is no bafflegab.

GO: http://www.uigi.com/air.html and read the technical bulletin. Pay attention to the comments about real air and it effects the design and operation of air separation plants.

Briefly, a sample air taken for determination of its composition, is filtered to remove particulate matter, dried to remove water and scrubbed to remove samll amounts of oxides of sulfur and nitrogen and other compounds such as hydrocarbons, VOC from plants, CFC's, etc. After analysis by various method the composition of the air sample is computed and reported for the defined reference state known as Standard Dry Air which is comprised only of the fixed gases at STP.

The composition of air as expressed as SDA is the same thu out the world and is independent of site. This is the origin of the phrase "well-mixed atmospheric gases." As I mentioned SDA exits at no place on the earth because real or local air is never at STP and always contains water vapor and clouds, and its composition is always site specfic with repect to the minor and trace components.

The ideal gas law is usually given as PV = nRT which can be rearranged to n/V= P/TR. What this means is the absolute amount of the gases in any volume of air will follow the weather and elevation. More importantly, this means there is no uniform temporal and spatial distribution of the gases in the air. Hence, it is impossible to model climate with any useful skill and accuracy.

ATTN: sod

I'm always on copious quantities of my meds: caffeine and nicotine. I don't consumme Evil Ethanol.

Harold, again:

> BTW, Don Al Gore, head of the Gore Crime family, is FAT!

You, Sir, are an idiot.

> The ideal gas law is usually given as PV = nRT [...] Hence, it is impossible to model climate with any useful skill and accuracy.

Harold gives a simple, elegant equation describing ideal gases, to 'prove' that we know nothing. More comedic gold.

I can hear the voices in Harold's head screaming, 'Argh! Global warming hypothesis, will you just go away? I don't want to disprove you, I don't want to show you unfalsifiable, I just want you to go away! Can't you just go away? Please? Argh!'

mattb:

I'd already thought Nova's material was pretty well addressed before:

here at Deltoid and the DeSMogBlog ones Tim mentioned. I read her handbook and blog. I'd earlier read the Evans piece and its debunking, and looked at Evans' backgroundUWAhas two within next few weeks.. Perth at least a decent research university @ UWA, and most such have public events.

I wonder if she regularly shows up at such, challenges them publicly, and uses her climate expertise to prove them wrong. It of course is much easier to create websites and speak at Heartland conferences...

I've previously posted a list of reasons for going anti-science. Maybe this will add a new one.

I find it sad to see someone who at least seems to have done useful work make such a transition.

MattB, I would not encourage a scientist to engage Nova. It just tends to add to the moise, that being her goal. Along with some others, the "hot spot" non-issue is a sure sign of someone interested only in obfuscation.

The "hot spot" did get thoroughly discussed here. Was there something unclear about the answer?

This trophosphere hot-spot is their key...

The key to what?

For this sort of thing to be a falsification of AGW you would have to show that the models and the experimental data are inconsistent including the uncertainties in both.

Yeah I know it got clearly addressed... but she still says it and ignores all those arguments... so it must be true...

...hang on a second;)

also - John - reference to people linking her to her hubbie was not targeted at your particular comment - I think you truly are a scholar and a gent! Sorry if it came across that way.

Anyone still wondering why the PR effort is moving toward full bore?

http://news.aaas.org/2009/0210aaas-annual-meeting-opens-in-chicago.shtml

And the point of this?

Quit repeating the baloney.
Quit repeating the trolls.
They've been marginalized.
Unless you help them repeat their message.

Instead, read what the AAAS is telling us.
Repeat the current science.

Speak to the problem, folks.
The wave of opposition will be huge.

Look at history.

Look at the tactics: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=50&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off…
Don't repeat the nonsense.

If you can't control yourself, learn what a killfile is for.

It's to enable serious conversation by filtering nitwittery.

Yeah I know it got clearly addressed... but she still says it and ignores all those arguments... so it must be true...

