Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear

Hank,

MM thinks Piers Corbyn is worthy of attention, apparently.
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/?s=corbyn

Some (presumably unintentinonally) humourous early posts from the beginning of OmniClimate (right around Bali 2007 UN Climate Conference):

http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/page/23/

http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/page/22/

My favourites in no particular order:
"HadCRUT Data Reveal the World is (Mostly) Cooling"
"Why They Hate Lomborg"
"Yikes! I Have Received Money From Exxon!!!"
"Bali: Gambling the Present for an Unknown Future"

The latter quotes approvingly from Dr. Sonia Boehmer-Christiansen:

For scientific reasons, all climate change policymakers and activists might familiarize themselves with the many voices â admittedly not proclaiming consensus â that are critical of the IPCC âscientific consensusâ. More efforts needs to be devoted to observing climatic reality, understanding climate and only then, perhaps, on preparing for adaptation to real change. In the meantime, there are enough real problems to solve.

I read 'em all so you don't have to.

Nicolas:

McIntyre doesn't claim to be a climate scientist, he is a statistician.

Precisely. So why does he proclaim himself to be a climate "auditor" when he can't figure out heat capacity?

And no, perhaps it's not the best example but it's a clear illustration of McI's climate science ineptitude. Want something "better" and more recent? Briffa's cogent response to McI's disingenuous post, coupled with Deep Climate's commentary, suffices.

And he is published, so that is simply incorrect.

My apologies, I should have added the qualifier "not published since 2005". And even that paper's scientific value was very dubious.

One mere paper in GRL doesn't cut it these days; I know of science schools in several good research-1 universities that insist it's Masters' students require at least 2 accepted first-authored peer-reviewed publications before conferring its degree.

Sure, McI is free to post whatever he wants on his blog to entertain the ill-informed peanut munchers, but my point stands - if he wishes to be taken seriously, get something peer-reviewed in Nature, Science, PNAS etc. To spout out so much noise on the Internets and not discuss it in acadmemic channels simply smacks of laziness and fear.

And here they are: MM07 and S09

It's weird how conversations like that go on in the total public now. Have you any thoughts on the subject, William?

I'm surprised the comments aren't full of crazies, as this is touching on a favorite sceptic battle-cry - troposphere trends.

[It is, but you need a fiar amount of knowledge to even realise that, let alone contribute. Anyway, the crazies gave up on trop trends a while back -W]

The next should be 'Oh dear^n' or 'Oh dear!'

This shows the virtue of the open review process at journals such as Climate of the Past.

[Agreed -W]

For someone who gave us one of the biggest whines in the climate blogosphere, Jr.'s comment about Gavin being petty reminds me of pots, kettles and some dark color.

Makes for good viewing though. Mind passing the popcorn?

How did JR end up on the paper in the first place, hardly his area?

Reality TV shouldn't be far

"Climate Swap": Two groups of academicians, usually holding vastly different stances on AGW, swap professors/students (and sometimes janitors) for two weeks. In fact, the programme will usually deliberately swap scholars with extreme, polar opposite AGW opinions, such as a dramatically catastrophist Nature-published author swapping with a fastidiously no-anthropogenic-warming-at-all GRL-published one. Despite using a phrase from the swinging lifestyle, professors participating in the show do not share a bed with the "swapped" scholar while "swapping" AGW belief.

Where did this Maurizio guy come from all of a sudden, and why is he posting now on all the climate science blogs so often?

Magnus:

How did JR end up on the paper in the first place, hardly his area?

It apparently started with a "dinner-table debate" in the House of Pielke. It appears that Jr's contribution was to propose "an empirical test" -- probably the trend divergence hypotheses. Not too sure how a PhD in political science policy contributed to that input, but he, like his dad, has a math background.

More Maurizio (saying what he *really* thinks):

Is the terrain being prepared for zealot co-revolutionaries soon to remove most freedoms and a wide range of technological achievements, imposing us a future "eco-friendly" life of pain, illness, manual labour and struggle, with the belief that human ingenuity is an evil that will destroy the planet instead than improve our lives?

Is this Catastrophism too? Perhaps. But who would have thought 100 years ago of the upcoming Golden Age of Nazism and Communism, doctrines getting ready to kill millions of people: having scientifically proclaimed themselves to be "for the good of humanity"?

- From TCS Daily, Aug. 16, 2006

Sounds a lot like Monckton.

Hank,

A quick look at Moribito's climate blog (one of five blogs!) reveals a pose of "I don't believe anybody about much of anything" and the inactivist posture consistent with sitting on the fence.

