Debunking

538 Broken Things

illconsidered — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:52:27 +0000

538 Broken Things

I am a longtime fan of ThingsBreak though his/her posts are a bit of a rarity these days. The latest post is a very good one on the recent debut of Nate Silver's 538 blog. I have read a few now and "Nate Silver falls off" is the one to choose if you only only choose one.

I don't have anything to add, ThingsBreak says it all and says it well.

illconsidered Fri, 03/21/2014 - 05:52

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538

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AP Misreports Haiyan as Category 4

illconsidered — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 08:49:11 +0000

AP Misreports Haiyan as Category 4

While reading an AP attributed article on Huffington post about Super Typhoon Haiyan (also known as Yolanda), I did a double take at this paragraph:

Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour), with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph), when it made landfall. By those measurements, Haiyan would be comparable to a strong Category 4 hurricane in the U.S., and nearly in the top category, a 5. Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are the same thing. They are just called different names in different parts of the world.

It struck me because "nearly in the top category" was not consistent with material I had read on Jeff Masters' Wunderblog, material such as this:

After spending 48 hours at Category 5 strength, the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone in world history, Super Typhoon Haiyan, has finally weakened to a Category 4 storm. With top sustained winds of 155 mph [edit: this is down from the peak figure of 195 mph], Haiyan is still an incredibly powerful super typhoon, but has now finished its rampage through the Central Philippine Islands, and is headed across the South China Sea towards Vietnam. Satellite loops show that Haiyan no longer has a well-defined eye, but the typhoon still has a huge area of intense thunderstorms which are bringing heavy rains to the Central Philippines. I've never witnessed a Category 5 storm that made landfall and stayed at Category 5 strength after spending so many hours over land, and there are very few storms that have stayed at Category 5 strength for so long.

Additionally he reported this for top wind speed data and historical context:

Three hours before landfall, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) assessed Haiyan’s sustained winds at 195 mph, gusting to 235 mph, making it the 4th strongest tropical cyclone in world history. Satellite loops show that Haiyan weakened only slightly, if at all, in the two hours after JTWC’s advisory, so the super typhoon likely made landfall with winds near 195 mph. The next JTWC intensity estimate, for 00Z UTC November 8, about three hours after landfall, put the top winds at 185 mph. Averaging together these estimates gives a strength of 190 mph an hour after landfall. Thus, Haiyan had winds of 190 - 195 mph at landfall, making it the strongest tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in world history. The previous record was held by the Atlantic's Hurricane Camille of 1969, which made landfall in Mississippi with 190 mph winds.

It took me longer than it should have to sort this out because in both the AP text and Jeff Masters' text appears the figure of 235 and I must confess some initial confusion because I did not immediately notice one was a figure for sustained winds and in kilometres per hour and one was for gusts and in miles per hour, so I assumed the same figures were in play even if the conclusions were so different. Anyway, I read the first passage in several places so I had to check it out.

The Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale is what the US government, weather agencies and media use and is what the AP article was referring to. There are other tropical cyclone scales in use and they vary in their category naming, delineations and wind speed definitions. As best as I can work it out, Haiyan is in the top category of all of these scales. This is what one would expect if Jeff Masters is correct in his historical placement of Haiyan, as he is. For example, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reports that Haiyan's top sustained winds reached 170 knots (315 kph, 196 mph). This is using "sustained" to mean a one minute average, as does the Saffir-Simpson scale.

In the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale the delineation for a category 4 storm is 130–156 mph, (113–136 kn, 209–251 km/h). At 170 knots (315 kph, 196 mph) is well into category 5 territory. But the AP text states "sustained winds of 235 kilometers per hour (147 miles per hour)", which does fall short of category 5. I think the mistake they have made is that they have used a weather bureau's definition of "sustained", which is a 10-minute average, and applied that figure to the Saffir-Simpson scale which wants a 1-minute average. I do not know what the exact source for the 147 mph figure is, but I have noted that on the Wikipedia page for Haiyan, the maximum 10-minute sustained figure is 145 mph and the AP article attributes that number to "weather officials" so they probably do have an accurate number despite not understanding what it means.

I'm sure this mistake will provide fodder for climate obfuscationists for many months and and will reappear years from now, and indeed I note that Marc Morano is already touting that phrase as evidence of "alarmist exaggerations".

But let's inject a little humanistic realism into the whole issue and recall that whatever you might want to say about its technical description, Haiyan's destruction is awesome and terrifying, and it is historic. The denialist talking points about how its not as bad as those alarmists are telling you truly fall down in the face of the images coming from the aftermath. Who do you want to believe, Marc Morano or your lyin' eyes?

[Update: WUWT goes all in comparing one weather agency's 10-minute average figure to the widespread use of the 1-minute figures actually relevant to typhoon strength and he of course cries "Lies! Lies!" Commenters have pointed this mistake out to him, but somehow that has not made it into any of the 10(!) updates to that post. Quelle surprise...]

illconsidered Tue, 11/12/2013 - 03:49

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One of the problems with Cat 5 is that below 190 mph, good brick/concrete buildings stand (take a look at the church in the middle of the picture)

I see your point, and perhaps the SS scale should also be revisited the way the F one was. Change the wind speed delimiters but not the category destruction definitions.