No, that's not why it's true. It's true because it's a signature of warming, regardless of source. The whole "it can only be caused by CO2-forced warming" is a lie that has absolutely nothing to do with science.

The fact that she ignores the science and continues to repeat the lie makes her a ...

serial liar.

Quit trying to defend her.

I just read the two Jo Nova threads linked at "Posted by: MattB | February 11, 2009 9:58 PM"

It is clear that she has no understanding of statistics. For example, she repeats the "no warming since 2001" tripe.

More on point, she dismisses the stastical consistency of the radiosonde measurements of Trop Trop observed record and the model results:
"Some AGW supporters claim that Santer et al has found the hot-spot. But his paper boils downs to a statistical reanalysis that suggests that due to noise and error, the hot-spot might be there."

She then offers what seems to be a quote from CA:
"Even if Santer is right and the hot spot IS hidden in the noise, the most generous interpretation is that greenhouse gases must have a pretty weak warming effectâ¦"

In a comment to that thread, she says:
"The best case scenario you can get from this for AGW is that the hotspot IS there but itâs too weak to see above the noise. Itâs probably not the major climate driver itâs made out to be. Something else is causing the noise; itâs more powerful than carbon, and the climate models donât know what it is."

IOW, she is arguing that the fact that observations and model output uncertainties overlap enough that they are statistically indistinguishable, means that warming in the real world is likely not be as strong as we see in the model output.

She simply doesn't understand what statistical uncertainty means. Or, if she does, she is being dishonest about it.

MattB:

For the life of me all I can see is a genuine science person who has looked at all the facts and just come up with a different conclusion

Wow, ALL the facts. I don't think there's even any climate scientist who knows all the facts. There are people who know more than Nova who indulge in denialism so there's nothing special about her point of view. When it comes to denialism the thing that matters is they look at just enough of the facts for their objective.

"Something else is causing the noise; itâs more powerful than carbon, and the climate models donât know what it is."

She seems to think the models should be explaining the noise.

How can you argue with someone like that?

ATTENTION: Harold Pierce Jr!

Standard Dry Air and all your other tripe is bafflegab trying to distract from the fact that with your own numbers, as suspect as they probably are..., you proved Osoyoos BC is warming contrary to your long term claim that it is not.
I find highly entertaining when somebody disproves their own cherry pick...is this a first?

But I'm taking John's kilfile advice...can you say Bozo Bin?

MattB:

This trophosphere hot-spot is their key... and as she shows on her site the responses to it are inconsistent. Hot spot is there, does not matter if hot spot is not there, hot spot is not the signature, hot spot is the signature just hidden in noise. At least one of those responses HAS to be wrong doesn't it?

Yes one of those is wrong. The hot spot is not the signature of AGW. This is the sort of misinformation that Nova is spreading. Nova a science educator? More like a science miseducator.

Hank, what PR push? I sense a bit of desperation as a consequence of Obama's agenda and his science appointments, but otherwise not so much. As regards the AAAS conference, maybe the denialists are just anticipating their lucky day:

For registered conference attendees, former U.S. Vice President and Nobel laureate Al Gore has agreed to speak Friday, 13 February during a special invited address.

:)

Can I just make it clear that I am completely of the opinion that AGW is real, serious, and that the time for action is now:)

Dhogaza @53 I'm not trying to defend her! I'm mostly probing for the flaw in her argument and I'm appreciative that folks here have chipped in. I do, however, try and do my best to at least understand the sceptic arguments, and I personally engage with them because I just happen to enjoy discussions with people of different opinions to me.

Chris @55... maybe you are right but I guess I just like to be optimistic about folks' intentions... and yeah "all" the science was just a phrase...

They are clever though... see you say the hotspot is not the signature, but then she can ask then why is Santer looking so hard for it with wind shear temp calculations... it is either important enough to look for or it isn't. (I see flaws in that argument btw I'm NOT saying it is a valid thought process).

