Matt Ridley’s first response to my post about his failed prediction was denial:
I did not write for the Globe and Mail in 1993 let alone about climate!
Then he moved onto stage 3, bargaining:
global av temp (ignoring pinatubo drop) is about 0.2C above 1991 level after 22 yrs - so I was spot on so far!
As you can see, the graph he cites shows 0.5 degrees of warming since he made his prediction, so it seems that he is applying a 0.3 degree correction for Pinatubo. Which brings us to Ridley’s next column, published in The Sunday Telegraph on 30 Jan 1994 (one month after his column with the failed prediction):
The satellites, however, tell a very different story about the 1980s (their data do not go further back). Orbiting the planet from north to south as the Earth turns beneath them, they take the temperature of the lower atmosphere using microwave sensors. By the end of 1993 the temperature was trending downwards by 0.04 of a degree per decade.
The satellite’s masters explain away this awkward fact by subtracting two volcanic eruptions (Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and El Chichon in 1982) and four El Ninos (sudden changes in the circulation of the water in the Pacific). Since they assume that all these would have cooled the atmosphere, they conclude that the 1980s did see a gradual warming of the air by 0.09 degrees: still less than a third of that recorded by the old method.
Even with this sleight of hand (and when I was a scientist I was trained not to correct my data according my preconceptions of the result), the startling truth remains that the best measure yet taken of the atmosphere has found virtually no evidence of global warming.
So according to Matt Ridley in 1994, Matt Ridley in 2013 used a “sleight of hand”, something that he was trained not to do. If we hold Matt Ridley to the standard he declared at the time of his prediction there has been 0.5 degrees of warming since he predicted that there would be just one degree by 2100.
But if we do want to know what the long term warming trend is, it is not a “sleight of hand” to remove the short term effects of volcanoes and El Nino/La Nina. It is, however, a sleight of hand for Ridley to just correct for Pinatubo and not El Nino/La Nina. Here is the graph from Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) that shows what temperature records look like if the short term effects are removed:
Using Ridley’s preferred UAH data set we see that there has been 0.4 degrees of warming since he made his prediction.
Any way you slice it, there has been much more warming that Ridley predicted. I hope this information will help him reach stage 5, acceptance.
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More like this
"because then scientific consensi would have performed far better throughout history and would have been far more responsive to disturbing data."
Than what?
Why?
And cod latin makes you appear like Frothing Mad Lord Monckton.
Not a persona you'd want to emulate.
"the evidence for CAGW"
Only deniers believe in CAGW.
The IPCC talk about AGW or MMCC.
"wasn’t stacking up as had been hoped."
And you have EVIDENCE of this?
Observation and experiment are not equivocal, no matter how much one 'broadens' the definition.
To give you an example, my first degree (before I studied science) was in philosophy with an emphasis on Epistemology, including the way knowledge works in science, and not once did the word "consensus" tumble from the bearded lips of my teachers, not once was the word "consensus" printed in any of my Epistemology textbooks, not one of the books on my philosophy shelf has an index entry under "consensus" and—here you may think I'm being hyperbolic, but I'm not—when I first heard Oreskes rabbiting on about it, I had to look it up in a dictionary.
(It's not that I'd never heard it before—I knew, from political discourse, that it meant something to do with majority opinion, but I wasn't sure if it was meant to imply unanimity or not.)
"Yes, but I just said I DO care, in fact I said I cared EXCLUSIVELY, about the evidence."
Except the evidence you don't want to know.
Like, for example, your insistence on investigating CAGW. No evidence for that because it's a denier trope.
No evidence for your assertions at all, so far.
You discard your beloved very quickly, don't you.
"Observation and experiment are not equivocal, no matter how much one ‘broadens’ the definition."
Yes I appreciate that they're non-interchangeable words. Point?
"To give you an example, my first degree (before I studied science) was in philosophy with an emphasis on Epistemology"
And by "study science" he means "Read WUWT, et al".
Yes, when you want to learn about science, ask the philosophers.
PS We have no evidence of your apocryphal story.
"Yes I appreciate that they’re non-interchangeable words. Point?"
Yes, what IS your point?
I guess this is what this dipshit learned at philosophy: when you have no clue what you're talking about, ask a question.
Shrinks do that all the time.
Wow, your effusions are making it harder for me to scroll to luminous and BBD's comments, so your comments are a real inconvenience. I obviously can't (and wouldn't) tell you to go away, but how about you take a "look, don't touch" approach?
Brad, your effluent is clogging up the drains.
Instead of just going "Point?" how about you explain what the hell you were doing?
PS doesn't look good if you're so easily confused. Then again, you're just stalling aren't you, dovey?
So my point, luminous and BBD, was that "consensus" is an irrelevant and (in my opinion) toxic import into scientific discourse. We had 250 years of healthy contempt for words like that and science worked pretty damn well if you ask me. Suddenly we get climate science, the first spectacularly expensive but utterly unproductive science, and (simultaneously) climate metascience, with its tedious fetish for "consensus", and surely one has to wonder if the failure of one may be due to the misguidedness of the other.
Wow, you're evidently still typing.
Here's another polite hint: I'm not reading your words. The only reason I hit refresh is to see if luminous beauty, BBD or chameleon have made a new contribution.
Your argument, if it can be called such, Brat, is that the consensus can't be driven by evidence because otherwise it would be better than it is.
But that is nonsense. it is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
"I’m not reading your words."
Since you don't understand words, this is no effective change.
You're still making no sense.
"So my point, luminous and BBD, was that “consensus” is an irrelevant and (in my opinion) toxic import into scientific discourse."
And that opinion, plus 50p will buy you a bag of crisps.
Where is your EVIDENCE that consensus is irrelevant OR toxic.
Wow, this is very, very simple and I can't imagine why you don't understand it.
I don't read what you type.
You're wasting electrons. Electrons I pay for. Please be considerate and stop.
You are confusing me with someone who thinks you're telling the truth. Or cares.
You're a denier through-and-through and as such are impervious to any and all arguments that may lead to the conclusion "The climate science is sound".
Ergo, I don't give a shit if you're reading or not.
A lurker will see those points I've shown as fallacies and they won't be buried under the shit of psycho-babble that is your preferred intellectual camoflage.
Your assertions about consensus are complete non-sequiturs to your earlier and agonised admission that consensus in science will be based on the evidence and results of experiments.
EVERY POINT since then has ignored this admission. Because you cannot accept the IPCC report, nor accept that the agreement from all national science academies are because THEY have read and understood the science and their agreement shows the science is solid.
Hence your assassination of the idea of consensus.
You answered with a correct answer THEN COMPLETELY IGNORED IT.
Brad Keyes
Scientific knowledge is provisional, of course, so the scientific consensus arising is not fixed. It will change as the evidence dictates.
Science is combative, not cozy. The consensus exists only because it hasn't been torn down.
We've had 250 years of this. Climate science is no different; you are proposing a strawman.
"We’ve had 250 years of this."
Not exactly. What we've had is 250 years of scientists talking about evidence evidence evidence evidence and rarely hearing the word "consensus" (at least if they're not working in the political sciences field, or in fields like artificial intelligence, network theory and neuroscience in which "consensus" has a different, well-defined meaning).
"Climate science is no different; you are proposing a strawman."
Climate science has some UTTERLY unique features, just one of which is that its envoloping discourse is saturated with the pre-scientific notion of "consensus."
Have you noticed any of the other idiosyncrasies of climate science? I'll let you think on that.
Also, I think you wrote (on the previous page? Dear Wow, this is the kind of nuisance you're causing with your noisome noisiness) that I'd agreed that experiment should be guided by something called "consensual knowledge."
I have to stop you there. No, I didn't, and I don't know what that phrase could even mean.
Since knowledge is justified true belief, the notion of majority agreement seems to be nothing but a distractor.
Oops BBD, I mean a distraction. (I wasn't trying to impute anything nefarious on your part!!)
Brad,
"So my point, luminous and BBD, was that “consensus” is an irrelevant and (in my opinion) toxic import into scientific discourse"
The problem here is your opinion is irrelevant. Scientific consensus is equivocal with accepted scientific theory or current scientific paradigm or whatever label one wishes to identify what is true in every field of science. There is broad expert agreement on some level of scientific understanding, if only to serve as a baseline on which to hypothesize about that for which there is poor or little theoretical understanding.
@BBD,
you talk about "the scientific consensus arising" from the combative process of science.
But the point is that whether or not a consensus arises wouldn't have even interested any previous (pre-Oreskean, pre-Post-Normal) cohort of scientists!
Is there a "consensus" that helium is lighter than tungsten?
Well, PRESUMABLY, but the question is just so silly, I can barely type it. You would certainly HOPE that a majority of chemists has the same, correct belief about a question like that—but nobody has ever degraded themselves by doing an opinion survey to verify this, and why would they? It's entirely epiphenomenal and uninteresting.
And all scientists in the last 250 years have known this, too obviously for words.
The psephological activities of people like Oreskes, Doran and Zimmermann represent an absurd and (to say the least) noteworthy spectacle to any competent historian of science.
That shit just never used to happen in science.
This ought to be the first alarm bell for you when it comes to climate science.
"Scientific consensus is equivocal with accepted scientific theory or current scientific paradigm"
Of course. Nothing I've said is incompatible with this.
" ...or whatever label one wishes to identify what is true in every field of science. "
Whoa there sport! What kind of person uses those entities as a label for "what is true" in any field of science?
Answer: a Post-Normal, Oreskes-virus-infected post-scientist, that's who.
(With all due respect.)
Any scientifically-literate citizen truly interested in identifying "what is true" would look first, second, last and only at the scientific ___________.
(You know how I'm going to fill that blank, right?)
"There is broad expert agreement on some level of scientific understanding, if only to serve as a baseline on which to hypothesize about that for which there is poor or little theoretical understanding."
I beg to differ. No self-respecting scientist when designing an experiment would take a vote on what "most experts" think about it. That's ridiculous. The scientist reads the evidence—as many papers as he/she has access to—and performs his/her own computation of what I think you called "the preponderance" thereof, and goes from there.
Before Einstein, quantum mechanics was never discussed in science, either. But, nowadays there is a consensus view of QM upon which the operation of your computer is unequivocally dependent.
(Pardon my previous misuse of the word 'equivocal'. I meant 'equivalent'.)
Brad, you are splitting semantic hairs. A distinction without a difference.
By the way, BBD/luminous, suppose you were a doctor and I came in to you with a constellation of symptoms. Now let's say you used consensus as a basis for choosing the best way to treat me (or simply the correct diagnosis), and you turned out to be wrong.
I could sue you for medical malpractice, and I'd win because you'd be dead-to-rights guilty. Any judge competent in medico-legal theory would take a dim view indeed if you said "b-b-but 9 out of 10 doctors treat that way!"
If that surprises you, it's because you probably aren't aware that we live in the age of evidence-based medicine (a real term), in which majority opinion is looked down on a sorry substitute indeed for evidence.
You correctly say that:
"Before Einstein, quantum mechanics was never discussed in science, either."
Was the theory of quantum mechanics less true in 1800 than it is now?
" No self-respecting scientist when designing an experiment would take a vote on what “most experts” think about it. That’s ridiculous."
Yes, that's ridiculous. It's a strawman argument.
Any self-respecting scientist will draw on his knowledge of previously well founded science, guided by the expertise of his mentors and fellow scientists without recapitulating every step back to Archimedes in his experimental design.
Brad,
If 9 out of 10 doctors gave you the same diagnosis and suggested treatment and one doctor gave a completely different diagnosis, would you be justified in rejecting the nine in favor of the one because it was more amenable to your individual desires?
Luminous, we're "just" disagreeing about words, but words are ideas, and I think you underestimate the damage certain foreign words are doing to the integrity and health of science.
For example, I'd only change a few words in your last paragraph. I'd say:
"Any self-respecting scientist will draw on his knowledge of previously well founded science, guided by the work published by his mentors and fellow scientists without recapitulating every step back to Archimedes in his experimental design.
None, except for the memories of several of the participants which appear to contradict yours, and remaining quotes from your comments by other people who proceed to demonstrate that you're full of crap - and extensive evidence at Deltoid that you're routinely and apparently deliberately full of crap.
So yeah, none apart from that. For most people who are inclined to evaluate the question "Is Brad Keyes full of crap?" that would seem to be more than sufficient.
One could point out (again) that you chose to break the forum rules, repeatedly, and were given plenty of chances. But please do keep up the childish whinging about the consequences of your actions complete with attempts to invite judgement of those who applied the consequences rather than yourself. It is highly indicative of being a person being (as you say) "of a certain character".
Brad,
"If 9 out of 10 doctors gave you the same diagnosis and suggested treatment and one doctor gave a completely different diagnosis, would you be justified in rejecting the nine in favor of the one because it was more amenable to your individual desires?"
Yeah yeah, we've all heard that analogy, which I must admit is superficially compelling, but let me cut through the Gordian knot:
I would ask every single one of those 10 doctors what signs and symptoms underlay their diagnosis and if any of them replied: "well, it's based on the fact that ninety percent of us think that's what you've got", I'd walk out without paying the consultation fee, because they're not practicing EBM. (Presumably they got their degree from the College of Climate Medicine.) Does that help?
The theory of quantum mechanics didn't exist in 1800. Even though the sub atomic reactions that the theory explains and describes did.
@Lotharsson gives us a laundry list of non-evidence and begs out:
"So yeah, none apart from that."
Right. Like I said.
And WHY is there no evidence at all for your story, only your questionably-veridical recollections?
Because in line with what I assume is considered ethical best practice in the pseudoscientific ukiyo of Climate Psychology, Lewandowsky's little elves deleted the evidence. They're the Phil Jones of the blogosphere! LOL
"The theory of quantum mechanics didn’t exist in 1800."
Right, but was what-is-now-called the theory of quantum mechanics an equally true description of the 1800 universe as it is now, of the 2013 universe?
No, that doesn't help. None of those doctors themselves have personally developed the evidence upon which their diagnoses are based other than their clinical experience. They are relying on the work of others for which they have not the time to replicate so many many studies.
It is a consensus of collective opinion.
I had a closer look at the previous depiction of Ridley's prediction here. The difference between the green curve's values at 2010 and 1993 is (within error margins) spot on, even though Tim didn't bother putting the appropriate kink in the green curve.
From the graph I make that difference pretty close to 0.10, maybe 0.11 at most.
"would you be justified in rejecting the nine in favor of the one because it was more amenable to your individual desires?"
I missed that last clause.
No, absolutely not. I'd only be justified in rejecting OR ACCEPTING medical advice to the extent that it was or wasn't justified by actual bedside observations, clinical examination findings and investigation results (or to use an umbrella term, "signs and symptoms").
As an aside, which doesn't change my answer, you might be surprised to know that in something like 99% of hypothetical clinical presentations, there exists somewhere a massive collaborative review conveniently meta-analysing the best evidence and practically spoon-feeding the doctor the most-justified diagnosis and treatment for the specific constellation of signs and symptoms.
(I'm sure there's a great, great deal more to being a doctor than simply looking up the apposite Cochrane Review for the given situation, though—don't get me wrong about that.)
Non-evidence-based medicine is not medicine.
"They are relying on the work of others for which they have not the time to replicate so many many studies."
I know that. They read studies written by other human beings. Sorry for not stipulating this—I thought it was understood.
"It is a consensus of collective opinion."
Again, where is this coming from?
No it bloody well is not a consensus of collective opinion. Sorry, luminous.
NB Notwithstanding our irreconcilable difference on that point, I must admit it's a great relief to meet someone who understands what the word consensus means!
It's not a consensus. It's a matter of what the collected, published evidence can justify. Two completely different things.
I hasten to stipulate that it is (hopefully) usually the case that most doctors who treat the relevant condition for a living would arrive at the same, evidence-based answer, and therefore the "consensus" answer will (hopefully) be the same answer as the evidence-based one, nevertheless the consensus cannot be any substitute whatsoever for EVIDENCE.
So I'm not saying "consensuses are always wrong" or even "consensuses are no more likely to be right than a random answer."
I'm saying something much deeper than that but I'm happy to keep explaining the difference if it still isn't clear (since you don't strike me as being deliberately obtuse!)
Brad's waffle about consensus is (deliberately, one suspects) missing the point - which I seem to recall was how he did it at Lewandowsky's too.
Consensus is NOT being used AS the scientific evidence underpinning the conclusions of mainstream climate science, no matter how hard Brad dog-whistles that tune or even explicitly proffers that particular strawman.
It is being used to communicate and illuminate the strength of the evidence underlying the conclusions to the unscientifically unskilled public - especially in the face of unscientific denialism employing tactics that sound like they are scientific but are not designed to mislead the scientifically unskilled. In particular, it illustrates the dilemma of the scientific unskilled who cannot evaluate the evidence themselves. They have to delegate their opinion on the matter to someone else if they don't want an opinion based on incompetence. In that case, do you go with practically the entire body of practicing research scientists in the field, or do you go with a few practicing research scientists backed up with a bunch of other people, some of whom are paid to sway your opinion?
And as luminous beauty points out, "consensus" is not some new "feature" of science or even of science communication. It is essentially synonymous with "accepted scientific theory". That makes the bankruptcy of Brad's argument crystal clear.
Saying it does not breathe life into a strawman.
For one thing, the "enveloping discourse", by which I presume the discussion of scientific thinking outside of science such as in the media or amongst the general public - for many medical science questions is also saturated with talk of "consensus" and its synonyms, so the claim appears to be false on its face.
But more importantly for "any competent historian of science", any alleged analysis of what is allegedly "unique" about climate science that denies like Brad denies (why do you think it's so important for him to smear Oreskes with irrelevancies rather than refute her argument?) the coordinated strategies of denialism attempting to dissuade the general public from adopting the conclusions of climate science is an incredibly skewed picture. And it's a picture that allows one to avoid inquiring (as Brad determinedly avoids) why pointing out strong consensus to the non-scientific public is a feature of communicating climate science to the public - and focus instead on alleging that the very pointing out in question indicates the science is dodgy. (And that fallacious argument is almost an archetypal example of the kind of illogic that is deployed to sow doubt unmerited by the evidence.)
Furthermore no "competent historian of science" would - by definition - so badly conflate the internal process of science with the external communication of it to a non-scientific public in order to cast aspersions about the results of those internal processes. (You'll see a similar rhetorical trick employed by Brad at #30, moving from consensus of researchers to consensus of practitioners who consume communications of scientific research.)
And you'll note that it's essentially a blame-the-victim strategy: use bogus arguments to mislead the general public (particularly as to the strength and scientific validity of the conclusions), and then allege that the responses to those arguments necessarily tailored for communication to a non-scientific public are themselves evidence of bogus science.
But as far as I recall, we're simply rehashing Brad's old misunderstandings of science, and we know from experience that Brad will simply twist and turn, duck and weave, dodge and Gallop...
Saying it does not make it so. Careful readers will note that Brad proffers false characterisations of most of the things I pointed out. Then again, careful readers will have already noted that Brad takes extensive liberties with the truth - but prides himself on "not lying".
But if the collaborative review, i.e., consensus, is based on evidence, you'd have no problem, right?
What you have to do, now, is prove the scientific consensus on climate change is not based on evidence.
Can you do that?
Indeed. Kinda like the IPCC does and then spoon-feeds the results to non-scientists.
And in the medical case you'll generally find that after a suitable time interval, that the consensus of researchers converges on results from this kind of study. And that the study results are communicated to non-researchers. Kinda like it's difficult to find a practicing climate science researcher who significantly disagrees with the IPCC reports, which are communicated to the non-researche public.
But wait...wait...wait...I know this one! If someone were to then say that there were a consensus amongst qualified researchers, either a researcher communicating to a non-researcher such as a doctor, or perhaps even a non-researcher such as a doctor when discussing treatment strategies with a non-researcher such as a patient, then that would be indicative of the consensus NOT being based on scientific evidence, right?! Just like pointing out the strength of the consensus in climate science indicates that the evidence must be dodgy, right?!
Let me give you another example that might help, though I'm remembering it in only partial detail.
An empirical survey of emergency room practices (carried out by a sociologist of medicine—an actual medical science researcher would never do anything like this, because it doesn't yield medical evidence) found that a majority of emergency physicians was prescribing supplemental oxygen immediately upon the patient complaining of a certain symptom—it was something very common, like nausea plus palpitations or something along those lines.
This fact is NOT evidence that supplemental oxygen is the right thing to give to such patients.
On the contrary, the medical evidence was that it is of no benefit. (So the interesting question was why all EDs were doing it.)
This was just one example (though there are myriad others in real life) in which the "consensus" answer and the RIGHT answer were not the same answer, i.e. "consensus" tells you one thing and evidence tells you something different.
That is why I'm stressing: consensus isn't evidence.
Except, if we're to believe skeevers like Oreskes, in climate science.
Finally, here's a hypothesis for your consideration/ delectation/provocation:
The above explains why medicine saves lives and climate science just wastes money.
"Indeed. Kinda like the IPCC does and then spoon-feeds the results to non-scientists."
And, if only the IPCC synthesised the evidence scientifically, you'd have a point for once, Lotharsson.
"But if the collaborative review, i.e., consensus, is based on evidence, you’d have no problem, right?"
No, the word collaborative merely means that multiple institutions, preferably in different countries with access to different languages, collect and crunch the evidence. It's a showy word that means "big and expensive and more likely to get the right answer because it draws on evidence from all over the place."
It does not mean anything like "majority opinion."
Oops. What I meant by "the above" here:
"Finally, here’s a hypothesis for your consideration/ delectation/provocation:
The above explains why medicine saves lives and climate science just wastes money."
... was "my preceding comments." (Not the present comment, which explained no such thing.)
"Just like pointing out the strength of the consensus in climate science indicates that the evidence must be dodgy, right?!"
Absolutely not. You're right, that's a silly argument, which I'm not making.
If only you could show it does not, you'd have been able to avoid all of your irrelevant prevarication about consensus and how unique it was in climate science and how it is being used as evidence instead of arising from the evidence.
And someone as smart as you would never go off on irrelevant tangents if he could simply proffer a Q.E.D., right?
You are again using consensus of non-researchers which is not analogous to climate science hence your example does not support your claim with respect to climate science. Why do you keep advancing fallacious arguments via inappropriate analogy?
But by now we are merely revisiting ground covered at Lewandowsky's - both in terms of subject matter and "argument" tactics. And you didn't do any better there...
@Lotharsson:
yes, you would hope and expect most doctors a generation from now would practice the best, ah, practice according to what we know now, at least in cases where we're currently right and have enough data, pointing in a consistent enough direction, to be very confident that we're right.
But that's because you would hope and expect that med schools right now are basing their teaching on up-to-date evidence, the gold standard of which is what I referred to before (a massive collaborative meta-analysis such as a Cochrane Review).
So, still ducking and weaving.
What about a whole set of reviews, some collaborative and some single-institution, all based on the evidence, at least one of them wide-ranging and heavily peer-reviewed, that all come to more or less the same conclusions? You'd have no problem with that, right?
You are - as you did at Lewandowsky's - doing a very good impression of making that argument. So you might want to be a lot clearer.
Of course, doing so might undercut one of your (ironically apparently evidence-free) assertions - that consensus is being used in climate science as evidence rather than is arising from evidence.
And since you insist on ignoring the distinction between practising researchers and consumers of said research, you'd generally expect that most researchers would share that view much quicker than that, right?
And in the real world, you'd even expect this to apply to confidence levels a bit less than "very confident", given that unfortunate constraint that real world choices can't be made on evidence not yet available, right?
"…if only the IPCC synthesised the evidence scientifically, …
If only you could show it does not, you’d have been able to avoid all of your irrelevant prevarication about consensus and how unique it was in climate science and how it is being used as evidence instead of arising from the evidence."
I can easily show that it doesn't. Unlike a Cochrane Review panel, the IPCC doesn't even pretend to follow proper meta-analytic principles. Every time an IPCC apologist says "hey, the IPCC itself doesn't actually do science/do the research/do the science" what they're actually admitting without any apparent awareness of it is that the IPCC does not follow any scientific method known to man.
You are unlikely to hear someone say "hey, a Cochrane Review panel doesn't actually DO SCIENCE", because a proper meta-analysis (as done by Cochrane) IS scientific research. It is done in adherence to the (or "a," if you insist) scientific method.
To give an egregious, instructive and hilarious example of non-scientific practice by the IPCC, remember the rationale Dr Murari Lal gave for his inclusion of the dial-a-mystic Himalayan prediction?
"We put it in because we thought it would encourage action in the region."
That answer would get a medical scientist or any other scientist fired from a real meta-analytic panel.