It would bring up another complication in that a storm's "true" assessment would really depend on where it is making landfall. Category 5 would have a lower threshold striking a more poorly constructed third world country like Louisiana vs Hong Kong.

I'm going to suggest it is all a bit of an academic exercise. Whether the storm was Category 5 or 1 makes no difference to all those destroyed houses. And it should not make any difference as to whether or not the residents are advised to evacuate - that should be based on the wind speeds and storm surges etc (which are very much dependent on the tide at the time the storm hits).

For a Cat 5 storm, considering the strict building codes and rigid enforcement, NOT, there certainly seem to be a lot of roofs left on. I was expecting to see pretty much every non-reinforced building to be flattened and pounded to kindling like buildings on the coast after Katrina.

Not that that proves anything. Perhaps this area was farther away from the eye-wall then other areas. Perhaps the tight clustering of the buildings helped. Maybe they just plain got lucky.

What mandas said.
Also, why all the irrelevant concern over a single data point?
This is hack territory.

Single data points do take on some significance when they represent new extremes (eg wind speed at landfall). Also, the spinning of the event we are and will continue to see is worth taking note of for those following the climate change debates...

Agreed that those issues take a back seat to the tragic destruction at this period of time.

Remember, anecdote is only valid data if you're using it to deny the science of the weather, coby.

coby, what is the *purpose* of the storm categorisation?

If it's how much damage it does, then it DOES MORE DAMAGE if it hits a poor town than a rich one.

If it's how fast the wind was, then use the wind speed.

If it's how much energy it had over "no synoptic scale picture", use the energy.

Volcanos may be countering greenhouse warming

illconsidered — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:22:43 +0000

Volcanos may be countering greenhouse warming

(image info and credits)

Fake skeptics of anthropogenic global warming love to set up the straw man that mainstream climate science believes that CO2 is the one and only driver of climate change. They can then use it in many different attacks, such as gee whiz isn't it stupid that they haven't even thought of the sun's influence. This is of course patently false as even the most cursory survey of actual scientific content will quickly reveal. This straw man is also an implicit part of the argument that the "16 year pause" in global warming proves that CO2 is not a climate driver. If CO2 has risen and temperature has not, then the theory of AGW has failed, they say. Well, this would only be true if CO2 were believed to be the only possible driver of the surface temperature record. (For this post I am ignoring the two facts that, one, 16 years is not enough to unambiguously show a trend and two, there actually is an upward trend).

Well, some recent research out of the University of Colorado, Boulder has found that despite the lack of any major eruptions, like that of Pinatubo in 1991, there has in fact been a significant increase in volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere over the last decade. This increase is large enough that its cooling effect could mask as much as 25% of the greenhouse warming we would expect to see if CO2 really were on its own as a climatic influence.

Between 2000 and 2010, the average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide — a planet-warming greenhouse gas — rose more than 5%, from about 370 parts per million to nearly 390 parts per million. If that uptick were the only factor driving climate change during the period, global average temperature would have risen about 0.2°C, says Ryan Neely III, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. But a surge in the concentration of light-scattering particles in the stratosphere countered as much as 25% of that potential temperature increase, he notes.

Further modeling indicates that the Asian Brown Cloud, unpleasant and influential as it may be regionally, does not explain the global data being recorded by satellite observation.

Now, by using a computer model that includes processes due to global atmospheric circulation and atmospheric chemistry, Neely and his colleagues show that the human contribution of aerosols to the stratosphere was minimal between 2000 and 2010. In one set of simulations, the researchers estimated the effects of all known volcanic eruptions, including the quantity of aerosols produced and the heights to which they wafted, on the month-to-month variations in particulate concentrations.

The pattern of stratospheric particulate variations during the past decade “shows the fingerprint of volcanoes, with the right episodes showing up at the right time,” says William Randel, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

This is an excellent illustration of why what the IPCC publishes are not called predictions, nor can they fairly be treated as such. They are projections of what would happen given assumed trajectories of key climatic forcing agents. When those agents, be they insolation, CO2 concentrations, stratospheric aerosol concentrations, ozone or albedo changes, do not actually change the way it was assumed in a climate model run, this is not the fault of the model.

So in summary, we have now yet another reason to dismiss the suggestions that recent surface temperature trends require the scrapping of the last 150 years of research and we must abandon the idea that humans are changing the global climate. We are changing the global climate, and the temporary amelioration of our disastrous warming influence by other natural factors is not likely to last long.

illconsidered Fri, 03/08/2013 - 05:22

Tags

Coby

Of course, you know that deniers are also going to say that this research proves that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans. In 3, 2, 1, ...............

mandas, can you cite articles which quantify CO2 emissions from submarine volcanoes in the pacific ocean?