Lee @ 54 - you hit on one thing that raises my eyebrows to question Nova's integrity (as opposed to just science understanding)... if Nova thinks she has it with the hotspot... then why rely on the totally bogus no warming since 2001 thing which flies in the face of statistics. In fact I'd been sidetracked from that contradiction so thanks for reminding me.

Hank Roberts, Steve Bloom:

> the 175th annual conference of AAAS, publisher of the journal Science, may draw as many as 10,000 attendees from 60 countries to Chicago.

10,000 attendees! Looks like the Heartland Institute will need to offer free food to more people in order to catch up.[1]

[1] the real reason for the huge attendance is probably that the AAAs event is a general science conference, rather than a climate change conference specifically... but don't tell anyone that

Mattb "..if Nova thinks she has it with the hotspot... then why rely on the totally bogus no warming since 2001 thing which flies in the face of statistics."

This is, I think, where the deniers shoot themselves in the foot.

A newcomer to the field is more likely to doubt the denialist position if one of their arguments is shown clearly to be bogus. It invites the conclusion that their other arguments may be no less flawed (and no less disingenuous, nmore to the point).

This applies not only to their arguments about the science but also to what they say about themselves, their supporters and their opponents.

It's hard to take someone seriously, for example, if he accuses a whole comunity of historically underpaid academics of perpetrating a fraud with money as a motivation.

Simillarly, bullsh|tting about your qualificatons or making up fairy tales about being persecuted is hardly going to enhance your credibility.

As for Nova, Evans at al and the hot spot signature, most people understand "signature" to mean a unique identifier.

It's easy enough to explain the "hot spot" is not unique to AGW but applies to GW from any cause. You don't need to be a rocket scientist or computer programmer (same thing, really, heh heh heh) to get that.

So they have this credibility problem existing within the one argument.

If they can't bring themselves to tell it straight as far as the meaning of "signature" is concerned, why should anyone trust what they say about tropospheric warming trends?

mattB:
No worries.

But, a thought for you(anyone else in the Perth area):
It would be nice if some people attended those forthcoming public talks at UWA, Feb18, March 10 and commented.

It's been ~decade since I've visited UWA, so I have no current calibration on what goes on there. Public lectures at universities are incredible resources for learning, and people lucky enough to be handy should really consider taking advantage of them, not just to learn the science, but to see different presentation styles and answers to questions.

Actually, that might be a nice feature for an Oz climate blog: a regular post that links to public climate lectures over the following month or two.

I shall attend Prof Imberger's lecture (he just won the premiers science award but he is not exactly Mr mainstream on climate science). He is actually my old honours supervisor - in fact I think he concluded that I didn't know what I was talking about when it comes to climate change - I'm starting to think he was right lol:)

RE: #57 ATTN: TomG

Since two weather stations were used for temperature data you cannot make any conclusion as to whether any warming or cooling has taken place. All you can say is that constant Tmin is consistent with the hypothesis that CO2 does not cause warming of the air.

Go to GISTEMP and get the plot of the Parowan Power Plant and explain to me why the plot is flat.

Did you bother to read A. Marterman's article?

RE #61

The real reason for 10,000 possible attendees is that grant money is paying for all expenses. And there is lots of poker action in the nearby casinos.

Yes, as everybody in rsearch knows: grant money is so abundant that one can waste it on pleasure trips. (Obs! irony)

Harold writes:

More importantly, this means there is no uniform temporal and spatial distribution of the gases in the air.

And yet labs all over the world find that there is.

Hence, it is impossible to model climate with any useful skill and accuracy.

And yet it continues to happen.

Robert Heinlein once said, "When you see a rainbow, you don't stop to argue the laws of optics. There it is, in the sky." Your arguments on this thread seem to me to be denying the rainbow.

Harold #66,

What a ridiculous comment, given the amount of money being doed out by the anti-environmental lobby to debunk the science that they hate. The denialists aren't interested in science anyway - for them its all about maintaining business-as-usual and profit maximization. Anyone with half a brain should realize this.