He has a post up about NASA becoming "CO2 obsessed" with the current Mars mission. It's a good candidate for Denial Depot

Paul Middents

Does anyone see the irony of RC always pointing to the peer reviewed literature, and then when something gets published that they don't agree with they get upset.

[You must have missed http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/peer-review-a-nec… -W]

Nicolas,

I think Gavin's (not RC) concern was that the authors ignored errors pointed out with more than sufficient time to correct prior to publication. The response was that the errors made no difference to the conclusion. Several folks in addition to Gavin dispute that contention.

The irony I detect is that this is the charge usually leveled against Mann et al by the auditors. Mann rationalizes "errors" detected by the auditors as not affecting the conclusion.

Where are the auditors when we really need them?

Oh, I forgot. They only audit the hockey stick and the historical temperature record.

Guess we'll have to leave it to guys like Annan, Tobis and Schmidt to keep track of the Pielkes. Imagine that, real climate scientists looking at the work of the Pielkes.

Paul Middents

Paul,

This is exactly my point. I actually feel that these types of reviews are useful responses even to peer reviewed papers. As to what people choose to take on that is up to them. RC never takes on Mann, and CA doesn't take on Pielke.

Nicholas,

There's a big difference in the quality of the blog critiques by top published climate scientists (e.g. RC) and those by non-scientist self-appointed "auditors" (e.g. CA). They are not equivalent "types of reviews".

DC,

That is simply your opinion.

That is simply your opinion.

Not in any rational world. If the self-appointed auditors at CA had anything significant to say, they'd do so in the literature.

Though I'm sure you'll reject the notion that science works because people work within science, in favor of some self-flagellating model that gives CA credibility.

Nicolas:

One of the biggest reasons to why I stopped taking CA seriously was when McI and almost all of his peanut gallery couldn't figure out something that first-year Met 101 students could correctly answer in their sleep. Climate auditors indeed.

Until McI and the others at CA stop their circle-jerk and publish something peer-reviewed (which at least the Pielkes bother to do), it'll be just irrelevant noise.

wow, that's appalling, Former Skeptic. Met 101? Forget that; high school physics is where one should learn about heat capacity. How could this be surprising to somebody who claims to follow climate science? Or even, somebody who's ever gone to the beach?

Hank Roberts, Deep Climate, Paul Middents: oh, the bother! Nothing like posting a series of ad-hom's, right? Ready to attempt any other character assassination, are you today? And why not.

Thank you for visiting my blogs and doing a "google" about me.

And for the record...I was a Connolley-allergic, I am turning into a Connolley-follower (at least in the sense of...following this blog).

Please book your places in the stone-casting queue.

Maurizio, as the blog saying goes, they laughed at Einstein, and they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. The game is that everyone gets to choose who they laugh at. Several people have appeared to put you in the Bozo category. Perhaps some introspection would be useful. There is life after Bozohood, but it is a hard way back.

Maurizio,
So quoting two paragraphs verbatim, and noting a simple, obvious observation about them is an "ad hom" attack and "character assassination". If so, you did it to yourself, didn't you?

Come on guys, the best you can do is an offhand comment in August 2008? McIntyre doesn't claim to be a climate scientist, he is a statistician.

And he is published, so that is simply incorrect.

It is simply his choice whether to publish, or simply post. From what I have seen it doesn't make his arguments any more or less correct. They seem to get plenty of response when scientists disagree, so we all know where different folks stand on an issue.

In my short time looking at this stuff I have also seen nonsense published by Schmidt and Rahmstorf. So no one has a monopoly on that.

Nicolas,

Your link refers only to Rahmstorf. Care to elaborate on Schmidt's "nonsense"?

Paul Middents

For anyone with a little time to waste, Nicolas raised his issues with Rahmstorf's simple sea level model on this RC thread:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/ups-and-downs-of-…

For Nicolas, did you ever communicate your concerns directly to Dr. Rahmstorf or did you just blog on it? Perhaps your characterization of his work as "nonsense" might impact his willingness to respond to your comments.

Eli - you forgot to post in the third person...what's up?

Deep Climate - since you know already what I "*really*" think, there is no point talking about it 8-)

Nicolas,
McIntyre has exactly one peer-reviewed article in the scientific literature (GRL, 2005). One. Uno. That's it.

Comments on his own article, the two articles in E&E (an unrecognized social science journal) and the non-peer reviewed letter to PNAS don't count.