Yes, so can you if you only google.

The US geological survey group look at that sort of thing for the USA.

All volcanoes add up to between less-than-1% and 3% of human production.

This last paragraph is a mess:

"So in summary, we have now yet another reason to dismiss the notion that recent surface temperature trends require the scraping of the last 150 years of research we must abandon the notion that humans are changing the global climate."

Scrapping, not scraping, I think, embedded in an accidental run-on sentence which is also missing a negation.

Feel free to delete my comment if you fix the sentence.

That was a mess, is hopefully better now...

Of course do volcanos counteract any atmospheric warming. The degree of the cooling effect is completely unknown since science has no sufficient values about submarine volcano eruptions. This deficiency in knowledge and GCMS parametrization is insufficiently known to the people outside the climate science circles, i.e. among politicians, media people, ordinary people like wow, jan, mandas, marco, etc. anf many other back seats in the audience without knowledge about what's going in science.

"Of course do volcanos counteract any atmospheric warming"

Really? So ANY amount of atmospheric warming is removed by volcanoes? But that would mean the world would drop to -33C after an eruption.

Please explain why this doesn't happen.

And how does freddykaitroll propose submarine volcanoes "counteract" atmospheric warming?

This "ordinary [person] not only knows about submarine volcanoes, he even knows that their effect on global climate, based on the assessment of volcanologists, is unlikely to be anything more than noise. Their effect on the trend is likely even less, as there is no evidence whatsoever of a trend in activity in the submarine volcanoes that are being monitored.

Freddykaitroll is once again showing off his ignorance.

coby, people ask me something and you preven me from answering. At least you could inform the blog participants that you censor me. Could you please com back to civility and abstain from German nazi police-like actions against me and civilized manners. Be a man and try to avoid the impression that you are one of the most primitive censors on the internet. I have already been banned several times from alarmist blogs, but every time the blog master had announced it. Not too long ago you proudly stated here that you would not censor any person. So what is your problem??
[coby: I have never said I would not censor anybody, and besides you have not been censored, I am just slowing you down. That makes your trolling a little less enjoyable for you, then that is probably the point. I do however really dislike sock puppets, take your handle either Kai or Freddy and stick with it.]

"And how does freddykaitroll propose submarine volcanoes “counteract” atmospheric warming?"

And without heating the oceans to be noticed, either.

"At least you could inform the blog participants that you censor me."

Censorship is government stopping you speaking, right?

And you can still type what you want elsewhere, can't you? So you're not being censored at all, you're just not being given a platform by someone else to speak.

Get your own.

coby, thank you, fair enough. I slow down, you are right.

Climate Trolls - An Illustrated Bestiary

illconsidered — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 08:04:51 +0000

Climate Trolls - An Illustrated Bestiary

As you travel the inter-tubes in search of learned discourse, understanding and information to prepare you for the coming climate cataclysms, you will see many curious creatures, some common, some rare, who are here for the sole purpose of deterring, deceiving and confusing you. Some will pray on your admitted ignorance or uncertainty. Some will pray on your subconscious wish that climate change not be real or if it is, it will be benign. Some will seem to engage sincerely but seek only to lure you so deep into the rabbit hole you will be unable to return. Some will dazzle you with words so long and unfamiliar and thoughts so obscure and eccentric that you'll feel you must believe. Some will simply badger and harass you until you can take no more. It is a harsh and dangerous world. This is why I wish to provide you a guide to these many and varied beings you will surely come across as you venture ever deeper into their native realm. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

An Illustrated Bestiary of the Climate Blogworld

The Galileo Gambiter - the harder you laugh at them the more sure they are that time will ultimately vindicate their transparent crack-pottery. No hypothesis is too far-fetched, no scientific reference too obscure and no twists of logic too contorted to be presented as irrefutable proof that they are right and everyone, and I mean everyone, else is dead wrong. No appeals to common sense or long established text book science in any field will shake their confidence.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Judith Curry's blog
Special attack: Dense, impenetrable jargon that is actually meaningless gibberish.
Favorite Topic: The laws of thermodynamics, galactic cosmic rays.
Best counter: Respond very sparingly or ignore completely. Under no circumstances make a serious effort at persuasion!

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The Auditor - Every new research paper is examined not for its logic, focus or internal consistency but instead is mercilessly scoured for incomplete or misstated descriptions of methods, unavailable or messy online archives of data, computer code that does not run on every machine of any configuration right out of the box, statistical assumptions that rely on understanding the physical reality they are describing. All explanations offered are only excuses for shoddy work, all acknowledgments of possible alternate approaches are admissions of fraud. Such treatment is, of course, reserved exclusively for papers that support the climate consensus.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog:    Climate Audit
Special attack:   Relentlessly ignore the forest while hammering away on the weakest tree (usually a Bristlecone Pine)
Favorite Topic: MBH98, a fourteen year old dendrochronology study of temperatures over the past 1000 years and the iconic "Hockey stick" graph it produced. Also any related statistical minutiae, usually misrepresented.
Best counter:     There is none.