Moreover, who is probably paying the expenses for the comedy shindig that is to be held by the Heartland Institute? I am sure the corporate denial lobby with their big bucks will open up their bottomless coffers to ensure that the usual suspects are there.

Hey everyone, I see that George Monbiot has created a great prize (the Christopher Booker prize for Climate Change Bullshit). "The award will go to whoever manages, in the course of 2009, to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/feb/04/christo…

I am sure that there will a lot of nominees! Let's start with the Heartland Institution's climate "conference"! Or perhaps Joanne herself?

> What PR push
The hope that in 2 years (midterm elections) or 4 years they'll see control of the US government back securely and can continue their policies. The fear that within 2 or 4 years things will actually be changed that will stay changed in US policies. Tipping point, politically.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20090208/Cartoon20090208.jpg

HPJ

The method of analysis I use is a modification of that A. Marterman employed for his analysis of the CET. GO:

You claim to be a scientist - write up your methodology in a scientific journal format, and post it here. If you are correct in your analyses your methods will stand any scrutiny, surely.

The warming trends you cite is [sic] due to poor siting of the weather instruments, most of which are now at airports.

Um, proof? You have surely corresponded in depth with the BoM about every station depicted on the various temperature maps, to be able to make this claim.

You have to provide your evidence if you expect to use this claim.

I sent an email to BoM re access to their data base for individual station records because annual trends are not useful,

Can you justify scientifically why using "individual stations" is not cherry-picking? Are you employing a randomised and stratified selection protocol?

Can you also explain why the BoM's annual trends are "not useful"? You see, to any competent analyst the trend maps are quite revealing indeed, irrespective of your "poor siting" canard.

Statistics are just not your thang, are they Harold?

Um, er, is there someone named Chat out there who likes to cut and past my comments? (#71). What gives?

It's a plagiarizing spam bot. I dropped the comment into the spam bucket.

They are clever though... see you say the hotspot is not the signature, but then she can ask then why is Santer looking so hard for it with wind shear temp calculations... it is either important enough to look for or it isn't. (I see flaws in that argument btw I'm NOT saying it is a valid thought process).

Well, MattB, save us the time we waste ripping you a new one and post those flaws you see along with the flawed argument.

Otherwise one thinks that perhaps you think there's something of merit there.

Harold Pierce has "come to conclusions" with his sanity ... and he has PREVAILED!

Congratulations to Harold and there's a part waiting for him in the remake of "The Cars that Eat People." Once again, good show, Harold.

Hello Bernard J

I just finished typing the results of my analyses of Quatsino weather station records into a text file, and I would be quite happy to send it to you for your comments and criticisms. You are a really tough Deltoid Dingo Dog so I'm going to let the data do the walkin' and talkin'!

Send you email address to: harold.pierce.jr-AT-gmail.com.

I think you will be quite suprised when you see the results. These results show that there is a Pacific oscillation that went into a warm phase ca 1930-40 and then shifted into a cool phase in 2001. This oscillation is probably related to the Klyashtorin-Lyubushin cycle which has a period of 66 years.

The PDO went into cool phase in 1940 and it sits on top of this long-term Pacific oscillation. Both of these have now entered a cool phase so the climate is going to turn cold and remain cold for quite sometime into the future.

BTW, What is do you have to say re A. Marterman's article?

ATTN: BPL I chose you #2 reviewer. Don't be shy! This free new stuff!

Klyashtorin-Lyubushin cycle

Harold has a lot of comedy value.

on substance of course, you ll do better when you listen to german comedian Mathias Egersdoerfer. even if you don t speak the language....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsnmzp9m5tI&feature=related

Jeff Harvey,

What is better than the announcement of the Booker Prize is the harrumphing outrage by the denialists. THAT is comedy gold.