@Lotharsson, this is a prime example of your completely counterproductive antagonism and obnoxiousness:
"And since you insist on ignoring the distinction between practising researchers and consumers of said research..."
If you think I've overlooked the distinction, then say so like a normal fucking human being. What kind of paranoid polemicist avidly converts every perceived mistake by an interlocutor into a Grand Jury indictment for deception with malice aforethought?
Seriously dude, even a highly unusually civilised exchange by your standards is fucking exhausting.
I'm hoping at least that luminous is reading, since otherwise (no offence, Lotharsson) I'm spending way too much energy arguing at you.
Are you completely un(-self) aware of how hypocritical this is, given your comments here over the last few days where you came across as being a Vile Mike with a better vocabulary and an occasionally functioning self-censoring filter?
Or is there more than one person posting here under the name "Brad Keyes"?
Me too. And I have much more limited patience with your "consensus is being used instead of evidence" line this time around than I did at Lewandowsky's.
No they are not, and it's deeply mendacious to claim otherwise. Either that, or much less intelligent than you give yourself credit for.
Your call.
"What about a whole set of reviews, some collaborative and some single-institution, all based on the evidence, at least one of them wide-ranging and heavily peer-reviewed, that all come to more or less the same conclusions? You’d have no problem with that, right?"
Not if what you were long-windedly describing was a proper meta-analysis.
Instead you're talking about the IPCC, where the closest thing to epistemological quality control is apparently its comically naive idea of putting politicians in the same room as scientists and allowing anyone present to veto any sentence they don't like. What a joke. What an expensive joke.
"Are you completely un(-self) aware of how hypocritical this is, given your comments here over the last few days where you came across as being a Vile Mike with a better vocabulary and an occasionally functioning self-censoring filter?"
How confusing. I thought I was worse than this Mike character?
(Are Mike H and mike the same commenter? Cos I would have thought Mike H was on your "side".)
"Every time an IPCC apologist says “hey, the IPCC itself doesn’t actually do science/do the research/do the science” what they’re actually admitting without any apparent awareness of it is that the IPCC does not follow any scientific method known to man.
No they are not, and it’s deeply mendacious to claim otherwise. Either that, or..."
I'm a big believer in positively reinforcing pro-social behaviours so: Thank you, Lotharsson, for conceiving of the possibility that when someone says something you yourself don't believe, there are explanations besides mendacity.
Now I shall follow up that praise with polite criticism.
Your objection is misguided, because if the IPCC were to follow the scientific method, it would, by definition, be doing science.
"Me too. And I have much more limited patience with your “consensus is being used instead of evidence” line this time around than I did at Lewandowsky’s."
Basic question, Lotharsson. Why is consensus being used AT ALL?
MikeH is not Mike.
And there we have more argument by assertion and innuendo rather than demonstration - which is pretty much where you came in on this sojourn at Deltoid. You haven't got any more now than you had at Lewandowsky's, which was precisely nothing, and you haven't learned to argue in good faith since then either.
I reckon it's time for me to waste time on something more profitable. Good luck convincing luminous beauty of your position - given your performance thus far you'll need it.
@Brad
Yep that pantera song is playing in my head too.
@Wow
See Wow? That's how it's done. Lotharsson can at least give Brad some actual content to play semantics with.
@Luminous
Thankyou captain obvious!
Chuckle :-)
You are splitting semantic hairs Brad.
I bet that accusation just rocked your world Brad?
@Lotharsson
Did you happen to finally work out what that idiom/epigram about pots and kettles actually means?
You will now need to inform LB that splitting semantic hairs is actually an essential ingredient in the tribe of 'ritual intellectual humiliation' play book of semantics.
And BTW folks,
It is not hard to define consensus and it is entirely googleable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making
or
con·sen·sus (kn-snss)
n.
1. An opinion or position reached by a group as a whole: "Among political women . . . there is a clear consensus about the problems women candidates have traditionally faced" (Wendy Kaminer). See Usage Note at redundancy.
2. General agreement or accord: government by consensus.
or
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/consensus
I'll try that again without "misguided", which is too much of a faffy word.
Dear Lotharsson,
Your objection is wrong, because if the IPCC were to follow the scientific method, it would, by definition, be doing science. Make sense?
Ah, the curse of seeing comments cross over when you post your last one.
When I think the other possibilities are plausible, I allow for them. When the evidence suggests otherwise, I often don't. The evidence suggested otherwise in the case you objected to.
You might consider applying the feelings of being wronged you apparently experienced and multiplying them by 10 - that may give you an inkling of the kind of offense I reckon you induce in many readers with some of your other comments.
Still wrong.
Hint: what is the IPCC and who is in it? Are you answering this question differently than the people whose statement you used to infer that the "IPCC is not doing science"? If you are, is your inference still valid?
It is a basic question, and one that a competent historian of science should be able to answer. I pointed you in the direction of an answer above. And I pointed you to some (ahem) pointed distinctions that you don't seem to reliably apply when considering the question but need to.
OK, this time I'm off to do other things ;-)
@chameleon, nice to know that someone is getting something (even if just entertainment) out of my enervating ordeal of attempting to reason with the son of Lothar.
:-)
Oh, did you see my answer to your question (though I think you directed it to bill and chek) about Jeff H's dismissal of Marohasy?
@Lotharsson, you mention "the people whose statement you used to infer that the “IPCC is not doing science”"
You mean the ones who say "the IPCC itself does not do science"?
Those people are pretty easy to find. Hasn't Pachauri himself admitted it?
"You might consider applying the feelings of being wronged you apparently experienced and multiplying them by 10 – that may give you an inkling of the kind of offense I reckon you induce in many readers with some of your other comments."
The poor diddums. What a monster I've been.
LOL. More seriously though, the product of that multiplication would be zero offendedness, because ten times the amount I'm offended by your Debating By Attrition modus operandi is zero. I'm just annoyed and bored by it.
So, no offence taken, Lotharsson.
:-)
"Hint: what is the IPCC and who is in it?"
I guess the answers are:
An Intergovernmental Panel.
and
A bunch of governments. And of course, to be fair, some (mostly government) scientists. And some government attachés. Who have I forgotten?
"Basic question, Lotharsson. Why is consensus being used AT ALL?
It is a basic question, and one that a competent historian of science should be able to answer."
Yes, it's a basic question, and I know the answer, as does everyone who's studied the history of science (but not many other people, I expect).
Now if I didn't know better, I might suspect you were ducking and weaving.
Since such a suspicion is, of course, deeply unworthy of you Lotharsson, I'll assume you innocently failed to realise I was asking you for, you know, an answer.
But I am.
What's your answer?
And to refresh your memory, the very basic question was:
Basic question, Lotharsson. Why is consensus being used AT ALL?
No I missed it.
Must have got lost amongst all those split hairs I waded through?
(I know I know, mixed metaphors)
Do you mind repeating it? Too much of wowism to go back and find.
@chameleon,
YMMV, but I've lost count of the number of believalists who (sincerely, I think) swear that "consensus" means "the preponderance of evidence."
The education system has a lot to... (you know the rest).
:p
@chameleon,
I know, with the hairs!
Here ya go:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/14/matt-ridley-responds-with-a-…
Yeah, Wow is a total card. And a liability to belivalism—so I hope he comes back (just not when adults are trying to debate).
Brad,
The IPCC doesn't do science because it is a small office in the UN, with minimal staff. It is a co-ordinating body for professional scientists who voluntarily produce an independent systematic and rigorously scientific review of the scientific literature and all the empirical evidence. It's the (mostly academic)scientists who do the work and write the reports, not bureaucrats.
It is a shame I suppose that governments have post hoc opportunity to involve themselves in the process, but they do not have any presumptive veto power over the language in the report. They are given line by line opportunity to present arguments for changes in the language, which are accepted by, dare I say it, consensus.
It is a shame for certain to spread libelous falsehoods about Dr. Murari Lal.
@Brad Keyes
While I have not read all the comments, I am yet to read anything from you that would qualify as substantive. Your only skill is setting up and demolishing straw men. I am sure that in between telling yourself how wonderful you are, you could keep this debate going indefinitely without a contribution from anyone else.
Wanker is the term that best covers it.
@Lotharsson,
D'oh!
My bad this time—*red face.*
Yes, @Lotharsson, you did give an answer to the basic question, which I somehow managed not to see for all the lecturing, moral insinuations and here's-a-hints.
Moreover, you gave a detailed answer.
So thank you. (I'll leave it on a positive note, to be...
... continued here).
Your answer, while sincerely proffered, is implausible.
Here's why.
The exigencies you mention—the need to "communicate and illuminate" the supposed unequivocality of The Science(tm) to a scientifically less-educated public—have never never previously been used as a licence to abandon science's age-old, noble tradition of abhorrence for talk of "consensus."
It is because of the supposed climate crisis, and nothing else, that the Royal Society's motto of nullius in verba lies forgotten and traduced by the science establishment.
They managed to hold true to it for 250 years, the entire history of modern science until the ill-omened mutant birth of the monster Oreskeism.
The entire sensible world has been persuaded that smoking systematically causes cancer.
How? NOT by an intergovernmental panel of doctors meeting in tropical hotels to declare "consensus" and mock everyone who didn't receive a party invitation as genocidal shills, contemptible quacks and unpublished incompetents.
No.
By evidence. END OF.
Ah, but you would know this if you understood—in fact, you must know this because you understand—the history of science.
So, son of Lothar, you still owe us some story that might rationalise why soi-disant "science" is being promoted in a fundamentally new, unprecedentedly unsuccessful, conspicuously un-science-like, powerfully doubt-fuelingly manner.
Or even:
... powerfully doubt-fueling manner.
;-p
@MikeH,
do you know where "Mike" is? Without an H, I think?
I've heard tell of his fine qualities and think he would add greatly to the conversation.
If the assumption that all Mikes must know each other is un-PC, sorry—I didn't mean to offend.
@luminous,
thanks for the link to thinkprogress.
Is it your interpretation of that blog post that this in the Daily Mail, which was the source of my example:
Said Lal: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
is a lie?
@luminous,
I ask because, in all the sound and fury of the thinkprogress article, I couldn't see any denial of the quote by Lal.
Which I find curious.
I've now read a second article on the topic, also at thinkprogress, also lacking any such denial.
Which I find curious.
However, BEING CURIOUS, I'm in the process of reading all other articles I can find on the topic, so if Lal has denied the quote I expect to discover so in the next few minutes (but please, let's not reopen the reading speed wars!)
Or if you can short-cut me to somewhere that Lal denies the quote that would also be appreciated.
Thanks again for the polite disagreement.
Don't worry, I found this in a blog comment (of all places):
"This is an email from Lal:
I am not a Glaciologist but a Climatologist and the statement attributed to me in “Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified” By David Rose in UK Daily Mail on 24th January 2010 has been wrongly placed. I never said this story at any time and strongly condemn the writer for attributing this to me.
More specifically, I never said during my conversation with Rose the following statements being attributed to me:
(a) ‘it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.’
(b) ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.’
(c) ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’, and
(d) ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’."
...And I've found an above-the-line printing of the same email at thinkprogress, which removes any doubt that Lal has denied the quote.
Against which is the reporter Rose's claim that he kept detailed notes of the interview.
It's unclear whom to believe, but I'm happy to assume for the sake of argument that Rose, not Lal, is lying if you like.
Frankly, Rose comes across as (at best) unwise for not recording such a potentially-explosive interview.
(Just my impression after 10 minutes' research into this "Rosegate" thing)
Anyone have other thoughts about it?
@luminous beauty, you mention that
"It is a shame I suppose that governments have post hoc opportunity to involve themselves in the process, but they do not have any presumptive veto power over the language in the report. They are given line by line opportunity to present arguments for changes in the language, which are accepted by, dare I say it, consensus."
Having never been allowed inside one of these conclaves, I'll defer to your description thereof.
So would I have been closer to the truth by ascribing to the IPCC (or whatever the preferred collective name for the people at the tropical hotel is these days) a process whereby a bunch of scientists and politicians in the same room vote on which sentences will be spoken in the voice of Sciencem and which sentences struck out?
If that's a fair summary, then yes, I think it is a complete donkey on which you pinned the tail by referring to it as "a shame."
the voice of Science, I meant.
@luminous,
Here's a representative iteration of the meme I discussed with Lotharsson.
"The IPCC itself does not conduct any research..."
Which makes complete sense if, like you say, the IPCC is a small office in the UN building with a handful of staff.
The quote continues:
"... but collects and analyses global research results."
Which makes no sense if, like you say, the IPCC is a small office in the UN building with a handful of staff.
Presumably, the person quoted is simply as confused as the average member of the public as to what exactly "the IPCC" means.
Interestingly though, I’m not quoting the average member of the public!
http://www.myclimate.org/en/information-climate-tips/climate-politics/i…
See numerous reiterations of the same confusion from people who really ought to know what they’re talking about:
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Comments.pdf
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/01/31/does-the-ipcc-follow-the-rule…
Can you set them straight, LB?
@Lotharsson:
"the coordinated strategies of denialism attempting to dissuade the general public from adopting the conclusions of climate science is an incredibly skewed picture."
Conspiracy theorise much?
Think you might benefit from talking to a professional psychologist who specialises in exactly that problem?
stephan.lewandowsky@uwa.edu.au comes highly recommended.
@Lotharsson rationalises on...
"[Science muggles] have to delegate their opinion on the matter to someone else if they don’t want an opinion based on incompetence. In that case, do you go with practically the entire body of practicing research scientists in the field, or do you go with a few practicing research scientists backed up with a bunch of other people"?
Nope.
You're asking yourself a trick question, which may explain how a reasonably intelligent bloke like yourself wound up on the, how can I put this politely?, counter-Aurelian side of the carbon dioxide controversy in the first place.
NEITHER of those answers is worthy of a high school graduate.
Here's what I do, Loth. Now you don't have to do what I do, but it's stood me in fairly good stead on ... oh, every single scientific issue that comes to mind.
I go where the evidence is.
It's a free country, of course. Feel free to follow your own algorithm. Feel free to make your motto:
"Always go in the direction the majority of government-payrolled scientists are said to incline, even if there's never been an academically serious, even vaguely robust opinion survey to tell us one way or the other."
But as your "majoritarian" cult hemorrhages membership year after year after year, maybe you should ask yourself at some point:
how's that working out for you?
Oh, and thanks for the warning about those Merchants of Doubt, "some of whom are paid to sway your opinion."
LOL.
Has it really never crossed your mind you that 90% of government-funded climate scientists would be in the Centrelink line if not for the climate scare?
(International readers, please substitute "...would be driving taxis if not for the climate scare?")
No: seriously, Lotharsson.
Was I too generous about your intelligence?
And to head off the obvious objection: no, I don't think the kind of data-retaining, email-archiving, decline-disclosing, Nobel-Prize-disclaiming, Excel-understanding, speaker's-fee-admitting, general-honest-science-based skills demonstrated by the average journeyman climate scientist are particularly transferrable to a real job in science.
ROFL.
@MikeH:
I am sure that in between telling yourself how wonderful you are, you could keep this debate going indefinitely without a contribution from anyone else.
Yes, interesting people (guilty as charged) do have this power of being just as interesting on our own as we are in the company of cookie-cutter mediocrities (which would be you).
"Wanker is the term that best covers it."
Praise from Caesar!
By the way, MikeH, I note that you speak English about as well as expected from your rank in the climate gullibilist army:
I am sure that in between telling yourself how wonderful you are, you could keep this debate going indefinitely...
Free English tip for the wonder-challenged:
Don't say "in between" if you can only think of one thing to follow it.
Tim, this has simply become ridiculous.
@bill, ready to make that easy $25 I offered for answering one rudimentary question?
@bill, what are you, a bird or a chicken?
Tim,
1. bill goes a little too far, but yes, it is odd (not to say "ridiculous") that nobody has anything to say about any of the points I've raised in the last 60 minutes.
2. however, it is Sunday night on a long weekend in Australia.
3. So, in an inventive bid to drive up participation on your blog (which I think is a very precious thing) my latest idea is to practically throw money at one of your regular commenters, bill.
(Actually, I'm thinking of offering to let any regular commenter take the money if bill refuses to.)
Why is he dodging said money? It's... ridiculous.
Anyone? Anyone at all interested in $25 for answering a BASIC question related to climatey-sciencey-type stuff?
Not a trick question. (It has a straightforward answer... but of course, you need to know it.)
By god, I think I've stumbled on the holy grail of modern cognitive science!
I've figured out what causes climate alarmism.
Fear of money.
Chuckle
:-)
Fear of money :-)
Good one Brad K.
I'm watching the Oz open and it's a great match.
But I have to confess I am enjoying watching this game almost as much.
Thanks for linking the cooment re Marohasy.
Comment!
Bloody tthypos tippos TYPOS!
Did you notice that JeffH had a sort of epiphany re the difference between the OPINION of scientists and science not long after he made furthef comments about Ms Marohasy & others?
Good for him.
I am still wondering why he linked Media Watch?
Why would Media Watch be a reliable scientific reference?
FURTHER! Dammit!
@hey chameleon, the TUMBLEWEEDS that greeted my offer of extremely-easy cash to any and all believalists here made me wonder if Tim had done a Komrad Stephan and "disappeared" me! I'm glad you can read me.
Seriously, though, it's not even a trick question—it's one that anyone with half a brain would know (or at least, wouldn't shoot their mouth off like so many deltoids UNLESS they knew)—so the cowardice they're displaying gives me a 95% confidence range that stops at less than "half" on the question "how much of a brain do leading deltoid commenters have"!
Anyway since I'll probably achieve nothing by flashing easy money (plus an irresistible bonus prize—see the 2013 Open Thread) at these cowards, I'm glad at least you're getting some amusement out of it!
Certainly, Brad's disconnection from reality is getting worse.
Brad was nuts to begin with, of that there is no doubt, guthrie.
"Why do you keep advancing fallacious arguments via inappropriate analogy?"
Because there is nothing to Brad.
Just empty rhetoric. It's all he learned at philosophy class.
The scientific evidence is WHY there is a consensus.
Brad, however, doesn't like the science, so he trashes the consensus.
” No self-respecting scientist when designing an experiment would take a vote on what “most experts” think about it. That’s ridiculous.”
And nobody said they did.
But you don't know what science does, do you Brat.
So you pretend.
Bumptious Keystrokes:
.
There is your straw-man, right there. You are completely, and deliberately, misrepresenting the nature of 'consensus' in this instance.
One clarification,
the contents of the IPCC reports has reached a consensus position in that APGW, and other side effects of the commercial-industrial complex, is very real and an existential threat to the continued prosperity (not in the restricted fiscal sense) of human civilization and all the ecological systems, including the fortuitous status of all the other natural processes that support such prosperity.
I await yet another example of your prolixity in attempting to hand-wave this away.
@Lionel A
"the contents of the IPCC reports has reached a consensus position in that APGW, and other side effects of the commercial-industrial complex, is very real and an existential threat to the continued prosperity (not in the restricted fiscal sense) of human civilization and all the ecological systems, including the fortuitous status of all the other natural processes that support such prosperity."
It sounds like you consider anthropogenic global warming to be catastrophic!
No, that can't be right. That's a denialist strawman, right?
PS, fair warning, Lionel:
There's a reason people a bit smarter than you have learned to run away from people a bit less smart than me. You're about to find it out. But hey, don't be afraid. Make your move.
LOL!
Black Knight declared:
There’s a reason people somewhat smarter than you have learned to identify the straw-men that you offer with the latest example being:
The emphasised being your word, not mine. Also the unnecessary and silly use of an exclamation mark goes against you.
So you don't think AGW is going to be a catastrophe.
Pleasure to meet a like-minded person in these parts!
Sorry I was a bit polemical with you, I thought you were, this big disastrist. You know those "it's an existential threat!" types.
Which was silly of me. I should have picked up that you were a realist when you yawned in relation to Wow's monologue on the other thread. Again, sorry.
So you can't read.
Or think.
Or know when you've been stomped flat.
Not good on context are you.
Only if we listen to the do nothing about it brigade, and those who dance around the points muddying the waters. Your sidestepping puts 'Riverdance' to shame.
As for you being silly, nothing new there.
I wonder what the source is for 'consensus' being a pre-scientific idea?
Rather it's a modern one, in the same way that we have a consensus about general relativity and the properties of elements. Implicit within it in a scientific context is that it can be superseded, like Newtonian dynamics, if you amass enough evidence.
Brad Keyes
As I said, and at least two other commenters have since also noted, you are engaging in strawman arguments about the nature of scientific consensus.
It is based on evidence; it is *not* evidence. Scientific knowledge and scientific consensus are provisional and will change if new evidence changes scientific understanding.
This is neither new, nor unique to climate science - a further, rather blatant strawman.
I can feel boredom setting in despite your prose flourishes. Underneath, I sense the same old 'sceptic' discourse, founded on nonsense and immune to correction.
I still have no idea how he/it managed to come to the conclusion:
Which, as I said before, is simply begging the question.
Brad,
Your over-use of the word 'catastrophe' is a clever ploy often used by climate change deniers or contrarians. Please grow up. You appear to try and give the impression of being a 'mature' contributor here then you resort to this nonsense. I often find that the ant-scientific people who inhabit the think tanks and astroturf groups like to drag the climate change down to the depths of tabloid-level discourse. The 'C' affixed to AGW is one such ploy. It really is imbecilic, but its become one of the denier's main strategies. The problem is that I have yet to meet a climate change denier who really understands what the repercussions of warming may be on complex adaptive systems. They typically expunge ecology from the discussion, on the simple basis that they don't understand anything about biotic and abiotic stressors and their effects on biodiversity. Therein lies the problem. Our planet's ecological life support systems (and the populations, species and individuals that make them up) evolve, assemble and function in response to a wide range on intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Climate envelopes are one such important abiotic constraint. Rapid local and large-scale shifts in temperatures will challenge biodiversity to adapt, and with it the effects will ripple through communities and ecosystems.
AGW has the potential to seriously undermine the functioning of many of the planet's ecosystems, either by pushing local populations beyond thermal envelopes to which they are adapted, or by altering the strength of interaction networks, leading to fraying and unraveling food webs (as is already being documented). Importantly, climate change will almost certainly be exacerbated by other anthropogenic threats, such as habitat fragmentation and loss, invasive organisms, other forms of pollution that impact systems and their biota.
The climate change denial/down playing lobby has few qualified ecologists in its ranks, particularly systems ecologists who study the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Now I would like some of these brainless luminaries to describe to me what they mean by 'catastrophic'. The response will be vapid and shallow. They simply don't understand how the term applies to complex adaptive systems, so in the end, if cornered, they will generally be forced to say warming that has profoundly disastrous economic consequences. But they will not be able to say why, because they are not ecologists.
So here is some advice. If you want to retain any shred of credibility here, stop using big terms which you have shown that you have culled form one side of the debate but which you do not understand.
@Jeff,
Your over-use of the word ‘catastrophe’ is a clever ploy often used by climate change deniers or contrarians. Please grow up.
Cut me some slack, even trained athletes have trouble keeping up with a dysphemism treadmill (Google it).
What, pray tell, is the mature term these days?
"Existential threat"?
Do you believe in ETAGW, Jeff?
Are you an ETAGWist?
WHAT DOES ONE CALL YOU?
Seriously, it's like trying to pin down an able-bodied butterfly on meth. Not when you're on meth, I mean the bu—you know what I mean!
" The problem is that I have yet to meet a climate change denier"
Me neither. I don't think anyone has.
Oh, hang on, that wasn't the end of the sentence.
"... who really understands what the repercussions of warming may be on complex adaptive systems."
You mean these mythical people don't accept how catastrophic it is?
Wow, they sound horrible, if they exist.
"They typically expunge ecology from the discussion, on the simple basis that they don’t understand anything about biotic and abiotic stressors and their effects on biodiversity."
Really? Can you point me to someone arguing that ecology should be expunged because they don't understand anything about biotic and abiotic stressors and their effects on biodiversity?
I've heard what you're saying before, it's just that I've never seen the argument that "we should ignore ecology because we don't understand stressors and their effects on biodiversity." (or words to that effect—I APPRECIATE that you were just paraphrasing.)
Well, despite having self admitted they are a denialist weasel,
my prediction based on evidence so far (including the fact of being a denialist idiot) has come to pass:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/01/january-2013-open-thread/com…
@BBD,
I'm sorry that you think our disagreement is something other than it is.
I've clearly been.... ah, unclear.
You say:
"It is based on evidence; it is *not* evidence."
1. The first clause there is hardly reliable. It is sometimes based on evidence. It is not, as a rule, based on evidence, and it is virtually never purely based thereon. I'm happy to defend this point—historically, psychologically and sociologically.