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The Sanctity of Science concern troll - Why oh why are climate scientists and their defenders so mean? If only Gavin Schmidt and the Real Climate team would be less snarky we could all trust the IPCC reports. (The abusive vitriol and real life death threats directed at working climate scientists never get noticed, of course.) For these creatures, the over-arching issue of our time is not mass species extinction, the possible collapse of global civilization or environmental destruction via climate chaos, rather it is how the reputation of scientists as the dispassionate, robotic investigators of irrelevant minutiae is threatened. Scientists must hurry back to the lab and stop all the hysterics about floods, famines and sea level rise before people actually listen!

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog
Special attack: You just said "We have to do something!!" You are now a "policy advocate" and now that you have politicized your science anything you have to say is inadmissible. Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect any more research funding.
Favorite Topic: The science-politics interface and how science has no place there (?).
Best counter: Ignore.

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The Not the IPCCer - whatever was said on whatever topic by any of the IPCC reports, the opposite must be true. Indeed there has never been a single correct statement made or paper published by any member of mainstream climate science. This conviction extends to even the most non-controversial and well supported contentions found in the literature and is accompanied by complete ignorance of what is found in the literature.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Watts Up With That
Special attack:    Peer review really means "Pal review" and Michael Mann and Phil Jones control all the major journals and all the world's science institutions.
Favorite Topic:   Whatever the latest typo found in the latest IPCC report is.
Best counter:      Light. The copious self-contradictions permeating their minds thrives only in darkness.

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The Faux Skeptic - any study that in any way is consistent with a warming world caused by human activity is met with immediate and intense suspicion and scrutiny and ever escalating demands for more evidence. No assumptions of anything, no matter how reasonable, are allowed, everything must be derived again from first principles. Simultaneously, every vapid and transparently, embarrassingly wrong blog post put up on Watts up With That or Climate Etc is swallowed whole, pointers to the blindingly obvious refutations are either invisible or met with the disbelief described in the previous sentence.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog:    Watts Up With That
Special attack:   A not so quiet superiority complex.
Favorite Topic: Themselves
Best counter:     Try to expose the hypocrisy of pretending to be a skeptic about everything except anything that goes against the scientific consensus.

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The Uncertainty Monster monster - The ways of the world are deep and mysterious. Do not be too eager to deal out taxes in judgement, for even the very wise cannot see all ends. Let's just wait and watch a few more decades.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Climate Etc.
Special attack: We must not take any actions until we are 100% certain it is too late.
Favorite Topic: IPCC definitions of "likely" and "very likely"
Best counter: Uncertainty is actually not your friend in risk assessments (duh!)

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The Avenger - Like a trap door spider, this creature is always waiting to pounce and when they do, it is sudden and ferocious. Their target is anyone who makes any statement that questions established peer reviewed literature and they live to defend solid science and the scientific method. Though they are primarily a very effective counter to the other creatures always attacking reality, it is all too easy for sincere and innocent participants to find themselves confronted, judged and sentenced to the same fate one might only wish on the likes of Marc Morano and Steve Milloy.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog:    ScienceBlogs.com
Special attack:   Withering condescension.
Favorite Topic: Climate denialism, Intelligent Design, vaccine-autism linkage.
Best counter:     Rhinoceros hide.

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The Gish Galloper - there is no such thing as "on topic" in this creature's world. Every response is met not with a counter argument, but with a change of topic. They will attempt to exhaust you without ever actually engaging anything you say as you frantically research and cite and they simply move on to the next meme. They can not hear a thing anyone says to them, they can only talk, talk, talk, talk.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog:    All of them.
Special attack:   A Gatling gun full of climate zombie arguments.
Favorite Topic: All of them.
Best counter:     Relentless focus on one of the very first stupid statements made. The only way to tire this creature is by preventing subject changing.

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Hockey Goon - every graph ever produced by any climate scientist anywhere in the world is ultimately traceable back to the infamous MBH98 hockey stick. This graph is simultaneously both the foundation and the keystone of the climate science edifice. Their singular mission is to destroy this IPCC icon and thus the entire house of climate cards tumbles into oblivion. Usually a very close relative of the Auditor.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Climate Audit
Special attack: The greater warmth of the Medieval Warm Period, as obvious as it is unsupported by evidence, categorically proves that today's warmth is not unusual, not unnatural and a welcome boon to human kind.
Favorite Topic: English wine, viking colonies in Greenland and any anecdote about any particularly warm season in any part of the world at any time between 800 and 1500 years ago.
Best counter: High sticking - there are no referees here! Grab any or all of the hundreds of hockey stick graphs continually piling up in the scientific literature.