Best,

D

Hey, Jeff Harvey,

George M's prize is obviously a fraud because it is set up so that he can win it himself :-)

ATTN: sod

FYI:

For some years, I've read fisheries researcher Dr. Gary Sharp's admiring descriptions of the climate science scholarship of a pair of Russian researchers -- Leonid Klyashtorin and Alexey Lyubushin. Today, I learned that the English version of their 2007 book "Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity" is freely available as pdf file at:

http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.p…

Dr Sharp served as their English editor, and the body of English-language scientific literature is richly enhanced by this addition. The book contains much that Dr. Sharp has already synthesized in his 2003-vintage UN FAO Technical Paper No. 452 ("Future climate change and regional fisheries: a collaborative analysis"), the full pdf of which is also freely available on the web, via the abstract page.

I got this from http://wwww.aipnnews.com.

As Hank 'n' Frank are always in need of new material, I will do them the favor of pointing out that the forthcoming Heartland conference has been scheduled to coincide with the Copenhagen scientific conference, the hoped-for effect on U.S. media coverage being obvious.

Dhogaza - maybe you are right... maybe I just believe there are flaws in that argument because if there were not she would be right...

But to me the flaw, since you asked, is that the "hotspot" is not "the signature" of AGW, however there is an interesting apparent discrepancy between the model and measurements, and the obvious thing to do in such situations is for decent scientists to try and figure out why that is... with the major flaws in the argument being 1) that just because it is beeing looked at does not imply that it is the crucial component of AGW science without which the house of cards tumbles, and (2) the dismissal of use of alternative methods of measuring temperature (wind shear) as though they were some sort of science black magic - because accepting those perfectly valid science techniques crushes the whole hotspot argument.

Also when you say "rip you a new one"... I hope what you mean is provide a couple of pointers where I can clear up my understanding?

The saying goes that you are better to keep your moth shut and appear ignorant than open it and prove it... I tend to think I'm better off opening it and being prepared to get shot down and hopefully learn a thing or two along the way.

Lastly - I honestly think you are misreading my acknowledgement that they have some cleverish tricks to suck in the layman with support for the ideas themselves.

you are better to keep your moth shut

Are we discussing the Butterfly Effect now?

Tm, wh ds Hrld.Prc Jr stll hv ny vwlls? Jst wndrng.

They are clever though... see you say the hotspot is not the signature, but then she can ask then why is Santer looking so hard for it

Yep, barristers are clever. Their objective is adversarial. They're only interested in telling part of the truth.

re: #83
It is actually useful to dissect arguments that are wrong, but effective, or at least, confusing.

> aipnnews
No relation to the AIP.

Maybe "The Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN)" -- Associated with Oxford?
http://www.aipn.org/news/aipnnews.asp?id=319

ATTN: Hank

FYI, aipn=America's Independent Party National (Committee).
You are one lazy Deltoid Dingo Dog, so lazy you can't correct a trivial typo.

GO: http://www.ainpnews.com

Ah, Mr. Pierce wants me to read his mind -and- fix his typos.
To encourage this respect, he calls me a dog.
Think about it, Mr. Pierce.

So let's look at the claimed source then. "America's Independent Party" -- the Alan Keyes folks who sued demanding proof Obama is a "natural born" American citizen. They lost that one in court. Good start. What else? Nothing on science.

Why not look for a way to test at home whether CO2 does as described? The Death Valley thing didn't work out well.

This simple test showed up at JNova's site, have you done it?

glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/globalwarmingexperiment.html

"... In this activity, you will measure the effect of excess carbon dioxide on the temperature of gas inside of soda bottles and see what the effects of aerosols are on the heating of the gas. ..."

Or this similar one:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/viewing/0302_03_nsn.html

"... To examine carbon dioxide's ability to absorb heat, have the class do the experiment below. Test this experiment before having students perform it. Safety Warning: Wear goggles, and have students wear goggles..."

Tell us your results and how you explain them.