The only reason that scientists respond is because McIntyre has managed to bamboozle the popular right-wing press into thinking he's actually on to something. It's got nothing to do with science as that term is commonly understood.

Last year, I spent a fair amount of time at CA. Many posts contain serious errors and misunderstandings, as McIntyre struggles through the science. At best, CA specializes in unfocused mountains-from-molehill "analyses". And the accusations of cherrypicking and scientific misconduct are unrelenting.

The recent controversies over Yamal and Tiljander are cases in point, as our esteemed host can confirm.

Re: #8, 25
Maurizio,
You wrote it. If it's not what you think, please let us know.

Thanks!

Paul,

I did communicate with Rahmstorf, of course no response.

And if you keep reading on my blog you will see my comments on Schmidt.

As usual no substantive response to my remarks from anyone.

Climate, no confirmation forthcoming.

Paul,

Andy by the way response to Schmidt is submitted. So far infinitely delayed by the publication.

did communicate with Rahmstorf, of course no response.

And if you keep reading on my blog you will see my comments on Schmidt.

As usual no substantive response to my remarks from anyone.

Which, of course, as any crank scientist knows, this means you're right, rather than just an annoying crank not worth responding to ...

Andy by the way response to Schmidt is submitted. So far infinitely delayed by the publication.

Infinitely delayed means you're right, of course. If you were wrong, they'd pay attention to you ...

#28
Our esteemed already posted on Yamal and Tiljander. I think he got them both reasonably correct, if not quite nailing all the details right away. And he certainly didn't come down on McIntyre's side in either case.

I also take it you agree with my count on McIntyre's published output. One peer-reviewed science article in six years plus is a pretty dismal output.

By the way, a while back RP jr claimed McIntyre was "published regularly". WMC agreed that that was rubbish at the time, although he quite likes RP jr's hurricane stuff.

OK, Nicolas, I'll play along with your hide the thimble game and go search your blog. From the looks of it, it needs the hits.

You have 15 posts. I find one. March 14, which mentions Schmidt. Is that your basis for tarring him with the "nonsense" brush?

Paul,

This isn't really that hard. The March 14th post links (perhaps you've heard of that). To the earlier post.

dhogza,

No need to be rude, I didn't really expect a response. I was asked if I communicated and I did. Again if you have a substantive comment on what I wrote feel free to make it. (And now I expect the classic reversion to authority.)

By the way the published comments were sufficient to show that what Rahmstorf published was indeed nonsense. But I'm sure you haven't read them. Or probably Rahmstorf's paper in the first place.

Nicolas,

It's only hard as you chose to make it.

I followed the link to your Feb. post which refers to MM07 and S09 with no links to the papers under discussion. Google Scholar and McKitrick's web page are no help. I am assuming that MM07 refers to something by McIntyre and McKitrick and that S09 refers to something by Gavin Schmidt. Gavin has published a lot in 2009 so you may have to help me here as I struggle with this concept of a "link". Perhaps you could use a few in your blog posts to make them a little less opaque.

And just to put your mind at ease, I have read both R07, the comments and reply. You have not convinced me that Rahmstorf writes "nonsense".

#34
MM07 is McKitrick and Michaels, I believe. And then S09 would be, in part, Gavin Schmidt's response. If so, the data related to these papers was used to engender McKitrick's erroneous land tropospheric "amplification factor" as taken up in Kea09.

So, full circle back to topic. Speaking of which, James Annan rejoins the discussion:

http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/11/klotzbach-ad-nauseam-2009.html

Re: #27

Deep Climate - I have written much more than those two paragraphs at the time and since. But anyway...one of my concerns, in 2006, was the possibility of some kind of "climate terrorism" becoming a reality, with activists so frustrated by inaction they would turn to bombs to destroy evil CO2-emitting power stations for example.

Given 9/11, then 7/7 in London, and the reports of terrorism-like activities by so-called "animal loving" extremists, I do not think that "climate terrorism" was or still is such a far-fetched idea.

Likewise, when people start talking of a "war against climate change", the concept of seeing the back of civil rights in the name of a higher purpose is something we should handle well before it happens. I am not the only libertarian concerned about this, and I am happy to see the problem is understood by people independently from their stance on AGW.

Luckily, so far inaction has prevailed on the "it's a war!" front. Also what I can see happening is an inward turn of those frustrations, towards self-help rather than bombs.

This explains why so many climate "believer" activist bloggers are so keen to censor non-believer comments, and so reluctant to post links to "non-believer" bloggers.