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The Conspiracy Theorist - for this creature, climate science exists only as a tool for the implementation of the New World Order wherein the UN takes over a world government funded by carbon taxes and presumably headed by Mike Mann.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite blog: Bishop Hill
Special attack: Global warming is not real because Freedom!
Favorite Topic: The imaginary hundreds of billions of dollars gullible tax payers supposedly shovel every year into university professors' already bulging silk-lined pockets.
Best counter: Silence. Any evidence you present is merely more proof of just how deep this conspiracy goes.

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The Right Wing Ideologue - To this creature, Al Gore invented climate science (just like the internet) and pretty much the only refutation they need for any argument you might make will involve a reference to either Al Gore's weight or the size of his mansion. Therefore climate change is not happening and if it is it is not humans and if it is it is a good thing and if it isn't it is still better than taxes.

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite news source: Fox News
Special attack: "Al Gore is fat!"
Favorite Topic: Al Gore's weight
Best counter: Don't bother...

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Breakthrough Boys - relax, they assure you. New technologies are just around the corner and will save us right on cue. We are masters of the universe, Mother Nature is our bitch and nothing earthly will ever get the better of glorious us. Come on! You know you want to believe...

How they see themselves	How the world sees them

Favorite writer:   Bjorn Lomborg
Special attack:     Just as the invention of the automobile indirectly solved the looming horse manure problems of old, so tomorrow will new discoveries rescue us from whatever mess we are in right now without even trying.
Favorite Topic:    Free market driven scientific research.
Best counter:       Direct engagement. But do it only for the lurkers!

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THE END

Thank you for reading. This guide may not be complete, but I hope it covers most of what you will encounter. Oh, and don't forget to arm yourselves with material from "How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic" guide.

The above was inspired by and encouraged by economics blogger Noah Smith. Many thanks, Noah, but I think you owe me a few hours of sleep!

illconsidered Fri, 10/26/2012 - 04:04

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Is Steve McIntyre an expert statistician?

illconsidered — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:18:23 +0000

Is Steve McIntyre an expert statistician?

I am not afraid of admitting my own areas of ignorance. The human body of knowledge is enormous and no one can possess all of it, or even be moderately familiar with all of it. The only shame is in pretending otherwise.

This admission fundamentally shapes my personal approach to the whole Hockeystick/Dendrochronology/Michael Mann brouhaha, which continues to this day despite MBH98 having receded into the rather distant past, in scientific research terms. I have to rely more on networks of trust and take a more removed view of it all and generally park that paper and that famous graph in the "pending full acceptance" bucket.

Well, here comes an opportunity for me to refine my "who to believe" assessments of competing claims of statistical expertise.

Further to the continuing and still amusing "conspiracy to call them conspiracy theorists" episode involving Stephan Lewandowsky, he has a new post responding to some more "auditing" from Steve McIntyre. His response, after an overview of what exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is, includes this passage:

Applied to the five “climate science” items, the first factor had an eigenvalue of 4.3, representing 86% of the variance. The second factor had an eigenvalue of only .30, representing a mere 6% of the variance. Factors are ordered by their eigenvalues, so all further factors represent even less variance.

Our EFA of the climate items thus provides clear evidence that a single factor is sufficient to represent the largest part of the variance in the five “climate science” items. Moreover, adding further factors with eigenvalues < 1 is counterproductive because they represent less information than the original individual items. (Remember that all acknowledged standard criteria yield the same conclusions.)

Practically, this means that people’s responses to the five questions regarding climate science were so highly correlated that they reflect, to the largest part, variability on a single dimension, namely the acceptance or rejection of climate science. The remaining variance in individual items is most likely mere measurement error.

How could Mr. McIntyre fail to reproduce our EFA?

Simple: In contravention of normal practice, he forced the analysis to extract two factors. This is obvious in his R command line:

pc=factanal(lew[,1:6],factors=2)

In this and all other EFAs posted on Mr. McIntyre’s blog, the number of factors to be extracted was chosen by fiat and without justification.

Remember, the second factor in our EFA for the climate item had an eigenvalue much below 1, and hence its extraction is nonsensical. (As it is by all other criteria as well.)

But that’s not everything.

When more than one factor is extracted, researchers can rotate factors so that each factor represents a substantial, and approximately equal, part of the variance. In R, the default rotation method, which Mr. McIntyre did not overrule, is to use Varimax rotation, which forces the factors to be uncorrelated. As a result of rotation, the variance is split about evenly among the factors extracted.

This seems a pretty straightforward, black or white, right or wrong issue. Is it? Is Stephan correct? Is there any possible constructive response for McIntyre? Statisticians please respond!

illconsidered Fri, 09/21/2012 - 06:18

Tags

The short answer is that an expert statistician would be unlikely to use Factor Analysis at all.

FA is a method which has been largely developed and used in Psychology rather than Statistics. It does the same sort of thing as Principal Component Analysis but with more assumptions and more computational difficulty.

Now, it may be that in some particular cases FA might be useful, but I've read several Psychology papers where the authors have just banged everything into FA (because everyone else does) when they would have learned far more from a few simple tables and scatterplots.