2. RIGHT. It is *not* evidence.
So here's the truly bizarre thing.
Lotharsson is of the view—which I nauseatedly disagree with and would willingly give my life to see dispelled from civilised thought, for reasons I'll enumerate if you can't guess them—that it is perfectly legitimate for "the consensus" to be invoked as a fact to convince the public of the seriousness of the climate threat.
Look at that concept very closely.
Lotharsson thinks NON-EVIDENCE should be used to persuade.
Lotharsson is anti-science.
(Tell me if I you'd like me to tease out the structure of that deductive conclusion a bit more explicitly.)
Let me try that last paragraph again:
(Tell me if you don't follow the syllogism I just laid out.)
Lying scumbag denier weasel.
Do you only go to a doctor who has PERSONALLY VERIFIED everything they have read in their medical books?
Because if not, then that doctor is not using evidence, but consensus to treat you.
Obviously, to your mind, any doctor who hasn't actually PROVEN penicillin production, nerve trauma or run their own tests on all drugs they prescribe is a quack and unreliable.
I'm afraid I must again reject your misrepresentation of the way in which scientific consensus arises. This is both argument from assertion and contradictory nonsense:
Dearie me.
The scientific consensus is evidence-based. It's the things scientists are forced to agree on because (despite their constant efforts) they have not been able to falsify.
If you view science as a fundamentally combative rather than collaborative endeavour, you might find that your view on scientific consensus is altered.
Maybe this arsehole is a solicitor.
Everything there is combat and winner/loser, and truth be damned if it gets in the way.
Tell you what, Brat, why not just wash your hands of us all, hmm?
After all, if we're not going to answer your oh so important question in the manner you require it to be answered, then you really don't have anything to stay for, do you.
Brad, even as pure sophistry your performance here is abysmal. Did you just take a few philosophy classes to pick up a few choice words in your corner pub discussions or did you actually finish something?
"(Tell me if I you’d like me to tease out the structure of that deductive conclusion a bit more explicitly.)"
Not really. It is an exercise in bogosity. It is, again, your go to fallacies, that of false equivalence and begging the question.
1. The scientific consensus is entirely based on evidence. That is, it is expert agreement on what data and data analysis reveal. If there wasn't consilience between multiple lines of evidence, there would be no consensus of expert opinion. If there is some other rule governing the process of scientific consensus, then you have failed utterly at explaining it. (begging the question.) Happy as you may be to defend it, you have repeatedly made the false equivalency of conflating scientific consensus with political consensus building. They are two different things.
2. The fact that there is a scientific consensus on climate change lies in the category of expert testimonial evidence, which is a valid form of evidence, but it is not scientific evidence. (again, false equivalency)
3. Your conclusion does not follow.
Yes, it is a bizarre thing alright. But it is in your faulty cognitive processes where the bizarre resides.
Lets make it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR for the denial idiot weasel Brat:
1. The scientific consensus for AGW's factual existence is entirely based on the evidence for and against it.
@luminous beauty.
You didn't study Logic at university.
(That's not a question, that's something I know from witnessing your difficulties following my logic, which difficulties are not to your huge discredit, because logic can be hard.)
Scientific consensus is not evidence.
If you have a problem with that fact, you'll need to take your quarrel up with BBD, who said of consensus that, I quote:
"it is *not* evidence."
Now we're going to need to bring in some set theory, which—though you've studied no Logic and probably little Philosophy of any kind—you will hopefully have encountered in Mathematics.
Consensus, which is NOT EVIDENCE, therefore belongs to the set {avocado, gunpoint, Schadenfreude, consensus, halibut, hake, Tartare Sauce, dissensus, hallucination, rainbow, sunbow, Cupid' Bow...}—and I'm sure I don't need to type out the rest of the set.
Lotharsson thinks it is morally and intellectually defensible to induce billions of people to assent to a proposition ABOUT NATURE by means of something in that set.
No scientist thinks it is morally or intellectually defensible to induce billions of people to assent to a proposition ABOUT NATURE by means of something in that set.
Have I lost you at any point so far?
Hey Wow, you've been exchanging views with me (within the limits of your humorous mental condition) for days now.
Let's see if you've picked up ANYTHING AT ALL.
Here's a question so easy it should be tractable by anyone in the pre-cretin (or sub-retard) state of cognitive maturation/collapse in which you find yourself:
Do I believe in AGW?
Sorry, your "logic" doesn't actually exist outside your own RDF.
Who cares? NOBODY other than you has claimed it to be.
Nope, he's is CORRECT in saying that it is morally and intellectually and absolutely defensible for people to use the consensus of experts to accept a stated position about nature to be true.
YOU, meanwhile, claim that unless every single person for themselves recreate ALL scientific knowledge leading up to that conclusion, then they must REJECT that conclusion.
That is morally reprehensible and a complete waste of everyone's time.
Well, not yours, since you have no valuable time to waste.
Sorry BBD, when I wrote "logic can be hard", I meant logic can be hard.
I didn't mean "you're stupid."
I was not being snarkastic.
Logic—which I should have capitalised, because I'm talking about a discipline, not just basic intelligence—can be hard.
Intelligent, small-l logical, educated people like you generally can't, and shouldn't be expected, to know big-L Logic.
There's nothing wrong with you if you can't follow it.
For example, I'm the only person in my family who can really follow Logic, because the rest (except my father, many years ago) have never studied it.
I'm not having a go at you any more than I would my own mother.
Unlike Wow, however, you are capable of getting it when you're talked through it, I'm very sure.
Hence I am investing the time to talk you through it.
Absolutely false. The not only accept it for others, they do it themselves.
NOT ONE OF THEM will go through set theory to recreate from first principles the mathematics that underpin PCA formulae.
NOT ONE OF THEM will go through the Schroedinger equation to see if they can prove it works.
They will accept the opinion of area experts.
Just like sane people (not you idiot deniers, obviously) will accept the consensus of builders who give a quote for work to be done on the house extension, or the car mechanics when taking the car to be looked at.
INSANE people, like you, will refuse to accept these assertions unless the builder has investigated their time in testing the evidence for tensile strength and failure modes of an RSJ, or the car mechanic has involved themselves in the operation of semiconductors that are used in electronic emission controls of modern cars.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneTrollLogic
There’s nothing wrong with you if you can’t follow it...
@Wow:
"Scientific consensus is not evidence.
Who cares? NOBODY other than you has claimed it to be."
ROFLOLAYR.
I'm sorry... LOL... you think... LOL you think that I, Brad... LOL... Brad.... LOL... Keyes claimed that ... LOL... scientific cons.... LOL... consensus was... was ev.... LOL... evi... LOL... vidence!!!!
LOL.
Wow, you NEED to get Tropic Thunder on DVD and you NEED to follow the very wise advice about acting that is given therein.
*Laughing out loud at your cognitive travails.*
Troll logic indeed.
Of course, you, Brat, are Full Retard.
And you know what that means.
Oopsie daisy—this comment:
"Sorry BBD, when I wrote “logic can be hard”, I meant logic can be hard."...etc.
may have been for luminous instead, but it doesn't really matter, it largely applied to both of you.
Brad Keyes
I am not clear where I have misconstrued your argument so you will have to be more specific. It's probably going to be helpful if you use # 30 above as the basis for your response.
I agree with Jeff Harvey's # 34, with particular emphasis on your apparent conflation of political consensus with scientific consensus. My sense is that this is where much of the disagreement lies.
You are the only one who's said that scientific consensus was evidence.
Here, for example:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/14/matt-ridley-responds-with-a-…
And every time you whine about scientific consensus not being evidence, you are creating the inferred statement "Scientific consensus is evidence".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrawmanFallacy
We realise that being a huge proponent and purveyor of insane troll logic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneTrollLogic), you are incapable of admitting anything other than "Chewbacca lives on Endor!".
@Wow, that you would even think that I'd claim scientific consensus was evidence is pathognomonic of learning difficulties so fucking profound, it's a miracle you ever worked out what keyboards do.
@ # 47
Well, I've started misattributing comments now, so never mind.
# 34 was of course Luminous Beauty not Jeff Harvey.
"If you have a problem with that fact, you’ll need to take your quarrel up with BBD, who said of consensus that, I quote:"
argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy and begging the question. You're selective quotation does not address the possibility that BBD was speaking of scientific evidence.
Your foray into set theory is, I'm sorry, not helpful.
How hard is it to understand the difference between scientific evidence and testimonial evidence? Scientific consensus is at the intersection of the two subsets contained in the larger set, called evidence. It is a consequent of the former, and precedent to the latter.
In logic, it doesn't really matter if your syllogism is sound, if your premises are hopelessly flawed.
When Brat writes, does it remind you of this exchange?
More of Brat's inspiration for "intelligence":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa2dMnJ9Ov4
luminous beauty
Yes, well, I was going to say something just like that, only not as succinctly or clearly... ;-)
"And every time you whine about scientific consensus not being evidence, you are creating the inferred statement “Scientific consensus is evidence”.
Whoa. Seriously? Creating—an—inferred—statement.
Of the opposite of my ACTUAL statements.
Every single time.
You're blowing my mind, man!
I seriously had no idea. Fuck me. I'm so sorry. I've been saying THE OPPOSITE of everything I've been saying?
Thank you SO MUCH for telling me.
How long have I been performing this logic-defying demiurgy, this verbal fucking alchemy, without even realising it?
And hey, Wow, while you're at it, could you do me a favor and whine a bit about deniers not being right about the climate, you not being the intellectual freak-show everyone says you are, anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions not being a net-good for the ecosphere, and my not humiliating you every bit as sadistically as I think I did on the other thread?
Why?
Oh, no reason. No reason at all. I just like watching magic shows, that's all.
@LB
I'd like to withdraw my investment in your education.
Oh, and I really admired this "selective quotation" from you:
"You’re selective quotation"
Yeah, your rite, I am sulective quotashun.
I absolutely am.
Hey, as an amusing aside, could you point me to a real-world example of non-selective quotation?
Cue tumbleweeds.
Brad,
What I think WOW is saying is that your obsession with your self-defined argument vis~a~vis evidence/not evidence is pure intellectual masturbation.
If you were to actually address criticisms of your arguments, rather than gliding over them with non-sequiturs and rhetorical misdirection, you would be much more in the dialectic mode than the crank mode.
But then you'd have to admit you have nothing cogent to say.
Sorry about that.
seriously, yes.
But I realise that insane troll logic is your superpower and that you can and will ignore anything you like and spout whatever crap you need to.
Just let it be said:
You have in your own words proven yourself a lying denier weasel for the entire internet to see.
As predicted, though, you don't care.
Insane trolls don't, as a rule. Because rhubarb is not stuck to the car radiator, probably.
Brat denies radiative properties of gasses.
Brat denies the second and first law of thermodynamics.
Brat denies the photon theory of light.
There you go, are they all science theories enough for you?
Brad,
For someone who claims to be a superior student of Logic™, it beggars the imagination that you've never run into the use of 'selective quotation' as a synonym for a contextual fallacy, sometimes called a contextomy. Believe me, it is a serious matter for genuine scholars.
The widespread and mistaken conflation of scientific consensus with political consensus by contrarians is unfortunate. How many times have we seen accusations that 'the science' is politicised?
It seems more likely that it is the contrarian framing that is politicised.
No, in this case, it's all pure insane troll logic.
And didn't I call it precisely?
Question answered.
Troll still here.
@BBD
"Yes, well, I was going to say something just like that, only not as succinctly or clearly… "
Thank Christ you didn't. It sounds like a train-wreck.
Brad, is there ANY intelligence in any of your posts?
I've looked and looked and looked, but there's no sign of any sentient lifeform having produced them.
Insanity, nonsequiturs, meaningless typing, and frothing are in abundant evidence, but no actual intelligence.
Boys and girls, when you go to university, study, don't do drugs, or you'll end up like brad here.
@BBD laments:
How many times have we seen accusations that ‘the science’ is politicised?
Most of what you write is a bit misguided, BBD, but you're definitely right to use scare quotes around what passes for science.
#83 _ "Fascinating, isn’t it, how people of a certain character literally cannot evaluate the merits of a proposition independently from their own bilious grudges against the proponent."
You could say that self-awareness is a mark of intelligence. On this measure this denier piece of shit is not doing very well; unless of course we're talking about a totally dishonest denier piece of shit. One can read throughout this thread the "bilious" references to Oreske, someone he seems to have a particular problem with. Something Oreske has said must have hit a raw nerve with our turd of the day.
I want to ask Brad one thing: do you sit in front of your computer logged into Deltoid for many hours at a stretch? It seems to me like you haven't been doing much else these past few weeks, Your comments are one endless stream that go for hour after hour.
Look man, here's some advice... get a life. Move on. I have no idea what you hope to achieve here, but whatever it is, it is not working.
#84 _ (Sorry to be so scientific about the whole thing. ;p)
What? I don't know how deniers can manage to be so annoying but unwittingly hilarious at the same time.
#15 _" So my point, luminous and BBD, was that 'consensus' is an irrelevant and (in my opinion) toxic import into scientific discourse. _ Suddenly we get climate science, the first spectacularly expensive but utterly unproductive science, and (simultaneously) climate metascience, with its tedious fetish for 'consensus'. "
More vacuous blather: "spectacularly expensive", "utterly unproductive", "climate metascience", "fetish for consensus". What a cogent and convincing argument, brimming with substance and intelligence. I should try that. Next time I debate a topic, I won't bother with such things as logic, facts or any sort of reasoning; all I'll need is a list of colourful, choice adjectives and the debate is as good as won. According to our fuckwit du jour, "consensus" has been imported into the climate science discourse. There's no evidence and no science in climate science; they just discuss the consensus. We know that he knows that because he told us he knows a lot about science. I guess that's why he hasn't bothered to say anything scientific. There's no science to discuss. Now I know why deniers have so much trouble producing scientific papers: there's no science to produce.
"Boys and girls, when you go to university, study, don’t do drugs, or you’ll end up like brad here."
Wow, if you go to university, you'll learn about a number of substances ending in -eine that help you stay awake through, and learn from, your lectures.
Oh, but hang on—then you'd be like me.
#16 _" ...or chameleon have made a new contribution. "
Considering that poor chameleon hasn't said anything that could be considered even half intelligent since he/she started posting here, it says a lot about our turd's level of discourse.
#23 _ "Climate science has some UTTERLY unique features, just one of which is that its envoloping discourse is saturated with the pre-scientific notion of 'consensus'.
_ Have you noticed any of the other idiosyncrasies of climate science?"
We're all ears for the turd to tell us what they are. I hope he makes sure to substantiate his claims, if he knows the meaning of the word.
#26 _ "But the point is that whether or not a consensus arises wouldn’t have even interested any previous (pre-Oreskean, pre-Post-Normal) cohort of scientists!
Again, the turd is making the assertion that the SCIENTISTS are interested in this consensus that he's so obsessed about. Again no evidence and too stupid to know that this "consensus" is part of the political discussion and not the scientific debate.
So argue off the clock.
For which I choose: nowhere.
Now shut up, lying weasel denier.
@Wow relieves himself on propositional calculus and English spelling, as usual:
"Brat denies radiative properties of gasses.
Brat denies the second and first law of thermodynamics.
Brat denies the photon theory of light."
Why, because I accept AGW?
#27 _ " a Post-Normal, Oreskes-virus-infected post-scientist, that’s who.
_ Any scientifically-literate citizen truly interested in identifying “what is true” would look first, second, last and only at the scientific ....."
Fuckwit is asserting that in climate science consensus is replacing evidence. For someone who puts so much importance on evidence, it's ironic that the cock-head doesn't believe in backing his opinions with anything resembling evidence.
jp, this may help understand how brad works:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneTrollLogic
Especially the cartoon with it.
Proof that you spout copious lies:
Now shut up, lying weasel denier.
#48 _ "That is why I’m stressing: consensus isn’t evidence.
Except, if we’re to believe skeevers like Oreskes, in climate science.
Finally, here’s a hypothesis for your consideration/ delectation/provocation:
The above explains why medicine saves lives and climate science just wastes money."
Fuckwit repeating the same strawman, over and over again, blissfully unaware that he's just contradicted himself: he cites an example where a consensus in medicine wasn't based on evidence only to proclaim that " the above explains why medicine saves lives and climate science just wastes money". That 's the sort of evidence free opinion that you would expect a low IQ moron like chameleon to hold, so obviously this scumbag can't be all that bright _ or possibly he's a dishonest shill, another piece of shit _ paid or unpaid _ who has nothing to say about the science but is here to sow doubt amongst the gullible denier crowd, sad imbeciles like the chameleons, karens and penties, GSW's etc. who will all think he's a genius. With the big words and the semantics and the sophistry, he'll have them well and truly sucked-in. Never mind that there isn't a shred of substance to support his vacuous waffling. There'll be a consensus of imbeciles nodding in agreement that he's the new superhero to demolish this "post-modernist" or "post-scientific" or "post whatever" climate science or whatever meaningless adjectives he's using. We've all heard it before, cock-head _ "it's a scam, a waste of money, carbon tax is a money making scam, consensus means nothing, climategate, IPCC, Al Gore...blah, blah, blah." Oh, there's a new one too _ from the last idiot denier: acidification of the oceans hasn't been measured everywhere ( he's read one paper and formed his conclusion on his basis) so therefore the evidence can't be accepted that it's happening, and like all denier idiots he can't be specific with any aspect of the science, e.g. tell us where and under what conditions that process wont apply.
Ah @Wow, giving us the benefit of his usual lucidity:
"So argue off the clock.
For which I choose: nowhere.
Now shut up, lying weasel denier."
If I might summarize (though no summary could ever TRULY do you justice):
You want me to shut up and argue. And you don't want me to do this anywhere. Because I deny the existence of weasels.
Ookaaaaay....
#52 _ “Just like pointing out the strength of the consensus in climate science indicates that the evidence must be dodgy, right?!”
Absolutely not. You’re right, that’s a silly argument, which I’m not making."
He spent dozens of posts directly or indirectly saying just that (only 4 posts above _ at #48 _ he STRESSES that " consensus isn’t evidence. Except.....in climate science", and now he's shamelessly denying it. The smelly stuff that my dog left on the verge has more integrity that this fuckwit. I've read a lot dishonest denier crap, but this piece of shit takes the cake.
There's one good thing to come from this.
Next time someone claims that the only correct answer to terrible ideas spoken out in public is "more ideas spoken in public" and I'll point them to this idiot pile of denier dogshit.
It should be interesting to see how they manage to keep the idea that this sort of insane troll is going to be countered by better discourse.
@Wow, how much does Heartland pay you for your proselytising work?
Peter Gleick forgot to include this detail in the Strategy Document, but I've always been curious.
#58 _ "If you think I’ve overlooked the distinction, then say so like a normal fucking human being. What kind of paranoid polemicist avidly converts every perceived mistake by an interlocutor into a Grand Jury indictment for deception with malice aforethought?
Seriously dude, even a highly unusually civilised exchange by your standards is fucking exhausting."
Oooh, our fuckwit du jour is getting a bit touchy _ Lotharson must have touched a sensitive nerve. MISTAKE? The fuckwit repeating the same strawman and refusing to substantiate that assertion despite being asked is a MISTAKE? I don't think so. The turd couldn't even be trusted with the milk money _ IMHO, it's only a small step between intellectual dishonesty and general dishonesty.
jp, the idiot troll doesn't read anyone else's points, why the hell should it bother reading its own?
An epic example of how Gish Gallop allied to a complete lack of intelligence or morality are why deniers still abound and think that there's still "debate".
Anyway Jeff, since you're the first local who's shown the slightest ability to ask politely, yes, of course I'll bugger off.
Night all.
Better billy-goats next time, please.
#61 _ “What about a whole set of reviews, some collaborative and some single-institution, all based on the evidence, at least one of them wide-ranging and heavily peer-reviewed, that all come to more or less the same conclusions? You’d have no problem with that, right?”
Not if what you were long-windedly describing was a proper meta-analysis.
Instead you’re talking about the IPCC, ..."
Here we go again: mendacious or stupid? I'd say some of both. But since there is so much dishonesty in the denier crowd, then most likely more dishonesty. Why should LB be talking about the IPCC? The peer-review process is being conducted everyday, all around the world, in every science faculty _ that's how science is conducted, I presume _ so if our denier turd has evidence otherwise, that climate science is conducted differently, that it's not evidence based, the onus is on him to prove his assertion.
#69 _ @chameleon, nice to know that someone is getting something (even if just entertainment) out of my enervating ordeal of attempting to reason with the son of Lothar.
hahaha....in denier- land, prevarication amounts to "reasoning".
Apparently so, now.
Remember, you said it.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/01/january-2013-open-thread/#co…
It's pretty easy to see why that twat gets banned everywhere.
"The problem is that I have yet to meet a climate change denier”
"Me neither. I don’t think anyone has"
Pretty cute there, Brad. Any more than you've ever met a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change promoter. Let's call it even there. But I am sure you have met a helluva lot of anthropogenic climate change deniers. And I will bet most, if not all of them have no expertise in the field of climate
science (or any science?) much like you. Am I correct? If so, on what do these laypeople base their opinions? Lemme guess. A few contrarian blogs. Easy to access. Soothing messages. Comforting conclusions, etc. etc. etc.
Look man, I hate to be harsh, but the rest of your riposte to my post is a bunch of gobbledegook. I admit I was probably speaking way over your head, and I apologize, but that was intentional. I wanted to point out that those downplaying the effects of climate change really don't have much of a clue how what they perceive as insignificant change can affect nature and biodiversity. If these people - like Watts, McIntyre and co., really had any kind of training in the natural sciences, they wouldn't write the piffle that they do. But their take is purely on physical and chemical properties of the atmosphere and perceived effects of change on various properties of the material economy through short-term changes in weather. I am sure that the extinction of genetic and species diversity doesn't rate very highly in their lexicon. Why should it? They probably understand less about this than about climate science (now that IS saying a lot).
But I come back to my last posting. Since you arrived here, you've written a novel's worth of comments in about 2 weeks. Wouldn't you be better off putting this effort somewhere else? Aside from one of two others here, most people think you are full of it (I won't say where I stand, albeit as you aren't addressing science in any way, shape or form, if there was a vote you'd lose big time).
I am willing to overwhelm you with studies showing all kinds of biotic indicators of rapid warming, set against a background of a natural world already staggeringly simplified by man. Somehow I think you'd bring the discussion back to square one - the size of the human fingerprint on the warming - but as I have said before, even if the evidence was as low as 10-20% for a very serious outcome, for the sake of future generations do you not think it prudent to take that in itself seriously? Or do you think gambling with nature and its ability to support mankind is worth a continued throw of the dice? Clearly, many people do. They think we have to go a lot farther down the current path before we should take the problem seriously. But if they are wrong, and I truly believe that they are, then the potential consequences might be very serious indeed.
I think it takes supine arrogance for humans to think that whatever damage we inflict to natural systems, that technology will always keep us one step ahead of the consequences. I admit that our species spends natural capital like there no tomorrow. Based on what I have learned as a scientist, I believe that we have to change course and soon if we are to avoid the consequences of our actions.
Brad Keyes
This isn't a substantive response to what LB wrote, which I agree with. Nor have you responded to # 47.
You haven't demonstrated that most of what I write is a bit misguided and assertion is weightless. And please, don't put 'scare quotes' in my mouth ;-)
Brad has all that.
Probably rich parents put him to Uni, picked philosophy because he thought it was easy, did badly and then skipped the rest of the three years and now believes themselves intelligent.
#71 _ "Basic question, Lotharsson. Why is consensus being used AT ALL?"
The same stupid strawman question. Used by whom? Used where? Our denier turd hasn't stopped implying that climate science uses consensus instead of evidence, but like all vacuous deniers can't substantiate any of his opinions. A lot of verbose drivel amounting to nothing. Our poor, substance-free fuckwit is now trying to highjack the thread. This sort of delusion, where some idiot deludes himself about understanding the science better than world's scientific academies, but is so lacking in self awareness that he doesn't even realize that he hasn't touched on a single aspect of the science _ not critiqued a single paper in scientifically competent manner _ must be some sort of mental disorder, a condition that seems quite common in the denier crowd. I don't think it'll be too long before they classify DK in Psychiatry manuals.
BTW Tim, I'm not a regular here, so I'm sure if it's my place to offer advice about your blog, but if you don't clamp down on the denier trolls they'll smother your blog with faecal matter and they'll kill it _ which is what they're probably trying to do.
"they’ll smother your blog with faecal matter and they’ll kill it _ which is what they’re probably trying to do."
