June 2017 Open Thread

More thread.

More like this

Thankyou for starting a new open thread.
Its always interesting reading.

So Li D?
What do you make of the conclusions from this study?

#3 Keep up research and monitoring so
implications of range change can be understood.
Range change is complex. Simple assumptions should
not be drawn.
Public education is important.

Simple assumptions being drawn re climate change is particularly highlighted in box 4.
It even has 'confounding' in the heading.
I also think that they have concluded that managing dengue virus is about educating the public and directing funding towards programs that have clearly worked based on historical data.

Russell, Dennis Dutton was a cornucopian crank. He lauded Bjorn Lomborg's abyssmal tome, swallowing all of the nonsense the brainless Dane wrote without a hint of scepticism. That a luke-warming blog he started has folded is nothing to cry about.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 21 Jun 2017 #permalink

In a moment of Freudian dyslexia I first read that as 'Climate Debate Delay' which was probably a better fit.

Jeff

Dutton is long gone , but Arts & Letters Daily is still going strong as part of The Chronicle of Higher Education- I was celebrating the demise of Climate Debate Daily as a weird ALD sidebar, not its creation.

Scienceblogs back behaving again.

Seems like it.

Does anyone here believe that the climate scare has been over dramatized?

By Justin Time (not verified) on 19 Jul 2017 #permalink

#14 As a generalised thing, not at all.
Not by science if thats what you mean specifically.
Its very very fast change on top of a massivly disturbed
biosphere.

Hi Li D, when I was taught about climate change at school we were told it was never going to rain again, snowfall was going to be a thing of the past and a hotspot was to appear in the atmosphere above the equator.
I recently read that much of the climate scare was based on a hockey stick chart. That chart has subsequently been proven to be concocted out of manipulated data and is not at all a true representation in any way of the temperature history.
The climate models appear to have failed and it looks like there is actually no acceleration in sea level rise.

What gives?

By Justin Time (not verified) on 20 Jul 2017 #permalink

Um, your sources of information in your life dont seem very good, thats what gives.
Sounds like you been exposed do an intellectual diet of horseshit.

There is this massive global warming signal in the Southern Hemisphere, the subtropical ridge has intensified and is travelling too far south.

Its observable and predicted by the models, where do we go from here?

By ironicman (not verified) on 21 Jul 2017 #permalink

The climate models appear to have failed and it looks like there is actually no acceleration in sea level rise.

On who's authority?

Such a statement usual comes from those primed with nonsense from misinforms/dis-informers or from misinforms/dis-informers themselves. Which are you?

Justin is clearly living in his own parallel universe. It is warming. Sea levels are rising, the Arctic ice is receding and ecological fingerprints abound. And I do not believe for a split second that you were taught in school that rainfall was going to cease. Poppycock. As bad as some schools are when it comes to teaching science, this has never ever been stated. It has been suggested that there will less winter days with snow in some regions - which is certainly happenjng in much of Europe where I live - as well as less ground frosts. Also happening.

Then Justin makes an outrageous statement about the 'climate scare' being predicated on the 'hockey stick graph'. What a stupid, facile remark. Justin, let me get this straught: you are a high school dropout - am I correct?

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 26 Jul 2017 #permalink

Jeff Harvey, your comprehension skills appear to be extremely inadequate, as such you should take your childish/boorish persona elsewhere, or reread what I have typed, comprehend it, and respond as an adult should.

Just to clarify (mostly for the numbskull).
Yes there is global warming, and has been since the LIA, the planet was warm before the LIA.
Yes there is sea level rise,
A note to the numbskull, all these things happen in a warming world.
Yes there has been sea-ice melting in the Arctic, although I believe Greenland has been gaining mass,
And yes there has also recently been a very powerful El Nino.