One problem with FA is that the solutions are not nested, so that the first factor in the 2-factor solution is not the same as the factor in the 1-factor solution. Hence the objection to using a 2-factor solution when only the first eigenvalue is large seems reasonable.

However, FA may well not be the best way to analyse these data in the first place. I've not looked at the work so can't comment directly, but past experience suggests it probably won't be.

Steve has already responded to this:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/20/conspiracy-theorist-lewandowsky-trie…

"Lewandowsky’s results are bogus because of his reliance on fake and fraudulent data, not because of replication issues in his factor analysis."

Is Steve an "expert" statistician? I'll leave that question to others, but I think Climate Audit's influence speaks for itself. The hockeystick has been relegated to the dust heap of bad science. Stieg's Antarctic temperature reconstruction has been refuted (improved upon?). The Gergis 1000yr Australian temperature reconstruction paper has been "delayed" and now Lew's paper has been shown to be pure junk (but we already knew that due to poor surveying methods).

Additionally, Steve has been a champion of better governance in the climate science field. I believe this has had a positive effect, but could still be improved upon.

"Is Steve an “expert” statistician? I’ll leave that question to others"

How about the answer?

Because it's "No".

"The hockeystick has been relegated to the dust heap of bad science"

Really? 14 national academies of science seem to disagree.

Instead of bloviating silly comments, why don't you produce a statistical analysys of your own and present it here for us all to to study? You obviously have much more information about the statistical methods Lewandowsky used than the rest of us combined. Looking forward to it.

Only the ideologically blinkered still cling to the Hockey Stick and, no, I'm not impressed that bureaucracies stand by it. Gravy train and all that. For great fun watch Richard Muller's evisceration of the Stick ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk

Remember, the overwhelming consensus before Mann was that the MWP and LIA did indeed exist.

Steve McIntyre has made it clear he is working with Roman Mureika on this problem. Roman is an "expert" by any definition.

Wow:"Really? 14 national academies of science seem to disagree."

Regardless of how many appeals to authority you stack on teh head of a pin, it's fundamentally wrong, his methodology was screwed up (noncentered PCA, failure to replicate via R2, deflation of variance) and most importantly completely at odd with modern, very-non-hockey-stick looking reconstructions including his own favored EIV method from 2008 (the latter agrees well with other modern reconstructions, in spite of more methodological problems).

Figure.

[ Can you believe that Lewandowsky used SV to determine the variance to use in his factor analysis? "Wow" is right. :-O ]

"How about the answer? Because it’s “No”."

What qualifications do you have to pass such an expert judgement?

"Really? 14 national academies of science seem to disagree."

Then 14 national academies must not have looked at the data and methods. If your result can be essentially replicated using random data, that can't be good. If the selection of you primary components is dependent on a couple of trees from a couple of denro chronologies or the upside down interpretation of contaminated data, then that really can't be good. Robust my ass.

"Regardless of how many appeals to authority you stack on teh head of a pin"

Do you realise what this is:

"Steve McIntyre has made it clear he is working with Roman Mureika on this problem. Roman is an “expert” by any definition. "

That's right.

An appeal to authority.

Once for McI. Once for Roman.

So if 14 countries' physics establishments is ignorable, how much more ignorable are two individuals?

Wow, you boys certainly have your problems in maths. You think 2 is greater than 14!

"What qualifications do you have to pass such an expert judgement?"

None, hence I'm not an authority and therefore I MUST be right!

"his methodology was screwed up (noncentered PCA,"

Nowhere near as scewwed up as McIntyre's attempt.

And, in 2001, a different PCA was applied and the SAME RESULT was seen.

Oh deary deary me.

To WoW: No, the mention that Roman M is an expert statistician was not an appeal to authority, it was related to the question whether or not Steve McIntyre is an expert statistician in the title of the article. The title of the article sort of asked whether the "science" in Lewandowsky's paper is really questioned by experts (presumably if it isn't then the author would suggest that we should pay no attention to the questioning). The answer to that is: yes, the science in Lewandowsky's paper is really questioned by experts.

Wow,

You disagree on Mr. McIntyre's having any expert status, and appeal to an authority of consensus regarding the Hockey-stick.

Carrick replies saying that Mr. Mureika is an expert as per *your* requirement, and thus in this particular case *you* cannot denigrate the statistics because of a lack of qualification. More importantly, Carrick says that it doesn't matter anyway because the facts of the analysis trump anything else.

You proceed to disregard the latter, and accuse Carrick of an appeal to authority and use that to justify your appeal to the authority of a collective of authorities!

Wow.... indeed.

Well, Lewandowsky took an online survey of convenience that only included anti-skeptic websites yet claims to investigate skeptics. You can't make a more basic mistake than that, so anything Lewandowsky says after that point is meaningless.

Lewandowsky's ideas about what eigenvalues to keep were outdated back in 1988 in the Psychological Bulletin, while McIntyre's knowledge seems to be up-to-date. And let's be honest, McIntyre made his living by his knowledge in the real world, while Lewandowsky has made his living in academia.