Definitely.
Here's an idea.
jp, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to refrain from this, but would some of the lurkers here like to say why the consensus opinion of experts are taken as settled by those who are not experts but who need to know what's going on in that field.
This won't help the hard-core deniers but it may help, coming from a non-expert who reads the information here (which, lets face it, is about the consensus of the scientists and the evidence from which that state arises), assert for those who are reluctant to accept the results in the IPCC reports understand why those reports are read and warranted.
Thanks in advance.
@Wow, please excuse a Parthian act of kindness. I must shoot you one last clue because I'm a sucker for two things:
animals and/or actors in distress.
"Do you only go to a doctor who has PERSONALLY VERIFIED everything they have read in their medical books?
Because if not, then that doctor is not using evidence, but consensus to treat you."
Wow, since you will insist on going Full Retard, here's a tip you won't hear in any Robert Downey Jr, Ben Stiller movie:
Overdoing it RUINS the effect.
When you say things like the above, the audience can't suspend its disbelief fast enough to save the scene. The realism is broken. I can't "believe" anyone—even you, Wow!—is that stupid. So long, verisimilitude!
My dear, dear, Wow, let me tell you why your stupidity has ceased to be moving and crossed the uncanny valley into crassly overacted Oscar-bait territory.
EVERYONE ON EARTH, EVEN GENTILES, EVEN COLLEGE NAIVES LIKE YOU, EVEN YOU yourself....
knows that books CONTAIN evidence.
No.
The IPCC reports CONTAIN EVIDENCE.
Your point?
The reason for consensus is THE EVIDENCE.
Your point?
Now where is your EVIDENCE for any of your claims?
Yup.
Books contain evidence?
It's got to be a good 60 or more years since chemistry textbooks contained evidence for the conservation of matter. It's taken for granted and implicit in what they say within, but they don't contain specific worked evidence for it the way textbooks did a century or more ago.
The IPCC report of course contains summaries of the evidence found in thousands of scientific papers, with references back to them.
Maybe his last reading of a science book was 80 years old...
Brad Keyes
I'm still curious about what you want. Sometimes these discussions move forward when proxy 'arguments' about 'the science' are set aside.
What do you think we should do about AGW?
Brad's purpose here is done. Ridley's claims dismemberment are way, way back, and Lati's nano-thin, not-enuff-data argument is a half dozen pages ago. But Camo was impressed. (Although to be fair, randomly flashing lights would impress that character).
Good question BBD,
I am VERY interested in practical results and outcomes.
What do you think should be done?
What are the clear and definable risks that we can and should manage?
I agree that the argument is bogged down in proxy arguments about the science.
There are untold numbers of websites and blogs and advocacy groups all arguing about the extent of etcetera.
There are many differing opinions of how much is attributable to what depending on how we present and what time frames and even which theories we use.
Strangely, I don't think anyone argues that humanity has had NO impact on the globe. Obviously the planet would be very different if there were no humans on it. Who knows if it would have been better or worse?
We have many here who claim that we need to 'internalise' the costs.
That argument sounds compelling but my question is:
Who/what gets paid for doing what in particular?
The implication in the rhetoric is that the environment or the climate will be the beneficiary but that isn't what's actually happening.
There is no shortage of Govt funding and/or private/corporate sponsorship.
But what is it all being spent on?
How do you think we should invest in mitigating risk from changing climate patterns?
I don't think it's humanly possible to control the climate or stop it from changing.
So what should we be doing BBD?
And Chek,
While 'impressed' is an OK way to describe my response to the arrival of Brad K I don't think it is the best word to use.
I was however highly, highly amused.
Brad has a cracking good sense of humour.
It was very funny to read.
Independent: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science
So Bill?
From your link:
Dr Brulle said: "We really have anonymous giving and unaccountable power being exercised here in the creation of the climate countermovement. There is no attribution, no responsibility for the actions of these foundations to the public.
Have you by any chance got a defintion for :
" the climate countermovement" ?
I have no idea how one could have a movement counter to the climate.
Do you?
However, you have just shown that indeed there is plenty of MONEY available to be spent on this issue in some fashion or other.
Which I gues does bear some relevance to my question above.
It appears therefore that in this case, money is being given for political advocacy.
Well, that's a huge shock!
Whodathunkit?
If we travel to sites like say Getup or perhaps AEF or IPA or perhaps PETA or Animals Australia or perhaps ACF or any of the numerous others, don't they also have huge access to funding? Some of it anonymous? What does it all get spent on Bill?
Do you think spending all this money from both Govt funding and private/corporate sponsorship on political advocacy (no matter which side of politics you may see yourself belonging) is actually achieving any worthwhile and/or practical risk mitigation results?
Or are we just moving or counter moving the climate?
And ... we have another of the steps in the ladder of denial from chameleon:
Anyone got bingo yet?
Meanwhile, this new jp character accurately sizes up Brad fast. If Brad were half as smart as he believes he is, he might wonder why his game is so transparently obvious to so many people - and why the ones cheering him on are demonstrably not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
jp just got one thing wrong as far as my quick skim went: Brad has already hijacked this thread. It's what he does. He did it at Lewandowsky's with the same low, low quality of "argument".
And just one response to one of Brad's fact-free smears:
You condescended about Logic being hard for other people and all, but you fail it yourself. You should ask for your university fees back. I bet you STILL can't allow yourself to admit (a) that the first sentence is insufficient to be used in a logical argument about science communication, but more importantly (b) that the second sentence does not logically follow from the first.
Wake me up when you figure it out. Ask someone for help if you get stuck. A brighter high school kid should suffice. Maybe even one of the 4th form debating class that Latimer derides.
And for anyone still playing at home, remember way way back when luminous beauty (I think) pointed out that "scientific consensus" is essentially shorthand for "accepted scientific theory"? If you want an even bigger laugh from Brad's "argument", go back over the last few pages and replace the former term with the latter and consider the results.
For example, here's a classic. Brad's been arguing that in climate science "consensus has replaced scientific evidence" [in the process of determining what is accepted], and he has been determinedly conflating the reliance on consensus opinion of researchers in the appropriate field by those outside of it.
Why indeed?! Inquiring minds want to know!
(Try the rest - they're comedy gold!)
Cammy, the wind blowing through your head must reach gale force sometimes. Your 'friend' Brad just blew thousands of words in a vain attempt to attack the scientic consensus, from Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, Line 1 of the denier handbook dating back to Frank Lutz's times.
Beelieve me, only you and Brad were the least bit impressed.
Attack the scentic consensus?
Chek, you just blew up Lotharsson's 'nuancing ' of the word 'consensus'!
I'll forgive you the typo as we all make those errors from time to time?
Lotharsson,
Please forgive me for once again stating the bleeding obvious but:
IF they had wanted to say 'accepted scientific theory' why are they using the word 'consensus'?
Because Lotharsson, those 2 terms are NOT the same by definition, no matter how much you would like to 'nuance' them.
Just because Lotarsson misquotes Luminous and claims that it is essentially shorthand for 'accepted scientific theory' is just, well, as JeffH would say, UTTER TOSH!
If you're claiming that there is a special definition for 'consensus' when scientists use it, then please supply the scientific dictionary definition that says so.
As in where is your evidence that 'consensus' means 'accepted scientific theory' when scientists use the word consensus?
Those pots and kettles are back again.
Luminous accused Brad of splitting semantic hairs.
Did you finally work out what that little idiom/epigram actually means?
I guess another easier one is :
Remember when you point your finger there are 3 others pointing straight back at you.
But anyway,
I'm much more interested in BBD's question, aren't you?
The game of playing academic semantics is really a complete waste of time and energy which the comments at this thread is amply indicating.
And it would be sooooo nice if you could perhaps develop just a litle bit of a sense of humour Lotharsson (particularly about yourself :-) )
That little comment about controlling the climate was just an attempt to be ironic with a little bit of amusing hyperbole.
What do you think all that money should be spent on Lotharsson?
There is quite a bit of it available you know.
Are you seeing any wise, practical and/or sensible investments re mitigating definable risks?
Judging by the amount of scrolling I'm doing I can only assume Chebbie's still type type typing away.
I can assure you I'm not read read reading. You lost anyone who wasn't just looking for a laugh back at that 'Here's James Delingpole making the same claim about Flannery I did' thing.
Can you honestly say that you have ever made a good-faith attempt to re-read that (as usual, toxic and hysterical) post and 'found' your evidence again?
Don't answer for my sake, of course...
Yes, Chameleon, a consensus means an accepted scientific theory. If it's not accepted, it means there is no consensus. If there is no consensus, it isn't an accepted scientific theory.
How hard is that? Everybody else understands it.
And the idiomatic expression, "the pot calling the kettle black" doesn't appear even remotely relevant here.
Maybe you can explain why you think it is?
I'll help you get started:
- what did Lotharsson do which, in your opinion, is hypocritical?
Use simple words, short sentences, punctuation, and complete each thought without ricocheting from unformed idea to random thought, which confuses your audience.
If you're gonna try and "split semantic hairs" (BTW: Pot. Kettle. Black - yet again.), one reason they used the term consensus was because denialist PR was attempting to promote unjustified levels of doubt amongst non-scientists by claiming to non-scientists "there's no consensus on these issues". Don't worry, Brad wasn't smart enough to figure this out either, even though some pointed questions directed him towards this concept.
But even without that the hair splitting fails - what Vince said. In this context they mean the same thing. Which you will deny, of course, having difficult with what words actually mean, let alone tricky concepts like context.
Bollocks. Your "academic semantics" schtick from the first time you tried it on here has been a transparent attempt to assert discussion you don't like to be irrelevant.
I'll consider believing otherwise when you point this out to Brad, who is the master of Gish Galloping semantics dodgeball, and to Latimer who spent an entire week arguing a complete strawman that rested on very finely parsing "scientific certainty" and then pretending the term had been applied to something it hadn't been applied to.
I don't believe you because both your immediate and your wider context suggest otherwise.
Most readers here get context. You should try it sometime.
If there's been a crime, and some DNA splashed into the book that was lying open on the bedside table, then yes, that book contains evidence.
Or, if there's an obscenity trial the prosecution might use the contents of a book as evidence to prosecute their case.
Otherwise, Brad the monkey-boy just typed another 30 lines that purveyed precisely zero factual information. Again.
What is it with deniers and their unceasing keen-ness to exhibit their stupidity for all the world to see?
There are many things that could be done, and the consensus - apparently even in radical greenie organisations like the World Bank -
is converging to the position that over the long term doing them would be cheaper than not doing lots of them - as well as far wiser from a risk management front...
...but it certainly is a pointless waste of time and energy to discuss that with people who deny many of the relevant scientific conclusions and/or deny the confidence with which they are concluded. We have to be reading the same book (or at least books with similar information) before we can discuss what the implications are of the information on p137.
And you and I are not. Wake me up when you do.
Some of them genuinely think they are once in a generation intellectual luminaries who are only prevented from worldwide adulation by a conspiracy of lesser mortals dedicated to preventing them from receiving the formal recognition they so richly deserve...or something.
No doubt there are other reasons ;-)
And some of them crave any form of attent... ... er, aren't here for the hunting, if you know what I mean. And you know what I mean.
@chameleon:
"I have no idea how one could have a movement counter to the climate."
It's a simple recipe.
Take $89 billion worth of climate agitators.
Put agitators in cauldron and, well, agita bene, as they say.
10 years later, out pops a "movement" to "stop climate change!"
How's that shit for clinical-grade anti-climate oppositional disorder?
Lol!
Someone quite reasonably asked me somewhere upthread something like this:
"Brad, what do you think we should do about AGW?"
First of all
1. Thank you for noticing the elephant that's managed to slip by all of your peers, ninja-like in the night: that's right, assembled believalist mora, I know AGW is a phenomenon.
2. As far as I can see, AND I'VE LOOKED, there is little in the way of evidence capable of persuading anyone (or at least, anyone who doesn't have an a priori craving or clinamen to believe) that the probabilistic ramifications of AGW are so net-negative as to be worth doing anything other than what doctors with completely asymptomatic patients call "watchful waiting."
Quite frankly, continental drift is just as likely to ruin your life as global warming ever will!
Oh, sure, the consensus among scientists unequivocally points—or so it's alleged by people who have never done a convincing opinion survey to substantiate this—to a major, game-changing, existentially-threatening worldwide climatic clusterfuck out of Revelations....
unless we Act Now!** (Which, the more perceptive among you will have noticed, we're not doing.)
It's a pity the evidence doesn't also point there.
Or there might actually be some justification for the existence of this delightful little Amish millenarian sect!
The only thing propping up such an alarm is the supposed, never-formally-measured "consensus" in favor of alarm.
However, as BBD and luminous will happily tell you, consensus is not evidence, and is therefore unworthy of any consideration by scientifically-literate citizens.
**Please note, however: there's nothing catastrophic about this doomsday scenario!
Sure, it's easy to mistake it for a catastrophe, but if you're one of the millions of people who were thinking it sounded catastrophic in some way, shape or form, let me stop you right there, buster:
"CATASTROPHE" IS NOTHING BUT A DENIALIST STRAWMAN! :-)
No majority of serious scientists has EVER suggested AGW is going to rise to the level of an actual CATASTROPHE.
Stop reading so many denialist tracts!
They're just playing down the urgent seriousness of the situations with immature joke-words like "catastrophe"!
Campbell Newman on flooding in Bundaberg.
40 knots? That is seriously fast.
Third major flood in Queensland since March 2010. Gee - what could be causing that?
Keyes. Why comment here where you are easily spotted as a fraud? Why not piss off to WUWT where your brand of pseudointellectualism would be a hit among the undead.
"Why not piss off to WUWT where your brand of pseudointellectualism would be a hit among the undead."
Ever heard of "multitasking," analfabeta?
"If there’s been a crime, and some DNA splashed into the book that was lying open on the bedside table, then yes, that book contains evidence.
Or, if there’s an obscenity trial the prosecution might use the contents of a book as evidence to prosecute their case."
And those are the only ways you can think whereby a few mLs of evidence would find their way into a book?
LOL.
Are you IN DENIAL of the fact that documentary evidence (as found in many books—seriously, this isn't a trick, go open one) is a form of EVIDENCE?
If you are in said condition of denial, then I take it you'll agree with the claim that any books (or spiral-bound reports) published by the IPCC can't contain evidence (except of a crime or a published obscenity).
What side of the climate debate are you on, just out of interest?
The Open Thread is broken (it's permanently slanted—take a look).
So I repeat:
@chameleon….
I'm reluctant to criticise a friend (elógialo en público/eviscéralo en privado/etc.), but, since we owe each other the truth, my fellow denialista and #1 splendid-hued, swivel-eyed (in a good way), coldblooded negatrice… you quadruply fail the same intelligence test I’ve been known to perseverate in flunking for hours on end... Like an idiot.
Without further ado, I present:
An Anatomy of Denier Fail.
**********************************
1. The affirmer @Lotharsson
—possibly a male, more likely a bug-ridden natural language worm whose “smarts” don’t even rise to the Turing pre-test of
NAMING JUST THREE (3) DIFFERENT SCIENTIFIC THEORIES A MEAN OL’ ARCH-DENIALIST LIKE ME REFUSES TO BELIEVE IN
—types/echoes some string. (Usually long, and occasionally idiotic enough almost to make Wow look like he’s only going Part Retard, as he always insists.)
2. You read said string.
[Denier brain fail 1.]
3. You invest your own finite and precious time upon this mortal stage REPLYING by addressing your good-faith, responsive thoughts back to LOTH4R++ in the childlike, evangelical faith that what you write might one day, somehow, nudge the tape-head that is Lotharsson's nearest analog to a mind.
Completely naive of you, of course. Learning difficulties much?
[Denier brain fail 2.]
4. Rinse and repeat, substituting* Wow for LOTH4R++.**
As above, you lose 2 Denier Brain Points, bringing you to −4.
(Don’t feel bad—my current lo-score is something like −12.)
* Admittedly, Wow’s string isn’t as long as Lotharsson’s.
** Another difference is that Wow is definitely a real person; the most bleeding-edge natural-language algorithms aren’t capable of 100% Retard performance yet. The technology is at least 10 years away, I’d say.
*******************************************
Give it up, girlfriend.
You are teh failing to achieve anythink.
Do something fun!——I dunno, give any domestic pets you have some affection, read a book, make up an iTunes playlist of the all-time most ass-shitting Pantera and publish/share it with your friends with a single click; It’s That Easy.
Scratch those suggestions: listen to me now. Go read the fragnificent @tucci78’s latest at WUWT.
(I think it’s on the thread about “And They Wonder Why Climate Realist Sites Get More Traffic Than Gullibilist Sites…”.)
If you’re not familiar with Dr Matarese’s shit (he's apparently a GP by day and is no relation to “Dr Maharaji,” Jeff!) then I envy you, @chameleon, because you have ahead of you an awesome literary discovery.
Not to mismanage your expectations, but try to imagine a cross between Hitchens and someone who's learnt the scientific method. I hope Dr Matarese quits his day job. What happened to Hitch left a gaping ulcer in the world of letters.
So, go away. :-)
You're only killing
— zomgies
and
— time
here.
And to clarify, despite their differences, Wow has proven himself Lotharsson's exact equivalent in being unequal to the dead simple request that he
*****************************************
NAME JUST THREE (3) DIFFERENT SCIENTIFIC THEORIES A MEAN OL’ ARCH-DENIALIST LIKE ME REFUSES TO BELIEVE IN
****************************************
That challenge ended in embarrassing rout of the very few believalists who thought it was easy enough for them.
Oh well, I'm off to spent the $25-75 someone could have won if only they'd had the nads to back up their obnoxious mantra that people who aren't climate-capnophobes are "serial deniers."
It's a pathetic lie by pathetic liars who don't even know WHAT THEIR OWN PATHETIC LIES MEAN....
LOL!
:-)
... as I expected. (And predicted—like a good scientist.)
Always nice to have scientific confirmation though.
Brad Keyes says,
Here's a test for you, Brad:
- How many times did the word "Catastrophe" appear in the last IPCC report's "Summary for Policymakers"?
Go on, have a *wild* stab at it.....
Ooh, Brad wants us to bet on the contents of his head, as self-reported by himself.
Should it take a genius to figure out why you'll get no takers for that one, Brad?
It's even worse than that. He's already explicitly been given that implied reason. What kind of genius can't figure it out after he's been told?
And how come almost all of the denialist trolls seem to have read-only brains? They just can't take on new facts, especially if they contradict the "facts" they already subscribe to.
@Jeff,
Thanks for clarifying that you meant ACC deniers when you said climate change deniers.
I'm drawing attention to your mistake not to have a go at you (hey, let him who is without sin cast the first stone) but simply to make the following point:
Everyone makes the mistake from time to time of using words that mean something they themselves (personally) don't mean.
The vast majority of the time—as in the example of your mischoice of words—it is 100% innocent and has no basis in mendacity or a desire to manipulate or anything like that.
Now I have run into the occasional—much rarer than you may believe—person who says "man-made climate change is a hoax."
The vast majority of the time, they themselves don't mean what the words they're using mean.
If you're interested in proving this for yourself, I'd be willing to share with you the magical technique whereby I have managed to convert 90% of self-styled "ACC is a hoaxers" into ACC acceptors before my very eyes.
(Yes, I'm about 10,000-100,000 more successful at "converting" people that today's leading yellers, like Lotharsson.)
Would you be interested in my revealing this uniquely effective conversion/persuasion/proselytization/consent-obtaining/recruiting technique, Jeff?
Just say politely "yes" and I will.
But say:
"sure, Brad, but on your past form I don't have high hopes that it'll actually be anything like you claim, because you're constantly lying to me about things"
and I won't tell you it. I'll let you wallow in dog-fighting pits like this, CHANGING NOBODY'S MIND about anything (because you have no idea of the key to doing so).
And in five years time I'll check back just to laugh at how small and inbred this little church has become.
"Ever heard of “multitasking,” analfabeta?"
Seriously, Brad, you appear to spend all of your waking hours on Deltoid. I do hope you have time for other things...
Oh, and when I boasted that my technique is "magic", that was HYPERBOLE.
It's not magic, it's common-sense psychology when you understand why people say "ACC IS A HOAX!!"
The only reason you haven't discovered the correct technique is because you don't know what they're thinking. (Not that you're dumb or anything—you're simply missing some key premises, because nobody seems to explain them properly. In other words, I DON'T BLAME YOU for not knowing anything about how to "persuade" "deniers." It's not to your discredit. Am I making this crystal clear?)
"Seriously, Brad, you appear to spend all of your waking hours on Deltoid. I do hope you have time for other things…"
Yeah, I get up to all sorts of other, more productive things.... WHILE I'm here "wasting" time. ;-)
It has a lot to do with the beauty of modern multitasking operating systems and the CPUs that make them possible.
Translation: call centre.
The other thing I find interesting about most denialists is - like a particular subset of rap music - they spend a lot of time telling people how astonishingly fantastic they are in various ways. After a while it's difficult not to view it as an expression of a wish fulfillment fantasy - or attempting to drown out personal insecurities.
"The other thing I find interesting about most denialists is – like a particular subset of rap music – they spend a lot of time telling people how astonishingly fantastic they are in various ways."
I feel ya man.
Like that time when I pretended I was some kind of genius, a new Jack Kennedy, because I'd suppozibly read a pulp conspiracy thriller in LESS THAN FOUR HOURS.
Which was obviously an empty and self-deluding boast, since (as we've all been told) it took Wow 13 hours to read that identical same shizzle.
Call me MC MegaloManiak, with self-aggrandizing phat phantasies and ttall tales about superhuman feats and implausibly hot honeys wanting to get down wit my speed-freakin' ass!
And another interesting thing after all the "consensus" strawmen on this thread. This is the 2nd thread about Ridley's 1993 claims. The first one quotes him citing "scientific consensus" (falsely, as it turns out). However (rather oddly, wouldn't you think?) Brad has not been sighted complaining about Ridley citing it. Perhaps it's not "anti-scientific" when you misrepresent the scientific consensus?
C'est la troll, as they say.
Brad,
@Lotharssion reads something maleficent into my failure to denounce or disavow an alleged dishonesty by (Matt) Ridley.
"Brad has not been sighted complaining about Ridley citing it."
I denounce all liars. Did Ridley lie?
I didn't pay enough attention to the article to form an opinion—it seemed a bit boring—so I'll have to trust your honest assessment, Lotharsson. You're not going to take malicious advantage of my trust, it goes without saying.
The only thing that comes to my mind about Ridley right now is a really good address about pseudoscience and its relation to climate science, which made some devastating points, weakened only by some questionable opening remarks. (This is my impression of it.) For instance he opened with a few somewhat lazy and incorrect claims like, "crop circles are pseudoscience; telekinesis is pseudoscience; this is obvious!"
Anyway Lotharsson, since we've always felt free to speak the truth between us, please confirm:
did this Ridley guy actually lie (about something important like a scientific article, a piece of evidence, or anything of that nature—not something of zero evidentiary value, of course)?
If so, if he really lied about something material, then he sounds like a kind of denialist Mike Mann, and who needs to be associated with that shezizzat?
Not me, that's who not.
D'oh, misspelling:
"@Lotharssion"
Nothing malicious.
Yes, Ridley made an assertion that was contrary to reality.
Who on earth would you deliberately avoid digesting the facts of this topic and choose to inflict your uninformed and half-baked opinions about it on us?
And again, you made an assertion which you now appear to be avoiding taking responsibility for, responsibility in the form of answering this simple question:
– How many times did the word “Catastrophe” appear in the last IPCC report’s “Summary for Policymakers”?
If all you've got is,
"I don't know, I haven't read it"
"despite this, I assert this non-fact"
and
"I'll avoid responding to any mention of the non-factualness of my assertions"
The you are nothing but a waste of space.
@Johnny Drama asks in, hmm, "good faith":
"Brad,
– How many times did the word “Catastrophe” appear in the last IPCC report’s “Summary for Policymakers”?"
What am I, Rain Man?
Listen, Drama, here's an equally important question, which I feel will do just as much as, if not more than, whatever trick you're playing one me with your own question, to hopefully neutralise in some small way the toxic mutual incomprehension that's so regrettably come to characterise the entire contemporary Climate Shitfight, and is paralysing any hope of an amicable cross-societal approach to the very real scientific and environmental challenges that confront us as this nascent century develops:
what's the first word of the 2nd (body-text) paragraph on page 100 of the SPM?
Fair warning: conveniently pleading "amnesia" will not impress anyone.
