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illconsidered | May 23, 2010FYI, the thread highlighted here is still continuing, though one wonders if it might be losing utility!
The following is offered only as a laugh, and truly no offense intended to the originator. At times, the distance between mind and keyboard can be dauntingly immense:
The first forcing is unknown; the second forcing is also unknown; I fail to see where you have an unknown unknown. We suspect that something undefined going on: that we know. If we know that there must be something there, we know at least that. Something is known there. Knowledge is something we know, not something we…
illconsidered | May 11, 2010Some old news here and some new, all of it about my favorite climate contrarian, Lord Cristopher Monkton. He is my favorite because he is a clown and the more he is put forth as denialism's "Septical Champion" the better.
First the old news. You may recall Tim Lambert debated Cristopher Monckton in Sydney a couple of months ago. Well that debate is up on YouTube in full. It is a 15 part playlist, but Tim tells us his presentation is part 3 and 4. I watched most of it and it is worth the time.
I think it is kind of amusing, and revealing, that Monkton claims some rather intimate knowledge…
illconsidered | May 2, 2010So the blogosphere has been abuzz over a recent Q&A Keith Kloor did with Judy Curry, the lengthy comment thread is where most of the interesting stuff is. I actually wish to opine on the whole sorry mess but that will be in a later post. Her biggest beef is about what she sees as "tribalism", but I only want to highlight with this post a comment on a follow up thread that really jumped out at me:
Kate says:
This is the fight that will define the twenty-first century as either a time when mankind advances due to honest enterprise, quality science, and technical achievement...or we are…
illconsidered | April 24, 2010Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal for Earth Day and exhibits the best of climate denialism's ability to flip reality on its head. I was considering going through it and highlighting its many falsehoods and logical holes but Arthur Smith has done a fine job of it already.
The WSJ op-ed is behind a paywall, but if you click the first result in this google search, you can read it in full. Arthur's take down is here.
illconsidered | April 21, 2010A nice site about our blue planet's blueness, The Reef Tank, asked to repost a recent ocean related article of mine and did so here.
Always worth checking them out!
illconsidered | April 8, 2010Here is a fascinating exchange between George Monbiot and Steve Easterbrook exploring the larger issues behind the recent Swifthacking of CRU email (aka ClimateGate).
Steve makes an excellent presentation of the case for what happens to be my personal view on this mess, namely that the media has failed in a major and tragic way and that this is a tale of a successful propaganda campaign not scientific corruption. In my opinion, Monbiot seems to understand Steve's points but still does not get the real story.
Have a read:
The computer scientist Steve Easterbrook wrote an interesting critique…
illconsidered | March 3, 2010While on the subject of great work by Tim Lambert, his recent debate with Christopher Monkton is available for viewing here.
It is 113 minutes long and I am pressed for time, so I am posting it before watching it. Feel free to point out favorite parts in the comments. Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for putting it on.
I have no doubt it will be educational and entertaining, can't wait to see it!
illconsidered | March 3, 2010Here is an interesting analysis designed for those who claim that CO2 does not correlate to temperature. (Sound familiar?). It is by a recently familiar name from the comments, Joseph.
I am not statistically well endowed, but Robert Grumbine comes to the same conclusion that when you accept the noisy nature of the data (aka reality) the fact is that CO2 does correlate to the modern temperature record very well, as expected.
How does Joseph's analysis look? He has some big numbers in terms of confidence.
illconsidered | March 1, 2010So Tim Lambert has been a busy blogger this last month with some really first rate investigative work on the truly abysmal rash of shoddy climate journalism in the UK. Check out his Leakgate category for a multitude of "must read" postings.
Also see Eli on Leakeng Ships. for another run down of Tim's work.
Real Climate did a good roundup of the phony spate of IPCC scandals as well, here and here (if you only click one of those links, click the first because it has some excellent background on the IPCC to add some reality perspective to the whole mess).
I don't understand how reporters can…
illconsidered | February 12, 2010The good thing for those interested in reality, is that arguments about short tem trends only last for...um short terms. The bad thing for the denialism movement's argument recycling machine is that they can't rely on copy/paste, or at least shouldn't!
Check out Things Break for a rather amusing example of this. Morano recylces a moronic argument about how sea levels are falling, which was true on the uninformative timescale of 2006 to mid 2009. But he amusingly links to current data[PDF] which shows that temporary lull is over and 2006 has been surpassed.