Lessons at school....
“Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain. Growing evidence suggests that hotter soils, caused directly by global warming, have increased evaporation and transpiration and that the change is permanent. I believe the first thing Australians need to do is to stop worrying about ‘the drought’ – which is transient – and start talking about the new climate”.
Tim Flannery

Yes, droughts/El Ninos' are good for global warming :)

By Justin Time (not verified) on 28 Jul 2017 #permalink

Justin, be careful who you attempt to smear, as my scientific education is light years ahead of yours. How many scientific publications do you have in peer-reviewed journals on the Web of Science? Let me guess: ZERO. I have 182. And counting.The next question is obvious: how many times have your papers been cited on the WoS: zero papers = zero citations. Mine have 5607. And counting. So I don't need a wannbe neophyte to give me an education. You need to grow up. You are the numbskull, asshole.

Myself and others read your last posts with derision. They were infantile, so don't come on here all innocent with this 'adult' persona. When you wrote, "I read recently that the climate scare was based on a hockey stick chart" this revealed right away (1) that you are reading denier blogs for source information, (2) that you refer to the science behind climate change as a 'scare'. Then you write utter piffle intimating that the Mann et al. (1998) paper in Nature has been proven to be made up out of concocted data. By who? Some denier bloggers like Anthony Watts or Stephen McIntyre? The proxy reconstructions have been supported numerous times since Mann's study.

Instead of asking questions in a way aimed at learning, you rehash all kinds of garbage gleaned from a denier blog here and a denier blog there. A little thing called the primary literature never occurred to you. I was more than willing to be polite to you if you hadn't come in here with loaded statements. But don't patronize me. As I said, my scientific education puts yours in the shade, sunshine.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 28 Jul 2017 #permalink

Jeff Harvey, there was no smear, I made an honest observation about you. How you have employment beggars belief!!!!

I read your follow up comment and went and searched you, prior posts in Deltiod then the www.

I have to be honest, brutally honest.

Your comprehension skills ARE DISGUSTINGLY WOEFUL, deplorable, execrable, miserable, condemnable, piteous, pathetic.

Your personality is effete, ineffective, hapless, ridiculous ect.

I really cannot be bothered with you actually, you are obviously so full of yourself and you harbor a self loving over inflated ego, I would wager that you look at yourself in the mirror when you are having a tug.

No, you are not superior to me or anyone else, you are not a climate scientist so don't think you are more knowledgeable on the subject than me, or anybody else for that matter,

I could see very quickly that you are the type that is totally sucked in by authority and parrot anything like a mind controlled zombie.

Why would I even want to try to have a sensible conversation with you?

By Justin Time (not verified) on 29 Jul 2017 #permalink

JT

Why would I even want to try to have a sensible conversation with you?

Looks like you cannot manage a sensible conversation with yourself.

Something about you smacks of ClimateDesperate.

JT

Jeff Harvey, there was no smear, I made an honest observation about you. How you have employment beggars belief!!!!

Really, well what is this from your prior post:

Jeff Harvey, your comprehension skills appear to be extremely inadequate, as such you should take your childish/boorish persona elsewhere, or reread what I have typed, comprehend it, and respond as an adult should.

?

Your own words betray you as a stirring little nonentity who apparently cannot comprehend the meaning of the words he writes.

You jump in here with both feet making two inflammatory posts straight off, although the first was ambiguously so until your next one appeared leaving no doubt as to your motives. Since amply confirmed. Noxious little pest that you are.

Justin, I don't take advice from high school dropouts. You know nothing about me or my research. I call it as I see it. You entered this thread with deliberately provocative remarks calling climate change a 'scare' and claiming that one line of empirical evidence - the reconstruction of historical temperatures that produced the now iconic hockey stick shaped regression line - was 'proven' to be based on 'concocted' data and was therefore broken.

These directed and utterly false conclusions immediately rendered you as incompetent, and unworthy of a polite response. You didn't say where you had obtained this nonsensical information, other than to intimate that it was factual. Certainly it was not obtained by reading from the primary scientific literature, as a number of subsequent studies with reconstructed proxies have reaffirmed that late 20th century global surface temperatures are higher than at any time in at least the past 1,000 years and probably much, much longer. So immediately your statement was consigned to the bin. Of less importance but still relevant in highlighting your scientific illiteracy is the fact that you referred to a graph as a 'chart'. I didn't mention this before because I did not want to sound pedantic but anyone with even a basic grasp of scientific methodology will be able to distinguish between the two.