If you can't answer that simple question without cheesy cheating (like LOOKING IT UP) or spinning like your oh-so-apposite namesake, then I guess we'll all know how much weight to put on any future opinions you "share" with us about ANYTHING scientific.
C'mon, tick tock. That's the sound of your PERSONAL CREDIBILITY being tested.
We all want to know if there's any substance to the implied claims of authority you make every time you hold forth on science or, to be honest, anything else that should be left to university-educated adults to discuss.
Are you a fraud as a human being?
Hey, I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no.
The answer is in your hands.
Tick tock.
Oh, on an unrelated issue:
it's been suggested that I've been spending an unhealthy amount of time here. Why? What possible harm could this blog do to my development as a human being?
Ah, the Brad Troll, ever willing to engage in histrionic false equivalence in order to evade an inconvenient point.
@chameleon,
My apologies, but I'm afraid you aren't eligible to claim the Dead Easy Money Where Your Mouth Is prize.
My information indicates that you're a climate realist.
The Dead Easy Climate Crazeeness Fast Money Challenge was, as you probably know, quintessentially a reality-based task, so it was felt that people in your credal group have an unfair headstart—and so, with regret, the Challenge could only be made open to believalists (specifically, persons sufficiently reality-challenged to bandy about epithets like "serial science denialist!!!")
Neverthless I thank you for your valued submission.
@chameleon:
Nevertheless, let's keep it interesting!
;-)
Would you care to hold a little wager/"office pool" on how long it will take for one of the resident believalists to understand (and, obviously, to give some verbal evidence of understanding) my Comment #47?
Brad now says,
What Brad said before,
So, I take it anything you say is a throwaway line that you are not prepared to defend with - I dunno - *evidence*, maybe?
So the question stands - Brad thinks somebody is throwing around
and yet, the IPCC, which collects and summarises the global pool of intelligent and expert opinion on climate change may, or may not, use the word "catastrophe" - Brad doesn't know - his opinions are not formed by the facts.
Reality was not invited to Brad's monkey-party.
In other words, Brad just makes this shit up as he goes along, shit he then flings in all directions.
That's what I call dishonest and fraudulent.
@Drama, the designated dullard for tonight, asks probably his most penetrating question yet!
"So, I take it anything you say is a throwaway line that you are not prepared to defend with – I dunno – *evidence*, maybe?"
Drama, think about it for a nanosecond.
Or about ANYTHING, really. Baby steps. Just THINK, is all I ask.
Why would I—why would any mentally-viable person—BACK UP A SARCASTIC COMMENT WITH "EVIDENCE" THAT SAID COMMENT WAS TRUE FOR REALZ?
Excuse the Lotharssonism but fuck me.
For anyone still wondering what Brat is doing here, he's graciously consented to proving that he's a denier, liar and idiot.
As he proclaimed when he offered his "deal":
He'd agreed if he posted here afterwards, he was proving his denialism.
"Ah, the Brad Troll, ever willing to engage in histrionic false equivalence in order to evade an inconvenient point."
Uh, any reader who's shallow, tone-blind and unskeptical enough to be "persuaded" by my histrionics that the questions really were (for realz!—not sarcastically!) comparable really has themselves to blame, don't you think, @Loth?
Or do you really need me to spell it out in bold type in full and everlasting view of the Unforgetting Web Itself that yes, any imagined "equivalence" is false?
Is that the audience you assume when composing your comments, Lotharsson? Retards? Do you write for retards?
See, he's doing it again.
Take note, people, deniers don't care if they look insane. Being insane, they don't think anyone will notice.
You know, like that old-time piss-up artist walking down the street ranting and raging at his imaginary friend.
Both are to an extend to be pitied.
Both to be avoided. They're unstable.
"Both to be avoided."
So why are you hanging around?
Mind you, it's not very scary, is it.
Really it's a cry for attention.
Failed at everything, wants to be known and admired. Even if to do so it must pretend the past never happened and that what it said was never once said, that everyone "missed" the little coda that means they can stay and stamp their tiny little feet and shout for mommy.
Shall we leave it, boys and girls?
Leave this conflicted little insane troll to its devices. That won't shut it up, because it knows in its heart that it can't be ignored.
@Wow, follow your own advice. Keep your own counsel. Practice what you preach.
Please.
Avoid me!
See me approaching? Cross the street.
Win-win. Everybody wins.
Avoid me, Wow.
I'm begging you.
@chameleon
It's Hour One, and no verbal sign of comprehension yet.
Ah, that Brad, he reliably misses the point by focusing on the false equivalence and (ahem) avoiding his avoidance. Which furthers said avoidance. Which was presumably the point of missing the point.
http://www.lyricsmania.com/alcohol_lyrics_suggs.html
Hope you like that earworm, boys and girls!
Wait, Wow, I know I asked you to bugger off, but if you're still here, one very quick question before you bugger!!!!
The question is:
In your opinion/imagination, why is it that you're the only person on this or any other thread intelligent enough to realise that you answered a question I didn't even realise I'd asked and don't remember asking?
Why are none of your coreligionists backing you up? Why are they so slow-witted, they haven't even figured out that you actually have a point?
What does it feel like to be an Angel among Men, a titan amongst halflings, Gauss in an age of Gishes, Dick Lindzen in an age of Joelle Gergises, Einstein in an age of I Am Sams, a Half Retard when all around you have gone Full Retard?
It can't be easy.
Lotharson, any idea why he's running after everyone here going "So avoid me, then. Go on, avoid me! Why don't you avoid me, huh?"
It's not like this is a street he's standing on and we're walking down it.
He has to come in here and type to this.
Weird stalker psycho.
"and yet, the IPCC, which collects and summarises the global pool of intelligent and expert opinion on climate change may, or may not, use the word “catastrophe” – Brad doesn’t know – his opinions are not formed by the facts."
Dude, I know the answer WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING at the report.
Where does my godlike ESP come from?
It's simply a function of the fact that, being so stupid yourself, you couldn't even think of a hard question.
It's pretty clear his source material doesn't even remotely resemble any sane human being's choice of source material.
He doesn't care what the IPCC publishes, his drivel is fully informed by a mixture of his own brain-farts and the brain-farts kindly provided by the crank blogs that wind him up.
Not that any of his posts contain anything interesting or substantive - it's all idiotic argument-sans-facts and avoidance of any previous sans-facts thus exposed.
And yet...you throw this word "catastrophe" around, as if it were relevant.
To make it relevant, you could answer my question.
I note your admission that
a. You don't make the effort to read valid source material
and
b. You make up the answers anyway.
So avoid me then, Wow.
Go on, avoid me, Wow!
Why don’t you avoid me, Wow?
GO AWAY already.
Good grief. Kindergarten is here.
@Drama,
allow me to blow your mind by answering your question correctly AND following my lifelong anti-intellectual denialist policy of shunning source material and avoiding bookes (which are teh geh) n leaving "equasions" to bespectacled dweebs like you, who I used to, like, flush their heads in the toilets n shit back in Middle School, back when I was really Somebody, y'know? Before my transverse ligament fucked up and I missed the draft and suddenly found myself, the fat, middle-aged quarter back married to the fat-ankled former (VERY former) prom queen, wondering where I went wrong.
The IPCC SPM does not mention the word "catastrophe" much, IF AT ALL.
Wow! (Not the retard—the interjection.) How did I guess???
Wow (not the interjection—the retard) actually buggered off!
What did I do right?
Because projection is his most successful self-delusion technique, mesuspects.
(That, and verbal diarrhea.)
"The IPCC SPM does not mention the word “catastrophe” much, IF AT ALL."
Krishna On A Stick For My Sins, were you mora actually WAITING for me to admit this before you felt you could move on to your "point"?
SO, is it not much, or not at all?
If you're going to criticise the consensus views of the world's science communities, it would probably be best to actually know what those views are, wouldn't you think?
But insists IN CAPITALS that they believe in the DATA (any data, which kind of explains why he's so deluded) and thinks that books contain EVIDENCE (and one would suppose, blogrolls like WTFUWT would, to him, count as EVIDENCE that he believes in).
And, since he hasn't READ the reports, there's no EVIDENCE in there that he's seen, so it can be discarded and the WTFUWT version of it is therefore REAL!!!!
BK
And on and on it goes.Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Incidentally, are you using some kind of stimulant?
Well its nice to see that in this weapons-grade bout of logorrhea, Brad did manage one interesting notion:
Quite frankly, continental drift is just as likely to ruin your life as global warming ever will!
The relative probabilities are debateable, but the analogy works, I think, though not as Brad would seem to have intended...:-)
Mind you, there doesn't seem to be any data or evidence behind that claim.
This is just for chameleon,
When you look at what the environmental movement spends its money on, it actually tries to spend its money on developing solutions to climate change, such as developing a solar panel industry in China, making sure everybody in India has an appropriate solar oven to reduce CO2 emissions, things like that. And they spend hardly anything on political or cultural processes. The climate change countermovement spends all of its money there.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/ro…
Brad,
"As far as I can see, AND I’VE LOOKED, there is little in the way of evidence capable of persuading anyone (or at least, anyone who doesn’t have an a priori craving or clinamen to believe) that the probabilistic ramifications of AGW are so net-negative as to be worth doing anything other than what doctors with completely asymptomatic patients call 'watchful waiting.'"
You've LOOKED? Give me a break. You really cannot see beyond your own nose, can you?
Yes, you are in denial. Although you realize you cannot successfully argue against the science of AGW, you are of the irrational opinion apparently gleaned from contrarian blog science, as opposed to real science, that continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere is unlikely if at all to lead to massive disruption of human civilization nor the ecological systems upon which that civilization depends, or in a word, catastrophe.
This is called minimization. You also display other symptoms of denial such as; projection, rationalization, denial of denial and DARVO.
A warning;
Every time you double down on the stupid, you progress on an exponential path toward infinite idiocy.
Is that really where you want to go?
@mike
"Deltoid-land! Gaia’s unflushed, public toilet–noisome, shittoir haborage of the famous “sinker”-toid and “floater”-toid group-stink."
Thank you for the first adult and veridical comment in a long while here (other than mine, obviously)!
However, your analysis then proceeds to call qualities of our host/landlord himself into question.
I'll be surprised and severely disappointed in Tim if he's as censorious as people on both "sides" are saying.
When I met him ten years ago, he seemed the kind of guy who was always up for a robust, no-holds-barred, honest exchange of disagreements about anything.
Has he declined badly? (Due to the effects of chronic climate alarm on the prefrontal cortex, for example?)
Did I overestimate him?
Is my recollection faulty?
None of the above, I hope.
How many failed flounces is that for Brad? And now the douchecanoe comes back and demands others leave?
What an absolute infant. Pathetic.
luminous beauty:
Yep. Brad Keyes is an asymptote one where the S/N ratio has gone off the chart. Time to leave him talking to himself I figure.
I forgot one of the most potent symptoms of Brad's denial; obfuscation. Rather than clearly stating an arguable position, he hides behind pointless sarcasm and vague and ambiguous 'hints'.
"Yep. Brad Keyes is an asymptote one where the S/N ratio has gone off the chart. Time to leave him"
I would be grateful if you did. Post haste. Your presence raises the Stupid/Non-stupid comments ratio, to a point where copious upscrolling is often needed just to find an intelligent person to talk to.
Shorter Brad,
No, you're stupid!
Projection, thy name is Brad.
Brad Keyes is hilarious. I'd love to see what would happen if he got into an argument with Jonas! I'm not sure if this comment system is designed to cope with million-post threads...
That won't happen, bob, since they both disagree with the IPCC.
Oh deary me. Passive-aggressive whining, delusions of grandeur, pitiful attempts at humor... you know, Brad, most people grow out of that tripe by the end of their teens. What went wrong with you?
Well, it all started when he did a philosophy course and decided that made him a better scientist than all the scientists in the world.
All he learned there was how to say fuck all and take a bloody age to do it.
They make well-paid freelance writers (if they're paid by the word).
Of course, Brad only does throw-away lines, so you can't expect any evidence.
I'm happy to get us started, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
So, Brad, your failure to explain your use of the word "catastrophe" together with your admission you are unfamiliar with the IPCC reports can be taken as an admission that you are nothing but a bullshit artist and a troll intent on wasting everybody's time here, right?
Indeed. He seems like the kind of bloke who'd have trouble getting a drink at an open bar because he couldn't state his position on what he would like to drink.
Why do you think I've been suggesting Tim confine him to that thread ;-) They're both massively in denial, but I'm sure a creative 3rd party could find a point of difference and off they would go. The ensuing waffle war would last for years...
The use of the word “catastrophe,” Johnny Drama?
Seriously? You have no idea where it might have come from?
I would have thought the basis for it was bleeding obvious. But then, nothing is obvious if you try hard enough, is it, Drama?
It comes from reams and reams of following shit:
BBD* strenuously assured me that AGW poses "an existential threat" to human civilisation.
Ban Ki Moon declared with a straight face, just prior to the last (or second-last? or third-last?) tropical IPCC-fest, that "this is our last chance to save the planet."
Australian Climate Commissioner Professor W. Steffen said on national radio that the question is not whether climate change is real (der, fred) but “whether or not our children will be left with a climate that is livable.”
Your favorite half-scientist half-historian Naomi Oreskes is on record saying that the dysphemism du jour, "climate disruption", is inadequate because what we're looking at is "climate DESTRUCTION."
The list goes on and on and on. Please don’t waste my time, and insult your own intelligence, by denying it.
Now your mileage may vary, but it’s bleeding obvious to me (as are a number of things that you’ve succeded in not understanding) that all these people seem to believe in some kind of upcoming CATASTROPHE.
* Or luminous beauty? I tend to conflate them.
If you don't see that, Drama, then I have to suppose that Mithras, Krsna, the Easter Bunny and Jebus could be impaled on 4 consecutive sticks in front of your eyes and be telling you, in triplicate, that "AGW is the greatest moral challenge of our generation [Krudd et al.]" and you'd walk right on by whistling:
"Catastrophe? Who said anything about a catastrophe? No demigod on a stick I've ever heard of has ever mentioned a catastrophe. Hmm. It must be some kind of strawman made up by Big Tobacco, Heartland and the New Murdochracy."
Hell, even in quadruplicate! (D'oh.)
God this is painful. Brad, it's a sliding scale - with really bad stuff at the BAU emissions end.
You are revelling in nonsense of your own creation. Please - stop and be sensible if you are capable of it. Stop being a prat, a troll and a smug buffoon and engage.
Otherwise I have to agree with others here - you need banning.
BBD, did I get that right then—"existential threat" was you?
Brad @ 97,
Now you're giving hints 50 comments later.
I'm glad I didn't take the wager. Terrible odds.
LB I will pull up your link later and comment if I see the need.
No time right now.
This is really getting old. An incompetent sophist and a brain-damaged sycophant.
Need better trolls, please.
@Stu, let me share something Gandhi said which really resonated with me.
Be the better billy-goat you wish to see in the world.
@chameleon:
;-)
That is all.
No catastrophes here
Like I said, incompetent. I just forgot to mention insufferably boring.
General announcement.
Do you understand anything about science or philosophy?
Is your name chameleon, Latimer, Tim, Jeff Harvey, jonas or Mike without an H?
Do your interests include such things as:
- thinking
- knowing
and
- reality?
Well then, if—and only if—I've just described you, I know you're gonna love this:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/01/january-2013-open-thread/com…
What is it?
Oh, nothing much.
Only the ritual coup de grace of the intellectual humiliation of the simpleton runt of Lothar.
Luminous:
From your earlier link:
Let's take your quote into its wider context:
This movement is fairly well funded. What’s interesting is that in comparison to the environmental movement, it actually doesn’t have as much money. The environmental movement actually has more funding, but it’s the nature of the spending that makes the difference.
When you look at what the environmental movement spends its money on, it actually tries to spend its money on developing solutions to climate change, such as developing a solar panel industry in China, making sure everybody in India has an appropriate solar oven to reduce CO2 emissions, things like that. And they spend hardly anything on political or cultural processes. The climate change countermovement spends all of its money there.
So you end up with this great difference between the two movements. As one movement is actually out there trying to develop technological solutions on the ground, the other is engaged in political action to delay any kind of action. …
It appears even a SOCIOLOGIST is aware that there are far greater funds available to the environmental movement.
As for the rest of the piece:
It is purely about political ideologies and therefore politics.
There is NO EVIDENCE that this so called counterclimate movement is any different to any other politcal advocacy group out there INCLUDING THOSE WHO CLAIM THEY'RE ENVIRONMENTAL
Neither is there any evidence about a comparative % of the massive funding available to 'environmental groups' that is actually invested in such things as solar ovens in India.
Are you claiming that none of their funding is spent on advocacy Luminous?
I'm now making an appeal to JeffH.
Don't you think this particular person (Robert Bruille) is EQUALLY guilty of attracting attention to himself and simply pandering to the 'adversarial' hoo haa that the media etc is having a field day with?
I sincerely wish you would ask BradK NICELY what a different approach could achieve.
I believe he could explain how much less expensive and time wasting that would ultimately be.
Unfortunately however, I think he is probably right and we could all come back here in 5 years and STILL NOTHING that anyone could regard as practical or sensible will be achieved.
I would once again, with respect, suggest that you pick up a copy of Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow".
It is quite safe, he's totally apolitical and totally an academic.
It's also very easy to obtain at the moment as it sits on the bestseller shelves.
He, like BradK and myself, does NOT deny the importance or the value of science and statistical analysis.
What he has discovered from a lifetime of research is that humans (and particularly experts) are not the paragons of reason that we assume ourselves to be.
I'm sure you would enjoy it JeffH.
It's SUPER-BRAD
It's SUPER-BRAD
An indomitable legend
In his own head
It's SUPER-BRAD
It's SUPER-BRAD
An insufferable boorish boring
SUPER-cad
It's SU... PER... BRAD!
OOPS! sorry moderator.
Mistyped email address:
Try again:
Luminous:
From your earlier link:
Let’s take your quote into its wider context:
This movement is fairly well funded. What’s interesting is that in comparison to the environmental movement, it actually doesn’t have as much money. The environmental movement actually has more funding, but it’s the nature of the spending that makes the difference.
When you look at what the environmental movement spends its money on, it actually tries to spend its money on developing solutions to climate change, such as developing a solar panel industry in China, making sure everybody in India has an appropriate solar oven to reduce CO2 emissions, things like that. And they spend hardly anything on political or cultural processes. The climate change countermovement spends all of its money there.
So you end up with this great difference between the two movements. As one movement is actually out there trying to develop technological solutions on the ground, the other is engaged in political action to delay any kind of action. …
It appears even a SOCIOLOGIST is aware that there are far greater funds available to the environmental movement.
As for the rest of the piece:
It is purely about political ideologies and therefore politics.
There is NO EVIDENCE that this so called counterclimate movement is any different to any other politcal advocacy group out there INCLUDING THOSE WHO CLAIM THEY’RE ENVIRONMENTAL
Neither is there any evidence about a comparative % of the massive funding available to ‘environmental groups’ that is actually invested in such things as solar ovens in India.
Are you claiming that none of their funding is spent on advocacy Luminous?
I’m now making an appeal to JeffH.
Don’t you think this particular person (Robert Bruille) is EQUALLY guilty of attracting attention to himself and simply pandering to the ‘adversarial’ hoo haa that the media etc is having a field day with?
I sincerely wish you would ask BradK NICELY what a different approach could achieve.
I believe he could explain how much less expensive and time wasting that would ultimately be.
Unfortunately however, I think he is probably right and we could all come back here in 5 years and STILL NOTHING that anyone could regard as practical or sensible will be achieved.
I would once again, with respect, suggest that you pick up a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow”.
It is quite safe, he’s totally apolitical and totally an academic.
It’s also very easy to obtain at the moment as it sits on the bestseller shelves.
He, like BradK and myself, does NOT deny the importance or the value of science and statistical analysis.
What he has discovered from a lifetime of research is that humans (and particularly experts) are not the paragons of reason that we assume ourselves to be.
I’m sure you would enjoy it JeffH.
In recognition of his unique - indeed, transcendent - status I suggest that the only genuinely beneficial engagement Brad could hope to undertake is with appropriately qualified specialists.
And soon.
Unfortunately, bill, the first prerequisite for that kind of thing tends to be that one recognises one has a problem, and the second prerequisite is that one recognises the experts know a lot more than you do.
You can see why those are going to be tricky here...
Lotharsson,
I also highly recommend the book to you.
Especially Chapter 22 which is titled:
Expert Intuition: When Can We Trust It?
He has conducted some fascinating studies and statistical analysis on this particular topic as well as referencing work from others.
I was quite surprised by the conclusions.
However it's only a recommendation so please don't bother trying to read anything else into it other than what it is.
Shorter Brad:
I get it.
Chameleon, no matter how many examples you can find of experts making a mistake, their performance is always going to be much, much better, on average, than the performance of the untrained.
In other words, you can't argue:
- Thalidomide
- Therefore Anthony Watts might have a point.
I *do* find it interesting, and funny, that somebody has suggested you read "Thinking fast and slow".
Because "Fast and Slow: is exactly about the methods people such as yourself perform assessments, and which scientists strive so very hard to avoid:
- Heuristic bias, ie, missing new patterns because you fit observations to known patterns (or, climate change is natural, it's always occurring)
- Anchoring, ie, bias based on irrelevant numbers (or, irrelevant photos of snow)
- Substitution, ie, a failed Kahneman experiment that proved that non-scientists perform poorly at defining the meaning of words.
- Framing, ie, analyses biased by the method used to describe them.
- Sunkcost, ie, people throw good money after bad (or, no matter how often Watts is shown to be nincompoop, his fans double-down on support for him)
- Prospect Theory, ie, not considering the whole of the problem and biasing analyses through over- or under-consideration of small parts of the whole.
Really, if Kahneman is describing the problems scientific humans face (and scientists are *very* aware of the need to identify and deal with assumptions and bias, and a great deal of their work is based around this process), it is 1,000,000x more relevant to people who haven't benefited from any kind of rigorous intellectual training.
For additional information about the latter,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Afv3U_ysc
Brad keys @ Page 18 # 100
No, it was LB and some of the underpinning ecological reasoning was supplied in earlier comments by Jeff Harvey.
'Existential threat' isn't a phrase I would use lightly. 'Very bad outcomes' sits more easily with my understanding of the consequences of the high emissions scenarios.
Idiot 'sceptics' who mash the entire spectrum of possible outcomes into a single *strawman* labelled CAGW haven't understood the most basic premise of all: the sliding scale, determined by emissions.
As I say, it's painful to behold. You are supposed to be clever, so you ought to be able to avoid basic blunders like this.
Besides which, complaining that CAGW hasn't happened is like saying you haven't died yet.
Here's a little known tidbit relating to Ridley. The Viscount is currently trying to use the Monckton route into the UK House of Lords. Not by lying about being a member, but by the other route - the anachronistic and undemocratic by-election in which only aristocrats can stand and only aristocrats can vote. Ridley has no shame it seems.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/70549/?edition_id=1332
Yeah, but, Wow, "there's been no warming since [insert date of last peak warm year]".
That's how clever they are.
Back on topic - sort of.
Russell Seitz over on The Rabett's has linked to a publication by Matt Ridley from, Drum-roll and 'beat to quarters', the GWPF..
Now is it new, maybe, but there is no publication date within the PDF and it contains many of the same old crocks e.g:
So, according to Ridley, James Hansen is an extremist.
Well Ridley you are a disgrace to the human race.
And look at the supporting citations at the foot of the page where the above is found:
Birds of a feather and all that.
This from Ridley makes him as much of a laughing stock as the Discount Viscount.
Ridley has been on the GWPF's 'academic advisory council' for at least two years.
Must be sad when your employment options narrow to the point where you have to take a job working for the shills.
Is that supposed to be another appeal to consensus? Can't be. Brat wouldn't stand for it.
And look who is broadcasting this Ridley nonsense that goes by the title A Lukewarmers Ten Tests
Sorry about those live links in my last above I didn't intend them that way.
So we are now down to global warming is happening, humans may be responsible for some of that but it isn't going to be that bad, aka the Lomborg-Lindzen pitch, with of course a list of other helpers including Ridley.
And even sadder when you have to list them as your references. Just for fun, can anyone locate anyone, anywhere on Google scholar or Web of Science who proudly lists those joke sites as their primary literature?
Here is a video describing some of Brad's training:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tGB8Uuffi4M
"Matt Ridley is one of the world’s foremost science writers.
Is that supposed to be another appeal to consensus? Can’t be. Brat wouldn’t stand for it."
I know, outrageous! It's a CONSENSUS OF ONE!
I won't stand for it!