Also in that article is the…
illconsidered | February 12, 2010And this one is a beauty.
Of course, like models, all analogies are wrong but some are useful! I think this hits the nail on the head in terms of CRU's perspective but I grant you it does not describe well any of the probable things that might be in the heads of the Climate Audit crowd. Undoubtably, some are sincere crusaders.
I really do prefer to take people at face value, but some impressive bit of researching over at Deep Climate kinda makes it hard to believe in the whole "gee, we're just asking" schtick Steve McIntyre puts out to the general public.
Check out the very substantial Part…
illconsidered | February 11, 2010For most of us, the F in FOI stands for "freedom". It seems for Steve McIntyre, it stands for "form letter".
Via Eli Rabett we learn that the Freedom of Information requests (FOI) that are central to the only potentially damnng aspect of the CRU "swifthacking" incident have been released. They can be found here[PDF].
I have not looked at them yet, but Eli points out a very interesting one that begins thus (and we are quoting):
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries…
illconsidered | February 3, 2010ONCE TWO SCIENTISTS--it hardly matters what sort--were walking before dinner beside a pleasant pond with their friend, a reporter for the Dispatch, when they happened to notice a bird standing beside the water.
"I am a skeptic," said the first scientist. "I demand convincing evidence before I make an assertion. But I believe I can identify that bird, beyond all reasonable doubt, as a duck." The journalist nodded silently at this assertion.
"I also am a skeptic," said the second, "but evidently of a more refined sort, for I demand a much higher standard of evidence than you do. I see no…
illconsidered | February 2, 2010As ridiculous as that headline is, it is the theme du jour in the denialosphere....
The chair of the UN's panel on climate change Dr Rajendra Pachauri was written a "racy" romance novel and therefore the IPCC AR4 is unreliable propaganda. Um...okay.
If I wanted the denialists to win the PR battle, I would quietly but urgently try to warn them about going a bit too far in the mud slinging ad hominems.
(see ClimateAudit and WUWT piling on this Telegraph "news" item.)
I mean, really, isn't that a truly laughable thing to get worked up about? Can't just about anyone with the minimal…
illconsidered | January 26, 2010The Oregon petition seems to be getting a small revival in the press and blogosphere lately, including in the comments here. I don't have a guide article for that, though I suppose I should. So much has been written about it, I don't know if I have anything original to say.
Some example critiques are from Scientific American:
Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition --- one was an active climate researcher…
illconsidered | December 18, 2009WUWT's Willis Eschenbach has supposedly uncovered how Evil scientists have fabricated a warming trend in Darwin. Deltoid has the details on why those pesky adjustments were actually made. Of course those details were cleverly hidden, like Jone's decline, where no denialist would ever find it: in the peer reviewed literature!
This fake investigation is called cherry picking, digging through the batch to find the slightly off colored examples. But what happens if you look at the whole bowlful all at once, as did this Italian Medical bio-technologist? (Yes, yes, not a climatologist, not even…
illconsidered | December 9, 2009Here is a fabulous boil down approach to the climate debate.
The main site is called "Information is beautiful" and like Robert Rhode's Global Warming Art, it provides a compelling and beautiful graphical presentation of an otherwise rather dry and technical topic.
What do people think? Too simplistic? Too technical for a lay audience?
illconsidered | December 1, 2009If you do not know what climategate refers to you probably got here via some odd typo in a google search. If you do but have not yet read Real Climate's post on it, you should do so. It is too late to rename the whole affair, but I thing "Swifthack" would have been more apropos.
Climategate is big news and not just in the climate blogosphere, all the major newspapers have opined. Here in cyberland, I have seen a doubling of traffic without really writing a thing about it or having a high traffic site link to me, I am assuming general interest in the story is the reason. Most of what I…
illconsidered | October 16, 2009The Reef Tank has kindly republished one of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic articles, the one about the claim that observed temperature increases indicate a much lower sensitivity to doubled CO2 than the general consensus figure of 3oC.
It is an old argument, but it still comes up frequently here and elsewhere so bears some repeating.
You can not use only the current temperature to assess sensitivity to 35% increased CO2 because:
the oceans have a large heat capacity so it will take several decades to see the full effect
CO2 is constantly rising
CO2 is not the only factor affecting…