As for not being a climate scientist you are correct. However, I personally know a number of them and part of my research examines the effects of climate change on trophic interactions, food webs and communities. For you to state that I do not know more about the relevant fields than you is hilarious, beyond parody. Of course I know more than you. Considerably more. Your scientific acumen in related fields does not rise above my shoelaces and is sophomoric in the extreme. Unlike you, I attend scientific workshops and conferences where these issues are discussed and debated. I also study a range of biotic evidence for warming, as I stated above. I am a tenured Professor and you aren't even a fledgling scientist. Most importantly, my views are shared by between 91 and 97 per cent of the climate science community to who I defer. These views are in turn supported by the positions of every National Academy of Science in every nation state on Earth, and every major scientific organisation including the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, NASA and the NOAA. I was recently interviewed by a writer for the American Geophysical Union because of my experience on blogs and in elucidating their influence on public debates on climate change. I encounter people like you all of the time, individuals who think that they are informed but who have no formal training in any relevant fields. You are just another example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I was more than willing to be polite to you if you had come on here asking questions rather than making stupid and incorrect assertions. When you did that it was obvious not only to me but to other contributors here that you came here as a quasi denier looking for confrontation. When called out, you resorted to the kinds of behaviour expected of people like you.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 29 Jul 2017 #permalink

To give an example of how utterly stupid Justin's first and second posts on this thread were, let's imagine for a second that he attends an international scientific conference in which climate change and its implications are a central theme. Let us further suggest that it is attended by many climate and environmental scientists who are leaders in their respective fields. Lastly, although this is pure fantasy, let us think that one of the sessions is called 'Citizen Science' in which members of the general public are allowed to give lectures.

Justin is one of them. The title of his talk is "Broken hockey sticks and the climate scare: where do we go from here?".

Here is how he opens his seminar. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour be be speaking in front of you all today. I would like this opportunity to take a look at the future with respect to the climate scare. When I was in school we were taught that climate change meant that it would not rain or snow again in the future and that a hotspot would appear over the equator. As you all know, the hockey stick chart has been broken because it was based on concocted data and the climate scare models are wrong........etc. etc. etc."

How would the scientific audience respond to this gibberish? I can tell you. Aside from a lot of initial murmuring among those assembled, there would be snickering followed by laughter. The whole audience would end up laughing their heads off because Justin's seminar was a pile of unadulterated bullshit. This explains my response to his initial posts. The word 'scare' is itself loaded with innuendo. If he had written in here asking others to comment on the veracity of the reconstructed proxies, and to discuss what they thought about the various scenarios e.g. mild effects to catastrophic consequences - of climate change, then I would have been happy to talk about this in a civil manner. But Justin came on here to provoke. You reap what you sow.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 29 Jul 2017 #permalink

#27 " ClimateDesperate "
Hahahahaha

Now why would Ridd be interviewed instead of say Hoegh-Guldberg?

JT

You are just sad.

Lloyd again neglects to mention Ridd’s work on projects to support the construction of fossil fuel export facilities along the Queensland coastline close to the reef.

Nether does he mention Ridd’s tendency towards climate science denialism.

Source.

I doubt there is much you can teach us about science, after all you don't grasp it at all.

In the article cited above above Readfearn mentions a Jim Steele who is well know to Sou at HotWhopper just enter Steele into the search box and hit Enter.

What was I saying? JT is a denier troll who came in here to provoke. His first two posts were about as deep as puddle, essentially kindergarten-level trash. Caught out, he's now reduced to short quips in which he reveals his sources of 'information'. They are the usual suspects - people with no scientific qualifications whatsoever. JT is just another deluded example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2017 #permalink

One final point now that JT has been exposed as a denying hypocrite. Here he uses the same long discredited strategy of citing a few cranks to support his arguments. Peter Ridd for example. Ridd is a member of the Australian Environment Foundation which is simply an anti environmental front group for right wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. The IPA is funded by a number of corporations with a vested interest in denial. Ridd also is a member of the Galileo Group, which has all sorts of idiotic positions on environmental issues. Ridd is one of the co-authors of this appalling new book edited by third rate entomologist Jennifer Marohasy and published through the IPA on climate change. The list of authors on it is a who's who of non-entities and shills including Bjorn Lomborg, Ian Plimer and Willie Soon. A collection of laughingstocks if ever there was one.