Just out of curiosity, Wow, have you ever been tested?
@Wow, in case I wasn't clear, this one was for you:
“"Matt Ridley is one of the world’s foremost science writers."
Is that supposed to be another appeal to consensus? Can’t be. Brat wouldn’t stand for it.”
I know, outrageous! It’s a CONSENSUS OF ONE!
I won’t stand for it!
Just out of curiosity, Wow, have you ever been tested?
Just out of curiosity, Brad, how long have you been off your medication?
@Stu,
"Just out of curiosity, Brad, how long have you been off your medication?"
Thanks for the reminder! How could you tell? I always take my 150mg Fooltolerin (you may know the US trade name Foolsufferin) with food in the morning, but I was in such a rush today I only had a coffee!
Damn, today is gonna be a long one...
Chek,
I think the saddest thing of all is people like you who think they're being clever by sneering at others.
It actually says way more about you than anything/anyone else.
@Brad,
Where do you get that Fooltolerin or Foolsufferin precription?
I have to spend part of the next 2 weeks with some govt employees and some researchers from Canberra Uni discussing the practical application of policy.
I could really do with some of that stuff!
Chameleon says to chek:
She forgot to direct that to Brad. I'm sure it was an innocent oversight.
She then goes on to sneer at "govt employees" and "university researchers".
Self-awareness is not strong in this one.
No Lotharsson,
This is a specific and very personal sneer:
"Must be sad when your employment options narrow to the point where you have to take a job working for the shills.
And even sadder when you have to list them as your references. Just for fun, can anyone locate anyone, anywhere on Google scholar or Web of Science who proudly lists those joke sites as their primary literature?"
While this one:
@Brad,
Where do you get that Fooltolerin or Foolsufferin precription?
I have to spend part of the next 2 weeks with some govt employees and some researchers from Canberra Uni discussing the practical application of policy.
I could really do with some of that stuff!"
Was an ironic observation that developed from the original personal and very specific example of sneering.
But I'm absolutely positive that you will argue that was not what happened and that you know better about whatever you choose to know better about whichever topic you happen to want to choose you know much more about or whatever :-)
However Lotharsson
If I have inadvertantly offended you, I certainly apologise.
There was nothing PERSONAL intended in my comment.
Sounds like they'll need it.
I can't even begin to imagine the pain they will suffer sitting through meetings listening to your inane stream-of-consciousness gabble for hours on end.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/incestuous-amplification-ec… - WUWT and GWPF explained.
So you think it's just fine to sneer about an entire category of people based on where they work (that generally being considered a personal characteristic - and sneering based on irrelevant attributes is generally called "bigotry") because you claim you were being ironic?
What strange webs you weave.
Just out of interest, how do you know chek's comments weren't "ironic"? If he were to say they were, just like you did, would that make them alright with you, just like your sneers are when you claim they were ironic, and just like Brad's smears are with him when he claims they are a joke?
And...oh, never mind - it's just not worth asking you to point out the factual differences between your generalised sneer and chek's comments.
But you appear to have a massive blind spot for Brad's very personal sneering (and smearing). It's astonishing that you've missed it. He's apparently very proud of it and displays it at almost every opportunity. Why do you think you are so one-eyed about this?
"Chek, I think the saddest thing of all is people like you who think they’re being clever by sneering at others. cranks.
FTFY.Oh, and probably the worst thing you can do for cranks is to take them seriously. It tends to make them even more whacko, perjoratives notwithstanding.
Hmmmmm?
Sneering at an entire category of people based on where they work, or, maybe even where they have worked?
eeeerrr NOPE!
Chuckle :-)
Where have I seen that done before?
Did you miss my comment some time back about many of my friends, family and associates and where they work?
and also here:
If he were to say they were, just like you did, would that make them alright with you.
eeeeerrrrr NOPE!
For fox ache Lotharsson!
That is a totally pointless and redundant question (as well as poorly expressed) because Lotharsson:
(and here I go stating the bleeding obvious again)
That is NOT what Chek wrote.
I'm reasonably confident if he had wanted to write it that way he would have done so!
Also Lotharsson,
If Chek was attempting to be ironic, I'm sure he is more than capable of saying so and explaining so himself.
And Lotharsson,
If you are not happy with Brad's comments I suggest you take it up with him.
He has not attacked me.
Actually at no stage have I noticed him launching into an unprovoked PERSONAL attack on anyone. (please take note of the word unprovoked)
In fact you may not have noticed but he specifically asked me not to intervene in his game of semantics with you.
(At the other thread)
And there you go Lotharsson,
He just explained he was NOT attempting to be ironic!
:-)
Well, at least we agree on something. Shame you think that's reason to ignore the question.
My question still stands. It wasn't about chek - it was about your self-justification.
Silly me, I totally forgot!
Of course you haven't noticed that - your powers of observation are remarkably limited.
@chameleon exhibits drug-seeking behaviour :
“[I need what some of you're on, because] I have to spend part of the next 2 weeks with some govt employees and some researchers from Canberra Uni discussing the practical application of policy."
;-)
!
Actually, yeah, tell me about it.
I once spent a week as a govt employee and I still feel sorry to the taxpayers who paid for the uncompetitive nonsense I and my colleagues were doing.
The impression I got from that admittedly-brief stint in the sheltered workshop of public service was that the average (though by no means 100% pandemic,) public-sector understanding of the concept of WORK is the opposite of the corporate capitalist ethos… and not in a good way. My colleagues and bosses overwhelmingle seemed to think that
work = energy dissipated,
work = heat generated,
or
work = hourly pay rate * attendance
… which is anathema to the midset of a self-respecting private-sector employee. What healthy, productive people want to do at the workplace is more like:
work = force * distance
work = change in [final – initial] state of the world,
or something along those lines.
That's the vibe I've consistently gotten over the years, anyway.
Note that there are some major exceptions—such as academia (including science), which is only logical considering that if you want to Get Things Done in those areas, you almost have no choice but to get on the public payroll. Unsurprisingly therefore, academia tends to contain a “healthier,” 50-50 mix of the parasite and the producer personality type.
So the validity of the public vs private stereotype is logically confined to fields that a person has the option of pursuing on or off the State mammary gland—fields like "business" (compare government business to business-business), IT (compare the average public University website to a proper website), etc.
Anyway, YMMV. Others' thoughts?
I was working for an area of about 300-odd employees of the civil service in the UK when Tony Blair went on his privatisation spree with his PPI scams and whatnot.
Some of the privatisations cut out some dead wood.
Many of the privatisations were scams that resulted in increased spending for reduced service (think the US healthcare system).
The area where I worked hired a business manager who then set us up as a bunch of business units with strictly defined areas of income and spending as well as quantified and qualified services equating to each source of funding. A proper business plan.
When it came time to put our services out for tender, not a single private organisation put in any kind of a bid for any of the work we were responsible for. Not one.
On the other hand, we being able to clearly demonstrate on paper far superior efficiency to any of the private company options, many civil service areas in our and neighbouring counties disbanded various of their sections and re-assigned us their funding to provide those services.
The upshot was, our civil service section pretty much tripled in size over the space of 2-3 years, while the privatisation wonks in London , including Tony Blair and his army of dishonest ideologues, absolutely shat themselves at having their privatisation myths exploded so very publicly.
I later heard CSIRO did something similar here and avoided the whole privatisation thing entirely.
Since then, I've worked about 50/50 in private companies v. Government here in Australia.
The main problem in government departments is that the only way to get rid of dead weight is to offer it promotion out to somewhere else.
So some places work really well, while others have been hijacked from the top by brainless fuckwits.
Still, the stunning inefficiency and waste in private companies - the vast amount of time wasted on sales activities, on schmoozing with clients, offering them incentives (read: blatant corruption), the ridiculous management-bloat and gross over-payment of the non-productive upper echelons, not to mention the diversion of vast amounts of money away from R&D and into shareholders' marinas...
That also describes the private sector in my personal experience. Once you get a fuckwit high up the management chain, there's very little you can do to escape the fuckwittery until they get ousted. If they have supporters in high places, that may simply not happen until their supporters have also gone. And if it's the CEO that's the problem it can persist for a long time - or until the company goes down the gurgler.
So you're saying that only the writer of that piece thinks Matt is one of the foremost writers, right?
Doesn't that mean that most people think he's a bit crap?
So does that mean he's telling a lie or that he's fluffing up Matt's resume for personal reasons?
@Vince
You call attention to "the vast amount of time wasted on sales activities" in the private sector.
Do you mean to draw a distinction between productive, profitable, rational sales activities and time-wasting ones?
Or are you suggesting that sales activities per se are a waste of time? But isn't this "inefficiency" something of a necessary evil when the market is, well, free?
Not all companies equate sales activities with marketing PR, lies, deception and corruption. But many do. And they do it at crossed purposes, making it a gross inefficiency that drives up prices.
Umbrellas with company logos on them. Marketing conferences where nothing of any substance is ever said, but where all participants get to go home with a new iPad cover. But worse - from 10am until 4pm, the suits at some of these companies spend their entire day planning that day's free lunch to give somebody, or to receive from somebody, along with as many other things to put on the expense account, thus driving up prices.
I've recently been watching a group based close by where I am (specialised technology company), and I swear their sales guys aren't even bothering to come back from lunch 3 days a week - and they're still at the bar at dinner time.
Meanwhile, the actual productive members of the company's workforce, on salaries of 1/3 what the bacchanalian professional liars are being paid, get a grilling if a late train causes them to miss a morning meeting.
Yes, no matter how bad the public sector can be, the private sector is usually far worse.
Vince:
I recall a term being used to describe this is 'promoted sideways' another, but less strong is 'put out to grass' - more retired than promoted sideways. A corollary to this is 'emeritus' .
This was prevalent in the old sailing navy when a Post Captain at the top of the list was by seniority promoted to Rear-Admiral but because of an absence of suitable squadrons for one otherwise lacking zeal and initiative instead of being appointed to the 'Blue' Squadron (Blue at the Mizzen), the lowest order, (with 'White and Red being the other two in ascending order of seniority) this new Rear Admiral would be termed as belonging to the Yellow Squadron, a Yellow Admiral thus 'Yellowed'.
It was a standing joke in the RN that some brass hats got their next step (up the ladder as it were) by committing a blunder, say grounding their ship, thus Court Marshalled and losing seniority by which they were then back in the promotion zone.
Well for once I can say I agree with you Lotharsson.
It doesn't matter where they work, some people are just complete f***wits!
If Wow behaves the same in real life with real people as he does in this virtual world, I would definitely take a bet that he is one!
I'd have to say that I would take better than even money that you would be one too Lotharsson if you behave in a similar manner in the 'real' world as you do here.
And Vince?
Wouldn't this just be your opinion?
Yes, no matter how bad the public sector can be, the private sector is usually far worse.
Having worked in both, I have found the opposite to be the case.
Most of the time in the private sector people are accountable and need to be responsible for their work and their decisions.
In the public sector that is often not the case.
Well it looks like the GWPF have pulled the document I cited here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/14/matt-ridley-responds-with-a-…
this has I have discovered comes via a poster at SkS .
Maybe calling Hansen names was a problem. Is it that Ridley has looked in here and decided to retreat or something?
@Lionel A
I think the GWPF just changed the link. You can still download Ridley's ramblings from the GWPF site and the Hansen smear is still there. Oddly, the GWPF front page also has an article claiming Hansen is a "climate sceptic".
Lionel, one place I worked, they would promote them and then assign them a little office somewhere out of the way and nobody would ever see them again.
Typically, these were the kinds of people who would take a lot of sick leave if brought into contact with any professional demands on their time.
A co-worker who had done his first degree in economics once explained to me all the (rationalist) benefits to the taxpayer of keeping these people "at work" rather than turfing them onto the dole. He was fairly convincing.
"Most of the time in the private sector people are accountable and need to be responsible for their work and their decisions. In the public sector that is often not the case".
Yeh - Just ask people who work (or worked) for Goldman-Sachs, Lehmann Brothers or other banking fraudsters or any of the places they've driven to hell through their criminal activities; or a former farmer forced from his land by neoliberal policies and forced to work in a sweat shop assembly line for Nike or Disney in some dingy back street of Port-eu Prince or Jakarta for a dollar a day; or any number of economic dead zones in the US when the corporations that used to be based there dumped the workforce so that they could seek some de-regulatory refuge in the south. Yup, the old private sector people are responsible all right.
BOLLOCKS.
Look at how much of a bollocking is given when reports of a civil servant getting a pay rise gets, or how much "council road workers, standing around drinking tea all day" get paid. Or roadsweepers.
Hell, look at how much stick Dr Pachuri got for getting paid for work outside the IPCC.
Yet look how little stick Texaco's CEO getting 24million in bonuses a year got.
Or Lord Monkfish's speeches getting him $100k a pop on the denialist lecture circuit.
Or the payments to lobby groups by private businesses.
Because every time those wastes of money get bandied about "Well, they're allowed to do that. Don't like it? Avoid it".
Every penny grudgingly given to government is harried over.
Companies wasting money (which cost is passed on to either the shareholders or the customers) is "private".
lord_sidcup
Yes the GWPF front page is here, with a new tilt at Hansen, 'James Hansen Turns Climate Sceptic' which goes to an article where it is clear that the headline is out of step with the content for Hansen is not newly sceptical of climate change. There is, however, much spin from Pat Michael's.
That GWPF misrepresentation of Hansen is laughably blatant. Exactly the sort of thing that should send up a big, red flag to visitors to the site saying *Don't trust us*.
What must they think of their readership to pull stunts like that?
Well, you have to admit: they're right about most of the readership, aren't they.
The GWPF distorting the facts? Blimey.
Anybody who can imagine that The Shining and Exalted Private Sector is the Saviour of Civilization after the fiasco of 2008 is an idiot. Or 12 years old.
Really.
Especially if they imagine they're 'Philosophers'.
Just because it's always worth giving it another spin, here's John Rogers' famous quote -
Anybodywho can argue that anyone here said that either the private or the public sector is 'shining and exalted' and/or 'the saviour of the world' has had what some would call here a 'massive comprehension fail'.
But 'idiot' will suffice :-)
Good job of totally missing the point Bill!
type type type
Oh, goodie! :-) How much money are you willing to put up? Would performance reports from employers that address not only outcomes but behaviours provide sufficient evidence to adjudicate the claim?
Oh, wait, your betting talk was conditional:
Ah, but in many respects I do. I have been specifically valued for being uncommonly effective at detecting and highlighting bullshit and poorly supported assertions as well as subtly mistaken claims. Companies generally try to stay out of denial because they know that reality doesn't respect wishful or mistaken thinking and they make money by acting in the real world, not the world as they wish it was.
What differs there and here is that "there" has a filter that weeds out a lot of stupidity once it is pointed out, rather than having it re-asserted time and time again. If you're an employee routinely seen to be promoting Teh Stupid in your role you don't last long. (The counter-example is the one pointed out above - where the stupidity is protected from a management level above, and that stupidity is ingrained rather than inadvertent. The great managers appreciate being quietly pulled up when they propose something stupid because they know reality doesn't respect stupidity - and they respect those who pull them up for helping them out. The fuckwits take it as a personal attack and get very huffy and attack back with spurious "reasoning"...wait, why does this sound familiar?)
If you acted there in your job function like you act here you wouldn't last more than a week. The negative feedback would be strong, and your complaints about it clearly unjustified. That means that most of the critiques that you find objectionable from me and others would never occur.
In my experience, douches like Chameleon prefer to have their copies of Atlas Shrugged on their desks at work, and any conflict that results is the OTHER person's fault for laughing at them, or for bringing it up.
The difference of course being that people I work with would not take it upon themselves to launch into a lecture about their negative opinions of my abilities.
The other marked difference is that the people I work with possess a sense of humour, postive mindsets and they also focus on practical and workable solutions to clearly identifiable risks.
Interestingly they work in private & public sectors.
Well, the primary difference is that this is the comments section of a blog, not a work environment! Trying to apply work standards of relationship to a blog full of people you are not in a working relationship with is folly (but you're apparently going there anyway). Peers in a collegial relationship often self-censor things they would say if they weren't peers.
That, and another key difference (I suspect) is that you're not launching into lectures there all the time like you are here based on clear falsehoods, bad incomprehension and unsupported claims - and then arguing in bad faith with the responses, which is very impolite. The negative opinions about your abilities are a response to your own persistent and ongoing form of impoliteness. (Managers doing performance reviews, however, are supposed to be free with negative opinions of abilities when they are accurate, so even the work environment isn't free of what you're trying to rule out of bounds as somehow being impolite. If you tried applying the kind of sophistry and incomprehension that you routinely try on here to your work within earshot of your manager, they would quite likely express a negative opinion...either immediately or during a performance review. If they don't they aren't doing a good job and they certainly aren't doing you any favours by withholding information you need to improve your performance. And if you got huffy and launched into irrelevant attacks in response like you routinely do here, that behaviour would also be noted as a negative that needs improvement.)
Ooooh, you've been reading my performance reviews again :-)
Do you realise that a "positive mindset" without critical thinking amounts to "wishful thinking" which employers don't want because it increases risks and costs them money? And that critical thinking requires expressing negative judgements when they are warranted? And that accordingly the fact that one expresses negative judgements does not imply that they don't have a positive mindset? Whereas the fact that someone tries to rule out negative opinions indicates they are probably avoiding critical thinking?
It seems your quest to infer an individual's value at work from their commenting style here isn't doing very well. (Ooops, is that an impolite negative opinion?)
Hmmmm?
So in other words you are indeed an f-wit Lotharsson?
Thought so.
:-)
Hmmmm?
So in other words you are indeed an f-wit Lotharsson?
:-)
Oops!
Said it twice
:-)
And...you interpret my words to say the opposite of what they say.
Again.
Are you the same serial misinterpreter and fact denier in your work as you are here?
Sorry about that moderator,
Feel free to delete one or both.
Wasn't actually necessary to point out the self evident :-)
And hilarious that I inadvertently did it twice!
Me can computer screen brain can thing can did. :-)
Type Type Type
Off-topic, but since the GWPF were mentioned above - the GWPF's Lord Turnball has a letter in today's Financial Times which contains this eye-watering bit of stupid:
The surface of the Arctic sea freezing in January is a big deal for him. Why would any self-respecting scientist or 'science-writer' associate themselves with the GWPF?
In that execrable document A Lukewarmers Ten Tests, which is not composed of tests at all but poorly supported opinion pieces, Ridley offers this at number eight, my emphasis (for Jeff's attention):
In other GWPF news, it has been discovered that adult obesity and anorexia are merely alarmist medical pseudoscience because the people who have those "conditions" are just as tall as they used to be.
Ridley claims warming has:
WTF?! He could start with this, and that's far from the only study.
What a hack.
@Lotharsson
FTFY:
"The great scientists appreciate being quietly pulled up when they propose something stupid because they know reality doesn’t respect stupidity – and they respect those who pull them up for helping them out. The fuckwit scientists take it as a personal attack and get very huffy and attack back with spurious “reasoning”
…wait, why does this sound familiar?"
Because of Michael Mann.
lord_sidcup # 73
The surface of the Arctic sea freezing in January is a big deal for him. Why would any self-respecting scientist or ‘science-writer’ associate themselves with the GWPF?
Because they are a libertarian ideologue first and scientist or science writer second. Obviously.
;-)
FIFY.
B of Kindergarten:
>blockquote>The fuckwit scientists take it as a personal attack and get very huffy and attack back with spurious “reasoning”
How would YOU know?
About the spurious reasoning that is.
Cue quote from Feynman. Oh, but you just have used that tactic again on another thread.
Is that the only quote of Feynman you know, and that because it appears at the top of a denier blog site, I pointed to that way up thread somewhere.
Familiar with 'Lectures on Physics' in three volumes are you? Doubt it. Perhaps you should try that collection. Real science not woo woo stuff from woo woo think tanks, like GWPF, WUWT, JoNova, Morohissyfit, Morono, ClimateFRaudit, Cardinal Puff etc. Once again I pointed to a woo woo blog that listed all these down a right hand column - see up thread again.
Seriously this latest effort from Ridley makes him a laughing stock with credibility dropping through the floor like Lindzen and Michaels, the later having gone through through about fifteen years or so ago when with the Greening Earth malarkey - now that was and Orwelian title.
Now Aunt Sallys all.
Drat these banana fingers!
How would YOU know?
About the spurious reasoning that is.
@Lionel A asks:
The fuckwit scientists take it as a personal attack and get very huffy and attack back with spurious “reasoning”
How would YOU know?
About the spurious reasoning that is.
Because of Michael Mann.
This is the Michael Mann who has been the subject of an unrelenting campaign of libel and bullying and whose "hockey stick" has since been confirmed as correct by the Koch-funded BEST study?
Turns out he's one of the excellent scientists.
Turns out all the idiots who said he was wrong were doing so in the absence of any contrary knowledge.
Liars, in other words.
Vince, you need to point out explicitly to Brad that the "hockey stick" was validated by BEST only as far as BEST went back in time. He gets awfully confused and upset otherwise.
You can try pointing out that it was validated by about a dozen earlier reconstructions much further back than BEST goes, but he gets even more confused by that concept and starts spittle-flecked ranting about sending Mann to jail or something.
I realise that, but as I have already caused Brad to forget who was trolling whom at least twice now, I was going for the trifecta.
The difference being that he has to lie to troll us here, whereas all I have to do is tell the truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tGB8Uuffi4M
So, Ridley is justfying himself with weblinks to Judith Curry's nonsense?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Curry
Geeze,
I dunno Lotharsson & Vince,
According to your own arguments re 'professional experts', we should be paying attention to Judith Curry.
According to the googleable information, one can't help noticing that she is a recognised 'expert' on matters concerning the atmosphere.
In fact one can't help noticing (again according to your own arguments re 'professional experts') that she would perhaps be better qualified to comment and to be referred to on these matters than say perhaps...ummmm... a biologist or a sociologist?
She has even co authored a text book and encyclopaedia on matters to do with climate and the atmosphere:
here :
Curry is the co-author of Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999), and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (2002),
Mind you,
That doesn't automatically mean that I am arguing that anything she says MUST be infallible just because she says it.
What I do respect about her however is that she has the ability to admit an error when she makes one and then work towards to corecting the error.
And for every Judith Curry, there's hundreds of climate scientists that disagree. What does that tell you?
...not only that, but you can check Curry's claims yourself to discover that her blog specialises in nonsense.
Nope.
You've misapplied the criterion.
She is an expert about one corner of climate science, but frequently wanders out of it and makes claims about other bits that (a) go against the people who work in those areas and (b) like Humlum, she prefers to publicise on her blog rather than publish in the peer-reviewed literature.
Why does she do (b)? Why does Humlum? Why does Lindzen do the same when talking to the public?
Inquiring minds want to know. You do not.
She doesn't use that ability very often, especially on her blog. She seems to prefer, like you, to dig in and double down.
As I told Latimer and you have probably forgotten I checked out her blog the first few weeks it was up. She made a horrible mess of something, had people patiently explaining it to her, and she was having none of it.
Bugger. Sorry for ruining the play.
Hundreds of climate scientists Stu?
What do these hundreds actually disagree with?
Is it Her ability to be a 'professional expert' in atmospheric sciences?
Have a read of the nonsense on her website and make up your own mind.
But Vince?
What about her co authoring and peer reviewed papers in respected scientific publications?
Don't they count?
And Lotharsson,
You seem to have forgotten the lecture you gave me re Tim etc at the other thread.
What are all of those people doing wandering out of their corners and commenting on their blogs INSTEAD of in peer reviewed literature?
How come no one objected to LB putting up a piece by an 'attention seeking' sociologist earlier in this thread?
Is there a special reason why they can wander out of their corners and make comments about others' work on their websites yet someone like Judith Curry can't?
She does indeed have expertise in climate science and she is indeed a recognised expert in the field of climate science.
No, I haven't. But I'm almost certain you've misinterpreted it.
Which people are you talking about? You have a bad habit of being non-specific.
And as I said on that other thread, here is the key question. Are the people you have in mind going against scientific consensus without meeting the same standards of evidence as the evidence that led to the consensus, or are they applying the consensus position which means that they are applying the same standards of evidence, indeed applying the same evidence as the consensus?
These two scenarios are markedly different in the evidence (or lack of evidence) that supports them, as anyone with "academic science credentials" can tell you.
Well you must have indeed forgotten Lotharsson because I did name some of them earlier, including the person who runs this blog.
Selective memory perhaps?
And your 'key question' is indeed purely and simply YOUR key question Lotharsson.
It wasn't even remotely similar to MY question.
If you want to answer your own questions, you go right ahead.