Thinking -- independent thinking -- may be hard, but it is important. Even for non-experts.

Here is Stephan Lewandowsky "on" Steve McIntyre:

http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/oberauerEFA.html

Here is Steve McIntyre's analysis of Lewandowsky's work:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/09/20/conspiracy-theorist-lewandowsky-trie…

(Working through the technical comments on both blogs is something of a slog, but important, I think, in tone, style, civility, information sharing, etc. Skip over the stuff that makes no technical sense)

Here's more about Stephan Lewandowsky, his feelings about "climate deniers" peer review, and much more. He recorded these short YouTube videos for the public:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4GUMMx4sK8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8wVfxoPqPA

Then, stare at the ceiling, chew on a pencil stub and draw your own personal conclusions. Tomorrow, try it again, with some more little bits of insightful information.

Soon, you will be riding a bicycle, full speed ahead.
....Lady in Red

Wow:"That’s right.

An appeal to authority."

Um no. Answering a question asked by the blog author.

One that you got wrong, genius.

LOL.

"Nowhere near as scewwed up as McIntyre’s attempt."

"scewwed up"??? Lol. Great timing from the great thinker himself.

Since the point is obvious wrt to centered PCAs, this just tells me that wow is another noob. All mouth, ad hominem, no knowledge.

"And, in 2001, a different PCA was applied and the SAME RESULT was seen."

Not the same result actually, still a wrong answer because there were other problems (R2 failed to verify). More recent studies (Moberg 2005 and onwards, who your intellectually challenged hero Mann apparently never understood why it was a superior methodology to his own) clearly demonstrate that outside of the calibration period, MBH just selected for and reconstructed red noise.

Simply because you fix one mistake doesn't mean you've fixed them all (and the list for MBH is pretty long).

The fact that Mann 2008 doesn't agree with MBH98, and Mann endorses his EIV as a superior method to CPS should tell you something important.

Also see comment about mixing SV/PCA and factor analysis and Lewandowsky, who doesn't know the difference between, even though there's 1/2 a million of us or so who do.

Enjoy tripping on your tongue. That's one thing you're good out. Peace/out. I don't waste my time with noobs with nothing to say.

"Um no. Answering a question asked by the blog author."

Um yes. With an APPEAL TO AUTHORITY.

Oopsie doopsie.

"Since the point is obvious wrt to centered PCAs"

Since McI selected only 30 measures to correlate to and those were heavily biased to self-correlation, yes, McI's attempt was laghably incompetent.

Therefore the answer to the question "Is Steve McIntyre an expert statistician" is "No".

Go on, Steve, feast your eyes on this:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007…

"The fact that Mann 2008 doesn’t agree with MBH98"

Since MBH 2008 still has that hockey stick:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2008/fig3.jpg

what level of agreement do you count as "doesn't agree"?

And you're still trying to use R2? You're no statistician, you're a dumbass with an Excel spreadsheet and thinking "Pivot Tables" is a cool thing.

William Briggs - who is a statistician - already blogged about this paper a few days ago - he is not a fan

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=6164

As for Mr McIntyre's abilities - well, people considering committing to 7 and perhaps 8 or 9 figure investments in mining used to trust his figures, so I'll go with the money.

The Hockey Stick has, er, "issues" - it isn't defended much these days. Mr Mc has blogged about the HS is correct but unless Prof. ("Robust Debate") Mann is willing to debate openly with Mr Mc then I kind of trust Mr Mc more than him.

One of them puts his money where his mouth is, one of them puts his mouth in front of the money.

Coby, an excellent question and you're right, it should be absolutely straightforward to get the answer you want (and I'd like to see too). I think we've just seen an illustration that online comments as they stand may not be a very good way of doing this. I think it might be better to actually try and find some independent people with credentials and ask them.

Though there's also the problem that any level of statistical expertise still leaves plenty of wiggle room for any sort of conclusion-drawing the expert wants. In Shumway's time series textbook, he takes the opportunity to make some blindingly poor climate-skeptic points - despite, you know, having written a text book that's clearly technically rich. The climate skeptic points fail some basic logic - which just goes to show, any level of technical expertise is no protection against stupidity.

So there are two (three?) separate questions: which of the two parties are technically correct (since they can't both be?) Consulting a small number of technical experts should answer that one quite quickly. Second, are they using the techniques and drawing conclusions in a logically consistent way.

The third question's most interesting to me: how does McIntyre choose what to analyse? He seems AFAIK never to have done much in the way of checking over Watts' work, for example. Is that because it's absolutely scientifically bomb-proof...?

Carrick is a liar:

I don’t waste my time with noobs with nothing to say.

Since you spend lots and lots of time on dishonest denier blogs the above statement is a lie.