The point is that deniers like JT rely on a few fringe academics for their arguments whilst ignoring the vast majority of us whose view are very different. He can't debate his way out of a soaking wet paper bag so he is left with nothing else but linking to articles or interviews by fringe academics in right wing sources. Blogs are full of idiots like JT. They are so utterly predictable. I could see from his first two posts that he wasn't remotely interested in a scientific discussion but in parroting nonsense from a few deniers.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 30 Jul 2017 #permalink

The appalling book Jeff mentions above is:

"Climate Change: The Facts 2017"

Contributors include:

Clive James - broadcaster and thus D/K inclined

Dr Jennifer Marohasy - Senior Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs

Dr John Abbot - Senior Fellow, Institute of Public Affairs

Bjørn Lomborg - Copenhagen Consensus Center

Jo Nova - Author of The Skeptic's Handbook

Professor Ian Plimer - Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne

Professor Peter Ridd - James Cook University

Matt Ridley - Author of The Rational Optimist

Dr Willie Soon - Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Dr Roy Spencer - University of Alabama in Huntsville

Anthony Watts - Watts Up with That?

Oh boy! What a line up.

Check most of them out here:

denier database

Note to JiT, if any of the sources you are about to use appear in that database — forget it!

The Institute for Public Affairs contracts into the apposite acronym IPA - sniffing at it can seriously damage your brain.

On 20 July 2017Justin Time waffled...:

"when I was taught about climate change at school we were told it was never going to rain again, snowfall was going to be a thing of the past and a hotspot was to appear in the atmosphere above the equator."

What a deplorable - nay - woeful iteration of denier dross.

I am left to wonder which school would have been peddling this kind of claptrap...The Bob Carter Academy for the Ungifted? The Ian Plimer School of Stuff We Make Up?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Aug 2017 #permalink

Incidentally, I found a resource for those of our correspondents who deny there is such a thing as the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/06/what-causes-the-greenhouse-effect/

As the Earth’s surface absorbs sunlight it warms up. As it warms up, it emits more and more IR energy, limiting its temperature rise (remember “energy balance”?).
...
But the atmosphere DOES absorb IR energy. The IR absorption coefficients at various wavelengths, temperature, and pressures have been measured for water vapor, CO2, etc., in laboratories and published for decades.
...
This absorption means the atmosphere also EMITS IR energy, both upward and downward. And it is that DOWNWARD flow of IR energy (sometimes called “back radiation”) which is necessary for net warming of the surface from the greenhouse effect.
etc...

While deniers have a ready explanation for why a real scientist is wrong about these things ("fr4ud!", "Agenda21!", "Conspiracy!" etc...) it turns out deniers aren't very good explaining why Roy Spencer is wrong.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Aug 2017 #permalink

The Clive James Department of Dribble?
The Jennifer Marohasy Institute of Propaganda Attempts?
The Lomborg Kindergarten of Pleading Incompetence as a defence to charges of Scientific Dishonesty?
The Codling-Evans Fachhochschule der Taten die Bankfamilien (wink wink)?

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 01 Aug 2017 #permalink

I agree Craig. When JT came on here spewing bilge with nonsensical correlations he allegedly learned at school it suggested that he was either lying or else was enrolled at an institution operated by the Institute of Public Affairs for the intention of dumbing down.

The reality was that it was a poorly camouflaged attempt to come on here to provoke the rest of us. Not a very good one, as when called out on his childish stunt he first played the innocent canard, then resorted to insults, then lastly by citing some shills as evidence for 'sound science'. The most hilarious thing was that JT, like most deniers, claimed to be knowledgeable on science when his opening remarks alone proves he is a simpleton.

By Jeff Harvey (not verified) on 01 Aug 2017 #permalink