ATTN: Hank

FYI: It is Dr Pierce and I have the academic stamps of approval of F. S. Rowland and the late F. Rienes, both of whom were awarded the Noble prize, and that of Regents of Univ. of California. Those are my bragging rights! What do have you got?

What has CO2 go to do the alleged global warming? Absolutely nothing! Go read "Global Warming: A Closer Look at the Numbers" by mine safety engineer Monte Heib at:

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

That experiment to test CO2's ability to absorb heat is totally bogus. Put water in a plastic 2L pop bottle and stick thermometer thru the cap and then measure its ability to absorb heat. The temperature in bottle saturated with water vapor will rise much faster than that filled with CO2.

ATTN: BPL, Explain to these dumb Deltoid Dingo Dogs why this is so.

RE: Death Valley

BPL was mostly right. Actually I knew he would nail me on this. Nevertheless, you explain to me why those plots are flat as well as that of Tombstone AZ.

ATTN: Deltoid Dingo Dogs!

I'm going to put so much High Harold Heat on you all that your fur will start smokin'. I put so much High Harold Heat on Joe "Rantin Joe" Romm that he couldn't stand it and blocked me from his blog!

Would Tim "Tim the Good Host" Lambert block me from his blog? Nope! He just gets out the way and lets the flames and fur fly!

ATTN: Bernard and BPL Where are your email addresses?

Enough already! I have to send my Quatsino stuff to Roy, Roger and Richard (aka the Man)!

Steve Bloom, I'm guessing he hasn't been disemvowelled because he's too funny. Nobody, apart from Sweet Lord Monckton, is as consistently amusing. His latest stuff is the best. He's like a retarded Mohammed Ali.

He's like a retarded Mohammed Ali.

Or a high-lair-e-iss parody character. Either way he's funneh.

Best,

D

not to defend Jr. but I think he refers to DIngo Dog from the RIchard Scarry kids books... mischeviously lovable character always up to no good. Go get him officer Flossy.

A thermometer in a soft drink bottle? If that's a sample of PhD level scientific insight, PhD's are being seriously devalued. Given that HPjr is so ignorant of the mechanisms of AGW ( or prefers to dismiss them outright), any criticisms made must be dismissed - they are criticisms of what critics of climate science want to believe climate science says in order to show it as flawed. A good hit therefore equates to whacking themselves over the head.

I don't think the deniers will stop their dangerous campaign of disbelief until it's too late. The next strong el nino might take some wind out of their sails. I'm hoping that the owners and editors of MSM's will begin seeing the downside of trumpeting denialist nonsense and stop publishing it but they ought to know better already and still keep it up.

> http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/globalwarmingexperiment.html

Why, yes, in fact, they do discuss both dry and wet versions, and adding another with only water but no excess CO2 makes sense. So how did yours turn out? Did you get the expected results?

How do you explain the results? Is there about both excess dry CO2 and excess water vapor, that causes each individually to intercept infrared that goes right through the control?

What might that be? Is there any similarity between a CO2 molecule and a H2O molecule that you can think of?

Does the shape of either CO2 or H2O differ from an oxygen O2 or a nitrogen N2 molecule?

What we need is an explanation for what's observable here in the grade-school test. Can you suggest one?

This is the same test, more or less, that Arrhenius made -- at standard temperature and pressure. What conditions that occur in the atmosphere did Arrhenius and the grade school class not test?

Harold writes:

What has CO2 go to do the alleged global warming? Absolutely nothing!

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is largely transparent to sunlight but absorbs thermal infrared light. As a result, putting more of it into the air means the ground will become warmer, all else being equal. Here's a detailed explanation of how this works:

http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Greenhouse101.html

And here's some confirmatory evidence:

http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Correlation.html

Well, as an observer, I agree that Dr Pierce is hilarious. From his posturing over his degree, and his "pedigree", to his professional wrestler-style "High Harold Heat" bit, to his "I knew you would catch that" bit we often see from loons...it's pure gold. Please keep it up.