Your comments were insufficiently specific to know which persons you were talking about. That's what I pointed out, that's why I asked you.
If your clarification of who you were talking about is limited to Tim Lambert, then no further response is needed. That question was already answered when you asked it last time and the answer does not change because you ask the same question again. Furthermore, experience has shown that repeating the answer does not lead to any improvement in your comprehension.
But I will provide one hint, because you appear to be additionally confusing yourself in a different manner:
Of course not! Why would you think I would ask your question back to you in response to you asking it to me? That's foolish.
I ask my question because answering it - which I am confident you will absolutely refuse to do - will answer your question, either directly or by bringing back to mind my previous answer.
Nonetheless Lotharsson,
The person who runs this blog posts on subject matter that he has not published in peer reviewed journals and which also is not from his 'corner'.
Judith Curry on the other hand is in fact a 'professional expert' in climate science.
Another little saying about geese and ganders comes to mind.
Tim & JC both obviously have the right to do what they're doing BTW.
...you will ignore my initial answer and re-assert your rebutted false equivalence.
Noted.
BK
Michael Mann took action because of the libellous statements made against him. That was the personal attack and not the concerted campaign to discredit MBH98. It should be noted at others of that team have had cause to move against certain parties since e.g. Wegman & Said of GMU. Look out articles by John Mashey and deep Climate for the trail there.
Cue evasion on this score as you slalom around this inconvenient truth too. Now cue another tilt at Gore, who BTW is NOT thought of as our leader, and your repeated attempts to claim that are pathetic and tiresome, for we have many. All those scientists like Mann et. al. who have provide the hard, and hard won, evidence that tells us how and why you are so, so wrong.
This is the truth that you cannot handle as evidenced by your prolix posts proving that 'so few can write so much to so little real effect' (sorry Winston).
Bananas again!
It should be noted that others of that team have had cause to move against certain parties since e.g. Wegman & Said of GMU. Look out articles by John Mashey and Deep Climate for the trail there.
cham:
Now where are these 'arguments' to be found? Come on be specific for a change.
Is your vagueness (note one definition of that is 'lacking substance' which applies too) symptomatic of laziness to backtrack and look up the specific items you have in mind?
She's misrepresenting one of my arguments - directly to me. She either doesn't realise it, or hopes I won't notice.
It's interesting that Brad isn't calling this out, seeing he appears to insist on claiming that appeals to the evidence underlying the scientific consensus are anti-scientific or pseudo-scientific or the worst corruption of the scientific method for 250 years ... or something.
But when Chameleon wants to "pay attention to" the un-peer reviewed and unpublished speculations of Judith Curry and Humlum...Brad see no evil.
It's indeed very interesting that Chameleon is in fact the one who linked the PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION and the PEER REVIEWED PUBLISHED information of Humlum and Judith Curry.
Lotharsson et al are in fact the ones who repeatedly link to and/or refer to the UNPUBLISHED and UN-PEER REVIEWED speculation of JC and Humlum and also unpublished and un-peer reviewed web site articles ABOUT them.
So the only place to find Lotharsson et al assertions about these people are via unpublished and un peer reviewed articles on websites.
Go back and check the linked info if you wish.
What's even more peculiar still is that Lotharsson et al are making these claims from a post at a website that is yet another un-peer reviewed and unpublished speculation about yet another person.
Humlum, Tim Lambert, Judith Curry, Rabbet, Marohasy, Tamino, Jonova and numerous others do also have websites.
They are interesting and informative and all of them do refer to published , peer reviewed work as well as to the accessible data.
But the argument that Chameleon was referring to Lionel is the argument from Lotharsson et al (and I believe that does include you) that 'we should only listen to the professional experts' and 'we should only pay attention to peer reviewed and published work by real scientists' or variations of same.
So according to that argument Judith Curry and her PUBLISHED and PEER REVIEWED work should be considered.
Judith Curry is most definitely a 'professional expert' in the field of climate science.
But, like Tim Lambert (who isn't a climate scientists BTW) and others, she also has a website where she comments on issues that are outside of 'her corner' (to borrow Lotharsson's terminology).
Cammy, putting this in the most direct and to the point form possible, you're both boring and stupid beyond excuse.
Any further expoosition is unnecessary as you own words speak for themselves. Which may come as a shock to you, as you imagine you're being clever.
But you aren't.
Just boring and stupid.
Type, type, type.
Fuck.
"Expoooooosition" = exposition.
For Cammy'n'Brad's benefit.
The 'poo' seems, somehow, apt...
Sheesh. Not content with lying about what Richard Simons said and what Delingpole said, now you're lying about what I and others "repeatedly link to"! Why do your "arguments" rely so much on lies? Have you forgotten that you introduced Humlum's unreviewed work here at Deltoid?
You seem to be under the illusion that those who insist on minimum scientific standards such as peer-reviewed claims, cannot legitimately point out that something violates those standards without having the "pointing out" of the violation be peer-reviewed.
Do you have any idea how ludicrous that is?! (My guess is "no".)
It would be, if Chameleon was in fact (a) arguing claims from that peer-reviewed published work - more particularly the parts of it that have survived scrutiny post-publication, and (b) ONLY arguing from that peer-reviewed published work that survived scrutiny.
But she's not. (And she's not fooling anyone - except maybe yourself and Brad.)
You are transparently engaged in an attempt to elevate the scientific status of un-peer reviewed claims to something approaching the same stature as peer-reviewed claims that have survived scrutiny in the literature, by appealing to the authority of those making them based on their publication record.
This is like saying that we should all take seriously a successful racing car driver when he says that attaching a device containing crystals and magnets to your car engine will make it perform better, without having any objective evidence for the claim.
Sure, he's got a great racing record! And that means he knows a lot about making cars go fast! But that doesn't mean every claim he makes about racing performance should be uncritically accepted - or even seriously considered, if it goes against the great bulk of existing scientific knowledge - especially if he can't show that his claims have cleared the lowest bar for such claims.
The first time you mentioned Humlum's claims, it was his website and his website "reports" which are not published in the peer-reviewed literature and have thus not cleared the lowest bar for such claims. When this inconvenient fact was pointed out, you tried to elevate his claims via appeal to authority by pointing out his peer-reviewed publications. The fallacy in that appeal is obvious to nearly everyone - but not to you. And if I'm not mistaken, you or someone else tried the same fallacy on with respect to Curry and her website.
You have been repeatedly pointed to the difference between arguing from the evidence, which does not require another round of peer-review for those arguments because it is already rooted in the evidence, and arguing against what we know from evidence which most certainly does require peer-review and post-publication scrutiny.
No, you've simplified it thereby changing it.
Yes, we should generally avoid those who aren't professional experts because they generally get it wrong a lot more often than the experts. But no, we should not listen to anything the experts say just because they're an expert. If they are making claims that aren't already supported by the peer-reviewed literature, and they can't get their claims into a peer-reviewed publication, the claims most likely aren't valid.
You clearly wish to avoid answering the key question: why would professional scientists whose reputations live and die by the strength of their research records AVOID publishing new insights in the peer-reviewed literature?
(Never mind the corollary - why are YOUR arguments so frequently unable to show that they are supported by the peer-reviewed literature? And does that explain why you try over and over again to elevate non-reviewed claims to the same status as the literature?)
Hy Dltds!
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Y knw wht mn, Dltds?
mike, do you imagine anyone bothers to trawl through your dense - in every sense of the word - contentless, spittle-flecked Tea-Partyite rants? It's hard to imagine an opinion more inconsequential than your own.
Hi there Deltoids!
Who won the sweepstake?
Looks like all the King's Horses and All the King's Men couldn't persuade Mr. Lambert to ban me........
Thought you'd love this quote from Byrne et al (2010) inadvertently brought to my attention by an alarmist:
'Recent changes in seawater pH induced by ocean–atmosphere gas exchange are thought to be substantial, with far-reaching chemical and ecological effects yet direct observations are sparse'
Note the words '...are thought to be...' and 'direct observations are sparse'
My point exactly. Nice to see the literature and I are in complete agreement.
ftp://soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/Acidification%20Pacif…
I am going to demand that the asylum Mike is in removes computer access for all of its patients...
Chameleon has a wonderful interpretation of how science should function.
That is: give equal weight to a small coterie of climate change deniers or down-players and a dozen or less peer-reviewed papers as to many hundreds of equally or more qualified climate scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed papers.
This is the standard mind-set of a contrarian. Note that Curry has frequently strayed well outside of her field in discussing her views on climate change effects on the environment. I have read some of those comments and they are mind-numbing over simplifications.
The problem with Chammy and those who think like her is that they don't read the primary literature. They don't pour through the pages of peer-reviewed scientific journals, or even try and access them. Its so much easier to scan the blogs. And of course, the deniers have cornered that market for the most part because their piffle is not published in scientific journals. As I said before, they are like creationists, who do little of their own research but spend most of their time trying to poke holes in evolutionary theory. They think that enough holes will bring down the theory as a hole.
Look, chubby, if you're unhappy with accepting claims from the peer reviewed literature your ONLY course of action is to stop posting here and go and read ALL of the stuff on climate research in the journals and check their workings.
Verify EVERY LAST ONE of them.
THEN you can come back here and explain what you got.
a) what does that have to do with your insane witterings being right?
b) it's not a validation of you, it's a black mark for Tim
Jeff, chubby gives NO weight to the accepted science and therefore only weight to the crank science.
Because the accepted science tells her she's wrong. And she don't like that.
@wow
I'm sure that Mr Lambert will give your award of a black mark to him the due consideration it deserves.
He will also note, no doubt, that the peer-reviewed literature (on which you place so much store in your comments immediately above) completely vindicates the position you spent so much time,bile and vituperation arguing against.
And having given due weight and consideration to both those points, I wonder what his conclusion will be? Will he think that discussing science really what you are interested in..or is it just a poorly disguised excuse to repetitively vent your huge capacity for misanthropy?
''ftp://soest.hawaii.edu/coastal/Climate%20Articles/Acidification%20Pacif…
Science discourse Imelda Harvey style:
1. Claim that your opponent denies the CO2-hypothesis (or anything else along those lines) even if he doesn't.
2. Call him names.
3. Invent that he is a right wing nut hating science (and a part of a fossil fuel illuminati obstructing climate science)
4. Be adamant about that a CV in bug-collecting is cruical to waive in front of you in almost every sentence. Otherwise you are not making sense.
5. When asked to comment on a scientific claim seek strength in 1, 2, 3, and 4. And of course talk about something else.
Almost predictably, you have misidentified what happened.
Turns out you were arguing against the idea that it was "a 100% certainty", but it only seemed to be you that knew that because you were too busy ducking and weaving to clarify yourself.
That means Wow and others weren't arguing against what you now claim was your position. (And what Wow and others were arguing against is in line with the peer-reviewed literature - a point that you conveniently elided.)
Furthermore, Wow and others were ALSO arguing against your refusal to draw your best inference from what we know about chemistry. That argument is also inline with the literature.
@lotharsson
Please check back to post #486 where I stated my position. Then compare it with Byrne et al (referenced above).
What position was I advocating? How does it compare with the remarks of Byrne et al? Or did you really completely misunderstand a chain of 600 posts on the subject?
For reference, here is the substance of post #486. My position did not change during the subsequent discussions, nor has it since.
'@guthire
Sorry – missed your post above in all the other crap.
‘ No, it’s a scientific certainty that it is a consequence of increased CO2. No if’s but’s or maybe’s, it’s been scientifically proven that the acidification, that is, becoming more acid, of the ocean, is due to CO2.’
Please show the observational data that proves that this theoretical effect is actually occurring. in practice in the oceans.
No argument that if you increase the partial pressure of CO2 over a jar of pure water, you will end up with a solution of carbonic acid that will be slightly acidic. Basic physical chemistry.
But pure water is not at all the same thing as seawater – a not very well mixed solution of all sorts of inorganic ions surrounded by huge quantities of rocks of CaCO3 and others. It is not at all obvious that the weak carbonic acid like carbonic will overwhelm the buffering effect of the solution and surrounding rocks
For such a complex and varied system. the only way to show that the pH is actually decreasing is to go out and make the measurements over a long period of time.
By analogy, to show that the GAT was actually increasing took the analysis of somewhere between 10 and 100 million temperature records taken from thermometers all over the world (and later by satellite ) over a period of several decades..
Can you show me a similar set of observations of ocean pH that will hep to turn a lab based theory into the same ‘scientific proof’ that you claim?'
Latimer, you have reliably missed my point.
Your request to "show the observational data that proves that this theoretical effect is actually occurring. in practice in the oceans" is NOT obviously a request to "prove to me with 100% certainty that it's happening ocean wide", because as I have already pointed out "scientific certainty" when used by guthrie refers to the cause of observed acidification, not to the fact of ocean-wide acidification.
You may have thought you were asking "prove to me with 100% certainty that it's happening ocean wide". You may have continued to think so as people asked you over and over and over again to clarify your position in any number of different ways with you refusing pretty much all of them.
But it wasn't taken that way by other people so people weren't arguing against what you claim you meant. Your allegation is clearly false.
This is simple English comprehension.
I see Olaus is trying to contaminate other threads with his usual ignorant discourse. I hope Tim takes appropriate actions.
The simple facts are these:
1. His hero, Jonas N, makes some pretty outrageous assertions with respect to the relationship between atmospheric C02 and climate warming. His views are at odds with the IPCC and the vast majority of climate scientists. Because of his nauseating attacks on just about everybody who disagrees with him, he is banished to his own corner.
2. In attacking his opponents, he repeatedly claims to be smarter than his opponents, whilst impugning the credentials of scientists he doesn't like or tend to agree with. When asked repeatedly what qualifications he possesses, eh gets all uppity and lashes out even more. He steadfastly refuses to say what those qualifications are, whilst sticking with the "I am smarter than all of you" riposte. His aversion of the question indicates quite clearly that he has no formal scientific education; if he did, all of those on Deltoid; heck everyone on the blogosphere for that matter, would know about it.
3. He is supported by a small band of right wing bozos who also have no formal scientific qualifications. One of them (Pentaxz) is a conspiracy nut; another (Olaus Petri) veils his lack of scientific knowledge with non-sequiters and witless remarks (much like another infamous Deltoid troll, TimC, used to do). Neither of his 2 Swedish supporters offered anything remotely scientific in defense of their hero; instead, they simply parroted whatever he said.
4. I have repeatedly said that I have no formal training in climate science and thus leave that field to people trained in that endeavor. My views on AGW are based on the prevailing wisdom in the field; that provides compelling evidence that humans are the main forcing agent. I also strongly believe that people who lack the specialist training in climate science and whose admit they are deniers or contrarians are doing so on the basis of inherent ideological and/or political bias and not on science, since they have not been trained in the field.
5. The reason I have presented my scientific qualifications - which lie outside of climate science but in another discipline, is to reveal that someone with a PhD and a lengthy list of publications and citations is also honest enough to know that he is walking on thin ice when he or she ventures into another field in which they have not been trained. I do not know much about the complex ways in which human activities alter climate patterns, but I do know that the vast majority of experts agree that humans are the main culprit.
6. Bearing that in mind, I can say with confidence that I know a lot about the ecological and biological effects of climate change which are already well documented. Part of my research involves intra-continental range-expanding plants, and its clear that some of these recent range-expansions are the result of warming. We are also seeing that communities are changing in response to warming. When it comes to population and evolutionary ecology, I am qualified, and can say that the bozos constantly attacking me do possess about 0.0000000000001 % of my qualifications. That is clear when they ill-advisedly stray into this field with discussions about ecological threats caused by a rapidly warming climate.
Essentially, people like Olaus are pig-ignorant of any field of science. On the other hand, we have self-trained people like Jonas who think they know a lot more than they do about complex fields.
Latimer tries the argument from ignorance angle:
"Can you show me a similar set of observations of ocean pH that will hep to turn a lab based theory into the same ‘scientific proof’ that you claim?’"
Why would anybody want to show you that?
Who imagines such a thing is necessary?
The experts on ocean chemistry do not agree with you.
If you tink all the relevant experts are wrong, and you are correct, then it is up to you to show us the theoretical and practical base for your beliefs.
As you have failed to explain any mechanism or observation that casts the slightest doubt on the well-known and observed ocean acidification, we can only conclude you are wasting everybody's time with your ignorance.
Latte could try showing that pH doesn't change in ocean water.
It's not difficult to try.
remember the argument from ignorance is also probably better understood as the lazy fuckers' argument.
YOU have to do all the work, THEY don't have to do squat.
I wonder what the hell frothing boy here is getting out of this?
@jeff
Thanks for the opportunity to reply to your points jeff, perhaps we can sort this out once and for all. Your points,
1. Jonas has repeatedly asked to see the science in the support of the AR4 IPCC attribution claim. You and others tried hand-waiving about 1,000's of papers without being able to produce a single one that was in any way relevant. 1-0 Jonas.
You deltoids then proceeded to try and prove how "sciency" you all were by challenging Jonas to a physics "pissing-contest". Your game, your rules, Jonas executed flawlessly, you lot had a "Roy Scheider on the beach jaws moment" when you realised that collectively you didn't have a metaphorical dick between you- (don't push for a "pissing competition" if you haven't got one)
2-0 to Jonas.
2. Jonas' claim to be better educated and smarter than you lot was amply demonstrated in 1. Just how dumb do you have to be to a) not understand the physics taught to 12yr olds and then b) based on that, think you would win a "pissing competition" on it. Divine intervention perhaps, Hansen would descend from the heavens to part the waves?
3. Well this is what you do jeff, again and again and again. You know nothing about the credentials of those you are talking too, you just "assert" these things. no evidence or corroboration required- very much "your way", you just stop listening and go off into your own little world thinking happy thoughts. ;)
4. It's fairly obvious to all Jeff that you have no formal education in Climate Science. You use that as your excuse for not knowing, or even having the education to read, or comment on anything relevant.
5. The reason you present your scientific credentials is you have nothing worthwhile to say, yet wish to participate anyway. As for your education, I don't know who paid for it, but there is certainly a case to be made for some sort of refund. You're an embarrassment to all.
6. Yeah, Yeah, we've done that, camp fires. kumbaya and prizes for the best "imploding foodweb" story, very impressive Comrade Zooligist.
For someone who keeps harping on about education, you're overly keen to demonstrate the obvious deficiencies in yours at every opportunity.
I make that Jonas 7, Jeff 0.
;)
Yep. It's a favoured tactic. They don't do any homework, just allege that you need to do it before they will reconsider their "skepticism". If you actually do it, as has been demonstrated here time and time again, they shift the goalposts and demand that you jump through more hoops, or they Gish Gallop to the next talking point.
1. We SHOWED Joan 1000 papers and they were all relevant since they came from the section that gave the attribution quote. However YOU handwave it away as "not one relevant paper".
The rest of the bollocks you posted makes me wonder how you manage to pass each day without being put in an asylum.
#2 is handwaving. since it wasn't demonstrated by his antics it wasn't proven by them.
#3 is entirely reasonable for actual human beings. Joan has already admitted that he has no education whatsoever. That you think he has shows that there's something wrong upstairs with you.
#4 is bullshit.
#5 too
#6 is rubbish
your counting is as underwhelming as your rhetoric.
Or, as Joans live-in-lover here does, completely ignore it and pretend it's never been done.
Hey, slug, why don't you try some science.
Prove your statement: "You’re an embarrassment to all."?
Slug-Boy: "Just how dumb do you have to be to a) not understand the physics taught to 12yr olds and then b) based on that, think you would win a “pissing competition” on it."
I don't know, how dumb are you?
Hey, slugs, AGW is real. You were wrong.
Get over it.
Latimer, instead of your "p=0" strawman, let's discuss a more real-world scientific p value via a hypothetical.
Specifically, let's hypothesise for the moment that there exists a global scale mechanism that will have prevented CO2 in the kinds of atmospheric concentrations we've had over the last few decades from causing significant global average ocean acidification over the last few decades.
Let's further hypothesise that this mechanism is not uniform in strength over the entire globe. As a starting point for discussion, and noting for future reference that it's an oversimplification even as a hypothetical, let us imagine that (say) a 2-decade time series sample at a random location has a 50% chance of showing significant acidification despite the global anti-acidification mechanism due to the effect being locally unusually weak or non-existent. (These seem like generous odds for the anti-acidification hypothesis - it is plausible to expect that in most cases where a global scale effect is in force that it is detectable over well over 50% of the globe. And of course it's an over-simplification since any particular location may show results somewhere in between "no acidification" and "significant acidification", and effects that are very strongly geographically skewed may be evident over less than half of the globe, but let's stick with the oversimplification to start with.)
Suppose further that you monitored a set of randomly sampled locations over the last couple of decades. If all of them showed distinct acidification over that timeframe, how many such locations would you need to have monitored before you reject the "anti-acidification hypothesis" at p=0.05 purely on that evidence? (Yes, yes, we know - it's a hypothetical that diverges from the real world in several important ways. But it gives us an initial way to get a rough sense for the statistical dynamics of the problem.)
If you don't like that formulation feel free to turn it around and formulate an equivalent simplified hypothetical using a null hypothesis that "recent" CO2 levels will have caused "recent" ocean acidification and do some quick stats to see how many locations with evidence of no acidification are required to reject that.
Right on the money GSW. :-) 7-0 in Jonas favor is a bit on the lower side, but it speaks volume abut the scientific emptiness in the Jeffie-barrel. The only substances in it are self idolatry, intorance, hate and methane.
And poor Wow tries to protect his loving master with some high pitched barking.
Ergo nothing new at Deltoid. ;-)
@Olaus
;)
methane?
By the smell of it GSW, I reckon it stems from Jeffie´s favorite orifice, you know the one he unplugs when he's cornered and wants to eloborate on climate scareology. It situated right in the middle of his impressive hemispheres, the lowere ones that is.
I'm sure you are familiar with the scent. ;-)
@Olaus
Ok, got it. The orifice he talks out of.
;)
1. Jonas has repeatedly asked to see the science in the support of the AR4 IPCC attribution claim. Bernard, me, Lionel and I have provided several hundred papers which constitute part of that chapter. We asked him to go through those papers, or at least a few of them, point by point, showing where the science is incorrect. Given the fact that every major scientific body on Earth is in consensus over the issue, its up to Jonas to point out where they are wrong.
1-0 for IPCC and for climate science.
2. Jonas repeatedly claims to have a better education than his critics. He bases this on his rank dismissal of the aforementioned papers without going through a single one. When asked what his bonafides are, he repeatedly responds by attacking others, accusing us of hand-waving, scoring own goals, various other insults and dismissive comments. Its Jonas who is opposing the majority of scientific opinion and not the other way around. Its up to him to prove they are wrong. 2-0 for IPCC and for climate science.
3. Jonas has clearly no formal education in science, as point 2 above proves. Yet he routinely attacks the likes of scientists with many years of experience in the field. But he refuses to take this wisdom the big, bad world. Instead, when asked over and over again why he doesn't, he says ' because its obvious that I am correct'. The real reason is because he's a big fish in a small pond on a blog, and is well aware that if he went out there with his crazy ideas and his lack of any formal training he'd be either ignored, laughed at, or both.
3-0 IPCC and climate science.
4. I have repeatedly admitted that I don't know much about anything to do with climate. The reason, GSW and Olaus, is because, unlike you pair of bozos, I am professionally trained in another field of science and that area keeps me very busy. I am supervising 3 PhD students, writing grants., publishing lots of papers (15 last year, 128 since 1993), lecturing at conferences and universities, and reviewing grant proposals and other publications. In my field I am happy to say I am a leading authority. In climate science I am most certainly not. Sure, you and Jonas probably know a little bit more about atmospheric science than me. Before you start doing high fives, let me put that into context. It means that I know very little about the field because I do not study it, never have and don't have the time to now. But it doesn't instantly elevate you or Jonas to authorities. I simply do not trust a guy who seems to intimate that he dropped out of education at an early stage or else never formally studied a field but who also tries to convince everyone that he is a major league authority on the issue. As I have said before, the reason people study for degrees, go on to do postdoctoral research then enter the tenure-track system is that this is the way to become recognized in specific fields and to gain the necessary acumen to be called a knowledgable expert. Commenting on a blog with a large number of other non-climate scientists, then claiming the intellectual high ground, does not make the grade. If Jonas is the brilliant scholar he always claims to be, then he would take on the real experts in the field of climate science face-to-face or in the empirical literature. As I have said time and again, he won't do that because he knows his allegedly brilliant ideas would be cut down to size. So he sticks with blogs, where he is anonymous and safe, and can also count on the unbridled support of like-minded simpletons like you and Olaus who support him not because of his scientific brilliance (how can you? You have no formal training in the field either) but eb cause you both share his view that AGW sis not a serious problem. You do so not because of any scientific reasoning, but because when that thin veneer is stripped away it fits in with your political or ideological views.