This also explains why the "appearance" of somebody not believing in upcoming climate catastrophes is responded with ad-homs. You learn to be very thick-skinned (and wary of friends and foes alike) when your opinion does not follow AGW orthodoxy.

Paul,

What is the point of my helping you find papers, that are easily located if your response will inevitably be. "You haven't convinced" me with zero specifics. I'm afraid that you haven't convinced me that you understand a discussion of regression, so I have little hope for spatial autocorrelation.

#36 gives DenialDepot's Inferno a run for his money in the humour department (even if it is unintentional).

Tamino, a person whose statistical bona fides I put much more stock in than yours, discusses Rahmstorf's simple model here:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/sea-level-rise/

He finds there is indeed a correlation between temperature and sea level but not necessarily linear.

Your comments at RC referenced above seem to be making the same point.

None of this justifies characterizing Rahmstorf's work as nonsense.

Re: #38

Deep Climate - Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. Looks like you're back in the ad-hom's department. Why am I not surprised.

Nicolas,

The point of helping find the papers would be to make your blog posts semi-comprehensible to one who is not a member of the CA cognoscenti. I am familiar with the concepts of regression and spatial auto correlation.

How silly of me to forget the there are actually three M's making up the skeptic trinity--Michaels, McKitrick and McIntyre. Thanks of the hint, DC.

I have now traced down the papers of interest and the RC thread where you got lots of patient attention from Gavin.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/on-replication/co…

In that thread, you posted links to your analysis of MM07 and S09 (I feel like such an insider now that those abbreviations trip off my keyboard). Unfortunately not even a boost and link from the master himself over at CA could generate any meaningful discussion on your blog.

I still see no justification in any of your work for characterizing Gavin Schmidt's work as "nonsense".

Unless you have something much more substantive to offer than your blog posts on Rahmstorf and Schmidt, I would suggest you moderate your tone and characterization of the published work of these two scientists.

Paul,

Are you trying to set a record for posts without substantive comment?

Nicolas,

If content were my intent then I certainly wouldn't waste my time chasing you around the innertubes as you look for attention.

You wildly overstated the significance of your analysis of Rahmstorf and Schmidt by characterizing their work as nonsense. I called you on it.

Finis

Paul,

Nice use of French.

If you want to actually criticize what I wrote with a substantive comment then do it. You can't really "call" someone on it if you can't point out what is wrong. I really don't think you understand them at all. Tamino's post just re-estimates a linear relationship without responding to either the published criticism or mine.

I only pointed to my posts to provide evidence for my earlier comment. I don't care if anyone reads it. I write for my own amusement.

Nicolas,

oh, dear!

'Finis' is Latin. The French is 'fin', pronounced 'feh'. Cognate to the Yiddish, as in, "feh, what a putz!"

Beauty are you kidding me? Try Google translate. It means finished, and of course it is French.

And by the way fin means end and it is almost impossible to write in English.

Any more worthless comments.

Of course finis is French, but only if you're using it as an adjective or as a conjugation of the verb (1st, 2nd person) finir. It is clearly neither of those here. Whilst articles are dropped, personal pronouns generally aren't. The French noun form for end is fin.

La fin

I don't know who is aligned with who any more. But I, perhaps foolishly thought that Paul meant that he was finished with the topic. Are you really telling me that if had written "finished" at the end you would have said it wasn't English because he didn't write a complete sentence.

You guys will argue about anything. I am still waiting for a single substantive comment about my criticism of the Schmidt, or Rahmstorf papers, but I know that will never happen.

What's alignment got to do with it? Eff all, that's what.

I've got no idea whether PM used finis correctly (à la LB) or incorrectly (like you NN), and I little care, as PM's meaning was evident either way as it's a perfectly good (assimilated) English word.

finis /fins, fns, fns/ n. LME. [L = end.]
1 At the end of a book: the end. LME.
2 The conclusion, the end, the finish; the end of life, death. L17.
[SOED]

And in French, finis is the present tense (1st and 2nd persons singular), i.e. finish; finished would be fini (in all perfect forms).

Here ends the Latin, French and English lessons.

J'ai fini. La fin! Finis.

I don't know, I never could spell in French. Google translates finis as finished. But since you don't pronounce the "s" anyway....

Google translates finis as finished. But since you don't pronounce the "s" anyway....

Well, you must have been correct all along then NN. Sorry to have wasted your time.

[Rm. I think this has to end somewhere, it has become dull -W]