If we didn't have the unintentionally self-parodying Harold Pierce character to amuse us, we'd have to lobby Stephen Colbert to invent one...

A thermometer in a soft drink bottle? If that's a sample of PhD level scientific insight, PhD's are being seriously devalued.

the denialists are using a simple trick:

give them a complicated example, and the complain about the modelling, "dry air" not happening in nature and generally accuse scientists of faking the results.

give them a simple example, they will complain that it isn t scientific and point out minor problems.

it is very hard to teach those, who are refusing to learn...

Interestingly, every single one of Skeptico's arguments can be turned back on the Climate Faithful.

Interestingly, every single one of Skeptico's arguments can be turned back on the Climate Faithful.

Oh, yes? Without telling lies?

Enlighten us, oh science illiterate, enlighten us.

It's true. I heard it from Jack Lacton's Uncle.

For those wondering about Nova's motivation, there is no need to blame Evans. In 1996 (before she changed her name) she caused a small furore at Questacon when she would not shut up about the intellectual inferiority of blacks relative to whites and Asians. A friend of mine had to endure that rubbish through a long car trip. The friend was a psych major and pointed out all the errors in the research Jo was spouting, but it did no good.

Presumably she keeps those views pretty quiet these days, but I think we can establish a pattern.

"...there is no need to blame Evans."

Maybe we can blame Nova for Evans.

This can't all be a complete accident, otherwise I'll have to abandon my theory of Unintelligent Design.

Jack Lacton's blog is entertaining in a sort of anti-intellectual, science-ignorant kind of way.

These are the people overturning the work of professional scientists?

#104 Stephen L
"...but I think we can establish a pattern."

Quite right. Once an idiot, always an idiot.

I wonder if she has left anything in print or on tape/disc
in regards to her...um...'intellectual inferiority' opinions?

HPJ.

There is no way on Earth that I will give you my email address. I learned to my bitter frustration many years ago not to give email addresses or identifying details online, when my original university email account was so spammed by the likes of you that it had to be closed.

Of course, you should be happy to share your analyses right here (or on a linked web page of your own), as they are based upon public data, and because you are claiming scientific capacities. At the least you should detail your methodology.

PhD? My recollection was that you were a technician in a chem lab before you retired - I do not recall any mention of your doctorate in earlier threads. What pray tell were the subjects of your Honours and doctoral theses?

I am particularly curious about the statistical components of any such, because you are notorious for the use of multiple t-tests in repeated-measures/multi-factor contexts, where the repetitious use of this most elementary test is considered completely inappropriate.

I also seem to remember that you managed some pretty obvious data-preparation cockings-up, on the last occasion that I actually bothered to follow up on your basement antics, so my suspicion about your bona fides would take a lot of serious documentation indeed to be countered.

Have a go at it though. This thread is as good as any other to test the cred of those who believe that they are more capable than tens of thousands of the world's best, real scientists.

I think I may have found HPJ's home page.

Popular tech video blogger Cali Lewis publicly joins the global warming skeptics, going so far as to call global warming a 'hoax' on her Twitter stream:

http://tr.im/gez0

when my original university email account was so spammed by the likes of you that it had to be closed.

I had a full-on VB virus attack from some mad chimp on a denialist site. You're lucky. Fortunately it never made it thru but if it did, it would have been bad for the company I worked for at the time cough.

And seeing as this was from an automaker surrogate - it convinced me of the power of maintaining the status quo and keeping information from folks.

Best,

D

Aside:
Recommendation: http://www.sneakemail.com

Create a unique email address for each untrusted person.
It gets forwarded to you, and any replies sent back, protecting your actual address.
You know who you gave it to.
If they sell it to spammers or abuse it, cancel it.

> In 1996 (before she changed her name) she caused a
> small furore at Questacon when she would not shut up
> about the intellectual inferiority of blacks

What was the name she used when that was happening?

Joanne Codling

Why do I have this funny feeling that there's about to be a spike in traffic at the Joanne Codling internet neighbour hood?