4- IPCC and climate science.
Re: my education, I could blow all of you out of the water in environmental science, population and evolutionary ecology. Being insulted by a gang of science wannabes is not insult to me. My career has been approved by my peers in many different ways - through my degrees, research positions, publications, collaborations and other relevant criteria. If you and the other few nitwits who write in here had any real scientific standing, I'd be tempted to hear you out. But you don't. None of you.
5-0 IPCC and climate science
The rest of your post has no substance at all. Just the usual vacuous bullshit. I am used to it by now.
Given the complete lack of substance in any of Olaus or GSWs posts, think its fair to say that both of you couldn't debate your way out of a sodden paper bag.
And Olaus accuses me of 'self-idolatry'. Ha, ha, the irony. Just read about 20 of Jonas's "I am smarter and better educated than any of you" posts and one gets the picture.
Seems like the Swedish meathead can say it a billion times (whilst providing no evidence at all) and it isn't 'self-idolatry'. Speaking of orifices, it just shows you how far up Jonas' butt Olaus has stuck his head.
@jeff
More methane jeff?
It's the sheer volume of bollocks you post that marks you out.
All you've done is confirm every criticism made of you in the earlier post. You're a jumped up, know nothing, can't contribute, activist/parasite and to top it all, you actually think all that is something to be proud of!
Well Comrade Zoologist, nobody listens to your pathetic pleadings of impending "Doom" and "feelings" about the "transnational elites" elites you harp on about. It's all just eco-balls.
;)
From what I've seen Jonas is just doing the rap artist thing of endlessly proclaiming how superior they are to everyone else - all bling and attitude, zero substance. He seems entirely mystified as how to handle people who don't believe him on his own recognisance.
GSW (or Mr. Hypocrite),
First of all, your vapid insults mean nix. Just because you are brain-dead ignorant about the way the world works is nothing to be proud about. Take your kindergarten-level crap back to Bishop's Hill, where you belong. To be honest, when I get under the skin of people like you and your like-minded cement heads here, it proves that I am getting somewhere. This is an excellent blog, were it not for a few stains like you and the Swedish meatballs. On several occasions you had the stupidity to try and downplay various ecological threats - and I demolished them every time. No wonder you came back here irate after licking your wounds. You can and never will have any knowledge in that field.
Furthermore, its up to you and the other clowns to show us where the IPCC is wrong and NOT the other way around. Jonas and you seem to think you hold the intellectual and scientific high ground. Well, I've got news for you: you don't. Your opinions are not shared by the vast majority of climate scientists who know thousands of times more than you and your self-righteous hero. So bugger off with your garbage. It is noted that the only time you appear back here is when your hero is in serious trouble - as when cornered over his ' esteemed' education and qualifications. He doesn't have any.
An insightful comment from our resident Swedish genius - (hats off to Chek and Stu for this little gem):
"I have proved it it superior to everyone who even thought of challenigning me ... You’ve already have provend that!"
I rest my case. No more left to say in response to this.
@jeff
Jeff, again your post is all about your "imaginings"; arguments you have "demolished", "licking wounds", what a guy- all that is just wishful thinking!
As has been remarked on before, you seem to be grossly ignorant on even your own area of so-called "expertise", the papers you reference are often out of date and "debunked" by later publications. You just trawl what's there for things that sound bad. There's no intellectual rigour applied to any of it.
The more you're pushed, the more you retreat to your happy place, where the demolishings happen in private and everyone agrees what a complete star you are, then jeff feels good about himself.
As for climate scientists, it's a very weak field, there's not much evidence of great intellects lurking there either. So much for Climate Alarmism.
;)
GSW, I have to admit that Jeffie is beyond anything I have encountered during my years in Academia. He's something extra. Can you believe it, he even felt it necessary to brag about his bug collecting merits and his students – again – instead of arguing his case (in a civil manner).
Even though sphincter control isn't his thing, the frequency and speed his CV come out of his ass is uncanny.
– "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the grandest conspiracy theorists and most intolerant human being in the ant and bug collecting kingdom?"
– "You my Jeff is the grandest conspiracy theorists and most intolerant human being in the ant and bug collecting kingdom!".
@Olaus
"Jeffie is beyond anything I have encountered during my years in Academia"
Agreed. Usually the dumb ones learn to keep quiet pretty quickly, it's the lack of self awareness of his "category" that's more of surprise than anything. Still it wouldn't be much fun if he didn't surface every now and then to give us an update of the "transnational elites" situation.
;)
"As has been remarked on before, you seem to be grossly ignorant on even your own area of so-called “expertise”, the papers you reference are often out of date and “debunked” by later publications"
[Citations needed] Essentially, GSW made this up on the spot. As usual. Just say something without proof and expect it to be taken as gospel. Of course this is nonsense.
Olaus: if you have some academic or intellectual argument to make, then make it. Of all the bozos in Jonas fan club, you are the one who has never, ever ventured into science, except to link that odd WUWT posting. If anyone is challenged here, its your Swedish hero. Look at my last post which was cut and pasted from one of his own comments where he was trying to say in his wonderful English how smart he is. The comment, by contrast, looks like it comes from an imbecile.
If all you have left is to belittle my research, line, then you have lost the argument well and truly. I note how you and GSW have followed Tim Curtin down that path. Its a real sign of desperation when you have to stoop to this level. Its proof positive that you have no arguments left (or ever did). So the last resort is to try and belittle me and my research. In a public forum, you'd be thrown out of the room.
On that note I'd like to ask Tim Lambert to banish GSW and Olaus into the Jonas thread. Olaus was once banned anyway for being such an ignoramus, but the jerk seems to pop up where he does not belong. If the best these clowns can come up with is what they've put up in their last few posts, then woe betide the status of contrarian science.
@jeff
"GSW made this up on the spot"
No I didn't jeff, you can start with your "Golden Frog" man, the one that claimed they all died because of climate change. Your were quite pleased with that if memory serves. Only when other researchers actually looked at the data, there hadn't been any climate change! Just exposure to a rather deadly pathogen.
Have you forgotten about that particular episode Jeff? didn't happen in your happy place perhaps? You are an ignorant piece of work jeff.
;)
And now little Napoleon Harvey calls out for Tim to help him patch up his fragile ego, ergo make the infidels dissapear.
:-)
I thought Olaus was already banished to the Jonas thread. Play by the rules or don't play at all.
Latimer cited:
Quick on the uptake are you not for I pointed to this back here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2013/01/14/matt-ridley-responds-with-a-…
But then with all that prolixity from BK I guess you missed it through lazily not going back to your last post and noting responses after. That is remiss of you. I suggest that you go back there and catch up before playing more sophist's retreats.
Whatever, how does that support your alleged 'lack of data' argument? Consider also the broader definition of data.
Please catch up with the new post numbering and referral system now available.
GSW.
You are a profligate liar. I never, ever said that global amphibian declines were exclusively due to climate change. I said that it was one important factor, amongst others, and that it likely exacerbates other stressors such as susceptibility to pathogens.
The way guys like you and Jonas make things up is legion. As for Olaus, I got news for you: if you think a brainless twerp like you can dent my confidence, think again. Twit. You and GSW belong Jonas' asylum. You in particular: you've never made a single reference to a point of science since you arrived. Let's see you go through a published scientific article and provide your 'expert' opinion as to its strengths and weaknesses.
No, of course you won't do that. You don't know how.
You really are an ignorant fool who'd rather take some wingnut assertions at face value rather than find out for yourself from those who make it their business to know, eh Olap?
After 1980 ice loss and glacier
retreat was dominant again. In Bhutan, Eastern
Himalaya, an eight per cent glacier area loss
was observed between 1963 and 1993 (Karma et
al. 2003). Berthier et al. (2007) used remote sensing
data to investigate glacier thickness changes
in the Himachal Pradesh, Western Himalaya. They
found an annual ice thickness loss of about 0.8
m w.e. per year between 1999 and 2004 – about
twice the long-term rate of the period 1977–1999.
In China, the overall glacier area loss is estimated
at about 20 per cent since the maximum extent in
the 17th century (Su and Shi 2002). The area loss
since the 1960s is estimated to about 6 per cent,
and is more pronounced in the Chinese Himalaya,
Qilian Mountains and Tien Shan, but with rather
small recessions in the hinterland of the Tibetan
plateau (Li et al. in press). Over the 20th century,
glacier area is estimated to have decreased by
25–35 per cent in the Tien Shan (Podrezov et al.
2002, Kutuzov 2005, Narama et al. 2006, Bolch
2007), by 30–35 per cent in the Pamirs (Yablokov
2006), and by more than 50 per cent in northern
Afghanistan (Yablokov 2006).
Olaus,
Get back to me when you've read a single published scientific paper and can discuss its results. Just one will do.
Can't you guys leave the discussion of Jonas in the Jonas thread?
Can’t you guys leave the discussion of Jonas in the Jonas thread?
It seems team thread pollution is the new denier strategy in place of having no relevant knowledge or arguments, Marco.
I’m still waiting
And it'll be a long wait because you will never allow your brain to develop enough to understand.
You may recall I posted the high and low season flow rates of the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta on the 'other' thread. Reduced ice and snow pack and subsequent seasonal melt equals reducing outflow. Apart from yet more global ice loss, nothing has changed since then.
I tell a lie. You've become even more ignorant and Jonarse approval dependent, Olap.
Back in your box, Jonas.
[I originally posted this yesterday but it didn't seem to stick. Repeated and updated.]
GSW said at #29:
and ignores the fact that Jonas' refusal to engage with the references and/or with the cited researchers effectively means that he can pretend that the work is not there. Effectively Jonas is relying on a permutation of the logical fallacy of circular reasoning in order to ignore the truth.
To this end I sought to break the dead-lock that Jonas devised, by putting to him this challenge:
I realised afterward that because I don't visit the Jonas thread I might not be aware if he's taken up the challenge, but in the past he's shown no respect for the boundaries to which he expected to contain himself (proven now at #61 above...), and anyway I know that others here would quickly tell me if Jonas has responded.
I suspect that he has not, and it's fascinating that he hasn't. This challenge requires no reliance on his part for anyone else to prove that which Jonas denies, and it does enable Jonas to demonstrate exactly what his claim is, based on what he's determined for himself.
And if Jonas can't address the components of this challenge, he exposes the whole of his exercise in earwaxing for the squirrel-spotting tactic that it is.
"I’m still waiting"
Absolutely fine.
You go wait over there.
Oh dear.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evide…
Oh dear indeed.
Still banging on about the imaginary solar activity for which there is no evidence whatsoever regarding the current warming. In fact oh dear, it's so bad williwatts daren't even put his name to it and has one of his stooges byline it instead. Oh dear, oh dear.
Still accusing *others* of fraud, too.
Anthony Watts needs to see a doctor.
@lotharsson
'But it wasn’t taken that way by other people so people weren’t arguing against what you claim you meant.'
If that is the case then it seems to me that a lot of people on his blog need to take some lessons in basic comprehension and reading.
My position was absolutely clear and unchanging. And remains so to this day.
That many chose to indulge in a bit of irrelevant 'denier-bashing' rather than bother to read what I actually wrote is merely a reflection of the poor quality of discussion on this blog.
For those of you who do have a brain...get out more.
@lionel a
How does Byrne et al support my position?
Well this sentence from the introduction seems to nail it pretty much
''Recent changes in seawater pH induced by ocean–atmosphere gas exchange are thought to be substantial, with far-reaching chemical and ecological effects [Doney et al.,2009], yet direct observations are sparse'
To translate:
'We all think that ocean acidification is occurring, but we haven't got much data to show that it is'
Which is exactly my point.
Please reread #486 if you failed to grasp this
@lotharsson
Fine.I am glad to see that you are agreeing with me.
Set up those monitoring stations, collect the data over a good few years and then do the stats to see if the effect is real. That is the way global warming was detected and I have consistently commended it to you all as an example of how ocean pH change needs to be investigated.
But - and I don't know how many times I have to say this - until you have got the data to work with, you are just dealing with an unconfirmed hypothesis. Those who claim it is more certain than that are being disingenuous.
Observations and experiments rule OK!
Yes, Lionel, Latimer just ignored your links, AGAIN, so he could pretend the relevant experts do not have the data to support their opinion.
Opinion which is completely divergent from Latimer's ignorance-based bollocks, of course.
Here is what the USGS have to say
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/ocean-acidification/
So, Latimer can explain to us what his expertise is that would indicate to us that his opinion on this issue.
Oh....he's had ample opportunity to do that, all he does is repeat his denialist bullshit ad nauseam.
Any facts to bring to the party, Latimer?
Or is it nothing but Denial?
FIFY.
You were relying on a very unusual definition of a particular English term. You then blame other people for using a more common interpretation of the term. Furthermore you spent a whole week absolutely refusing to clarify your position despite numerous requests when a couple of sentences would have made it clear where you were coming from. Hence:
Nope! You need to take some lessons in writing clear English. Speaking of which:
About what? Are you like GSW trying to put words in my mouth or do I agree that we agree? There is no way to tell from what you wrote. Perhaps your writing lessons could include the concept of at least a passing reference to the context or concept you had in mind so that readers have maybe a 50/50 chance of guessing what you are referring to?
More importantly I note that you haven't touched my hypothetical. I bet you won't dare to. It shows why claims like this:
...embody the fallacy of the excluded middle, or "black and white thinking" - which is not very scientific, just like your "100% certain" definition is not scientifically useful. It appears to be the same reason that you won't give us your best inference of what is happening in the oceans with regard to acidification from the theory and evidence we already have (quite apart from the fact that you are determined to remain ignorant of some of the evidence).
No, that isn't it.
They were deliberately doing this. That's why they never clarified. Just bad English comprehension on their part would have given a statement on what was meant. Whereas since this was merely to pretend it was all everyone else's fault, this was not forthcoming.
Of course the abuse of English may still have been accidental because, lets face it, this IS a moron we're talking about here, but the continuation of its use would have been abuse of serendipity. And still not fixed by an adult education course so sorely needed.
No, Wow, he's not a moron, he's a genius - despite a failed career as a chemist and having to fallback on some sort of job fixing people's computers, he knows better than all the world's successful chemists.
Yeah, like I said, a moron.
The extremely dumb ones always think they're smarter.
Probably confusion: "Nobody understands what I say, must mean I'm too smart for them!"
What a load of uninformed BS, Bernard J
It seems that you still, 1½ years later aren't even aware of what that AR4 claim actually claimed. (Pssst: It's not the existence of 'attribution studies')
And it seems my suscpicion of where 'Wyvern' came from where correct. He certainly sounded like someone who had ben 'prepped' by one of the ignorant shouters here. And he and his 'arguments' deteriorated quite quickly once I pointed out how inconsistent his comments were.
Well no surprise there. And BTW he never claimed to have read the papers he forwarded either. As is the case with most of you trying to drown out your nagging fear that I might have been correct the entire time.
I certainly have been correct in pointing out to all of you that none of you has ever seen any real science establishing that AR4 claim. (But admittedly, most of you are unable to read and understand such science and what it would take. Hence, all the noise and no substance)
I also like to point out that (unscientific) Bernard J, believs that the arctic ice is "the most obvious near-term indication of rapid (human-caused) global warming"
This guy really doesn't even know what attribution is. And still he talks (ignorantly) about it, dropping some names ... hoping that this impresses som of the other Deltoids.
Help! The patient has escaped! He's on the loose! Send out an APB!
"...hoping that this impresses som [sic] of the other Deltoids"
Well, certainly more than any of the crap you've ever written....
Seriously.
THIS is why this retard needs banning.
Not given enough love on his own thread, he demands whatever wherever he wants is what happens.
Look Jonas, tight now I have bigger fish to fry... in other words my own research. Two chartered members of your fan club couldn't quite fathom yesterday why I don't spend weeks on end reading climate science papers and learn more about the field. I might as well say the same thing to others who don't work in population ecology. I see Madame Professor Curry doesn't hesitate to venture outside of her field into ecology, with quite often disastrous results. She ought to think before she opens her mouth in venturing into uncharted territory.
If you want to think that the AR4 summary has little or nothing in the way of science in drawing the 90% attribution claim, then go with it. But the problem is that hardly anybody will hear you. I like Deltoid a lot, simply because Tim L aims to show the climate change deniers what utter hypocrites and cherry pickers they often are. But in the end, I have hardly ever met a scientist who has ever heard of most (if not all) of the climate change discussion blogs. Most are too busy doing their own thing to concern themselves with the views of every untrained Tom, Dick or Harry who ventures online.
The only reason I do is to show that their are a huge number of biotic indicators which show that it is warming rapidly in many parts of the temperate world, that these responses did not end in 1998 or 2001 or whenever, and that the consequences for ecological communities and systems may be severe down the road.
As for the causes for the warming, as I have said a million times, I defer to the climate science community by-and-large who have the necessary skills and experience to understand areas that I have never studied. I am sorry to disappoint you and your cheerleaders, but non-peer reviewed opinions on blogs may influence public opinion but in the halls of universities and research labs they mean diddly squat.
PS If you or Olaus wants to describe my last post as 'self-idolatry 'then that's your prerogative. I don't think that at all, as I have said so many times that I am not a climate scientist and thus prefer to stick with biotic aspects. I certainly have a lot of knowledge and confidence in my own professional field, but not in physics or atmospheric chemistry. I wish some of the climate change deniers in blogs would be a little more honest and admit that they are untrained in these fields too, rather than trying to give the impression of having all of the same skills and training as professionals in the field.
Fat chance, that. I get attacked from all sides by AGW deniers for being honest. What's their excuse?
Say what you will about Jonas, but he's a world-class troll. And I think he's pretty clearly demonstrated the limitations of the give-them-their-own-thread method of troll-deterrence. He's created a de facto denier denier blog out of a single comment thread, and his useful idiots pollute every other one. I've been a fan of Deltoid's troll-fights for many years, but this is just getting silly. How many times do we have to see the black knight cut in half before you walk away?
jeffie
"I wish some of the climate change deniers in blogs would be a little more honest and admit that they are untrained in these fields too, rather than trying to give the impression of having all of the same skills and training as professionals in the field."
What kind of educated skills do you need to read thermometers? You know, the ones that shows no significant warming the last 16 years?
So Pentax, please explain why Arctic ice continues to decline almost lineary for the past 16 years, and that all kinds of biotic responses to warming are also still being observed in the plant and animal kingdoms...
Nature is a far better thermometer than anything humans can come up with.
The answer is simple - warming has not stopped at all. End of story. You'll have to try another one.
"no significant warming the last 16 years"
That's denial for you. Despite at least two occasions I'm aware of where this erroneous factoid ha been exposed as a lie, PantieZ sticks to the meme come what may.
Hey PantieZ - where did the heat come from to cause record Arctic melt in the sixteenth year of your 'hiatus'?
And for bonus points, why does 'significant' not mean what you think it means?
Getting better by the minute ..
Now Jeff is disputing the recent temperature record
Getting better by the minute...
Now Jonas is disputing both biotic and abiotic indicators...
Essentially what our dickwad Swede is saying is that biotic indicators don't count. Forget the huge evidence showing continued poleward and elevations shifts in the distributions of plants and animals, changes in seasonal phenology and voltinism, lengthening of the growing season, and a wealth of other processes that are still being reported and published in the scientific literature. We have to ask ourselves this poignant question: are human thermometers more accurate proxies for warming that biotic proxies?
Of course they aren't. Jonas many think he can win a debate of attrition over on his own thread, but when we factor in a huge volume of natural responses to climate warming that are being recorded up to the very present, he doesn't stand a chance.
Again, Jonas, straying out of your myopic field of vision will undermine you....
Jeff ... temperature is not measured that way ... you really should know that. Some climate alarmism tag-along:ers say that phsycotic behavior will increase with temperature. But you still are not a thermometer ..
Please get rid of these dishonest trolls. They are just chasing decent people away from this blog. That is the only reason they continue to post their dishonest rubbish.
Just to clarify, and to show how dishonest they are, there has been quite a bit of warming over the past 16 years.
See here:
http://tinyurl.com/aasw93f
@Jeff
"Now Jeff is disputing the recent temperature record"
Is this true jeff, do you dispute the recent temperature record?
Ian F, without the dishonest trolls, this blog would have hardly any commenters at all. You got it all wrong: It's those trolls who are chasing away decent folks. Screaming and demanding they should be banned and their comments deleted ..
Are you really telling me you weren't aware of this? Honestly?
So Jonas, you are saying that biotic indicators don't matter? Hundreds of studies reporting the phenomena I described earlier, record Arctic ice loss this year, a linear trend that has continued unabated since 1998.
This is the exactly why scientists don't take contrarians seriously. Why do you think species and/or populations adjust their ranges? Why have some temperate species moved northwards hundreds of km since the 1980s? Why are these range advancements continuing to the present day? Why are plants budding or flowering many weeks earlier than they did 10 years ago? Why are some species still increasing the number of generations they produce in s single season?
Nature does not lie; it responds. What you appear to be saying is that a huge number of biotic proxies don't mean anything. Is that it? Its all a huge coincidence? Of course its still warming. 2010 was the warmest year on record. The USA has just experienced its warmest year on record. Australia's last 6 months are the warmest ever. It may not be warming every where at the same rate - some places aren't - but in temperate regions it sure as hell is. To repeat: studying natural responses to climate is the most accurate way of determining short to mid-term responses.
I understand that you don't read the pages of Global Change Biology, Ecology Letters, Ecosystems, Ecology, Journal of Ecology, Oikos, Oecologia, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, and many other rigid journals with high impact factors. But brazen ignorance is no excuse. Until you better equip with knowledge about natural proxies then I might as well be discussing this with a brick wall.
Ditto GSW. Ian Forrester is correct. Tim needs desperately to send you back to your cave.
Jeff ... you moron ...
It's been warming for well over 150 years, some say 400 years. Slow indicators will be slow to react and adopt. And not beable to resolve shot time spans as 1½ decades. You can't use those as temperature proxies for shot periods. You need thermometers for those!
Must I really tell you every relevant part of science?
You need to remeber one thing Jeffie: The hypothesis is that CO2 warms the (lower) atmosphere, and that other things will follow, not the other way around. It's not the sea that heats the ice from below, and the lower torposhere (according to the AGW-hypothesis)
And if the atmosphere doesn't show any (further) increase in temperature ... you can't start looking for your AGW signal elsewhere.
Remember what you are arguing. And please dont expect me to correct you every single time. Try to get it right on your own for one times sake ..
"Arctic ice continues to decline almost lineary for the past 16 years,"
And of course your'e talking about the summer ice. How about the winter ice? Any significant difference there? Or how about the Antarctic ice? Referring only to summer arctic sea ice is quite a cherry pick.
"and that all kinds of biotic responses to warming are also still being observed in the plant and animal kingdoms…"
Yeah, and? How many spieces has actually got extinct? Although I am not a biologist, I can tell you that the only constant in nature is change. Strange that a biologist with your CV don't seem to know that.
Jeff #2097 .. I am saying what I am or was saying. Never ever what you wanted me to say ... pleaste get that into your heard. Your incessant ivneting of strawmen is reallytiresome and boring.
Nature doesn't lie, and I agree with you. And sill you are relying not on nature and observations, but on rudimentary simulations for your beliefs ...
It just doesn't make sense. As your previous comment about non-peer reviewed expert gossip never reached its mark ...
"Forget the huge evidence showing continued poleward and elevations shifts in the distributions of plants and animals, changes in seasonal phenology and voltinism, lengthening of the growing season, and a wealth of other processes that are still being reported and published in the scientific literature."
Now, if we set aside the whole CAGW issue, what do you mean is the danger with this?
Why Jonarse - please elaborate on this new theory of climate change you've invented, why don't you?
I'm all ears.
Radiative imbalance is for losers, eh?
chek .. I am teaching you about your pet-hypthesis that most of you don't even seem to understand or be too familiar with ...
CO2, heating the lower troposphere, through a mechanism described as increased backradiation ..
Now please don't pretend to understnad physics, or you will look as Pid as Stu ...
Your by far most relevant comment here (since I arrived) was to realize that this AR 4 claim was an expression of (soc called expert-) opinion. Unfortunalely, it was not a 'realization' you managed on your own ...
I see. So those pesky 'back radiating' photons you speak of are very particular about precisely what they heat, then?
Yes, they are chek ..
they cannot penetrate more than microns of the sea surface for instance ... did you really not know that (either)?