Steve McIntyre is both incompetent and dishonest in his use of statistics (note I will not refer to him as a statistician since that would sully all others who are real statisticians). He was completely dishonest in his claim that using Mann's techniques resulted in "hockey sticks from red noise". What he, in fact, did was to generate 12,000 runs, throw out all which showed upside down hockey sticks (probably 50%), select 100 of the remainder which had the most hockey stick shape then post the best 12 of these. That is the complete opposite of what any competent and honest statistician would do. It is cherry picking at its very worst. Cherry picking is one of the more egregious forms of scientific misconduct.

McIntyre brings to climate science all the worst characteristics of his primary occupation, mining and resource development. That area is full of dishonest scam artists and fraudsters. See for example Bre-X Mining, Cartaway Resources and Timbuktu Gold. McIntyre should have stayed in mining exploration where he would be quite at home with these scoundrels instead of becoming involved in climate science and bringing all those deceitful and dishonest tactics with him.

"As for Mr McIntyre’s abilities – well, people considering committing to 7 and perhaps 8 or 9 figure investments in mining used to trust his figures, so I’ll go with the money. "

Well, considering the welfare of the fossil fuel industry whose members pay McIntyre, I doubt he'd be welcom if he showed that AGW was real and a problem.

You're right: go with the money.

McIntyre's been bought off.

"The Hockey Stick has, er, “issues” – it isn’t defended much these days."

Neither is the spheroidal shape of the earth. I guess that means that the round earth theory has, er, "issues", right?

But no, the hockey still has maintained its validity despite a score or more of further more exhaustive trials. What you still hear about is MBH 1998 and how it has "issues" which, as it turned out, were of academic importance. The shape, however, was real.

'sfunny how you never hear about McI's paper which had so many problems in it the paper was abandoned except in the denialosphere.

"He seems AFAIK never to have done much in the way of checking over Watts’ work, for example. Is that because it’s absolutely scientifically bomb-proof…?"

He never looked at Wegman's work, either.

But the answer to your question can be found at tamino's blog site.

"Well, Lewandowsky took an online survey of convenience that only included anti-skeptic websites"

Well, apart from the web sites like CA and BH and WUWT, but they "couldn't find" the email asking them for their input.

"You disagree on Mr. McIntyre’s having any expert status, and appeal to an authority of consensus regarding the Hockey-stick."

I disagree that he has any claim to being an expert statistician in the same way as a priest who buggers little boys has no claim to being a man of god.

If someone "as an expert statistician" makes the mistakes that McIntyre did in his paper "rebutting" MBH98, then they are not a statistician, let alone an expert one.

"the mention that Roman M is an expert statistician was not an appeal to authority,"

No, it WAS an appeal to authority.

Unless you're going to say that there was no point in bringing his name up.

When McIntyre posts stuff like this on his blog,
"Lewandowsky’s results are bogus because of his reliance on fake and fraudulent data",
you get a pretty clear picture of where he is coming from.

*Obviously* McIntyre isn't a trusted source. He's just a guy who posts mostly nonsense on a blog to support an opinion is clearly not deride from any facts. Why anybody pays attention to him is a mystery, although his reaction to Lewandowsky has been pure GOld.

Sorry coby... I don't think that esteemed statisticians will be showing up any time soon to answer your question.

They've probably done the analysis and concluded that there is a very high correlation between blog posts on climate and trolls of all varieties. For example, on slashdot they should automatically categorize any climate related post as "troll". Or maybe "trolling for trolls".

Good question though. My thoughts are that Climate Audit's value is not necessarily with Steve alone, but more so with competency of the collective.

"there is a very high correlation between blog posts on climate and trolls of all varieties"

Yes, you for example, turning up here, trolling away.

CA has no value whatsoever execept to those who value their personal fortune over the future of their family.

Dan Olner... Watt's doesn't have an extensive publishing record. Also, I think that any ethical person would recuse themselves from reviewing a pal, otherwise they'd be accused of "pal review". Maybe the climate science community could learn from his example.

coby... re: Trolls

Wow... exhibit A.

The rest of us (exempting TRJ)... exhibits Bee thru Zed ;-)

"The third questions most interesting to me: how does McIntyre choose what to analyse? He seems AFAIK never to have done much in the way of checking over Watts work, for example. Is that because its absolutely scientifically bomb-proof?"

This question has been asked many times - I'm surprised that most people who ask it don't bother to use the search feature on his blog to find the answer.

In short, what is said on blogs does not impact political policy, nor appear in the reports of UN IPCC where it does have such impact. That's first. Secondly, it's his blog, and he is (at least semi-) retired, so he posts about what interests him, as do most bloggers.

If you bother to check the archives, you will find that his posts on the subject at hand are unusual, in that he does use the f-word. Given the number of times regular readers/posters at his blog appeared to believe he would be justified in using that word, he almost never has, EXCEPT, as in this case, with relation to DATA, NOT PEOPLE; METHODS, NOT MESSENGERS.

AJ, you're a knobhead.

Exhibit A is DEFINITELY kai.

You are, likewise only here to propound denial of the facts because you're

a) An idiot
b) Told that it's all a commie/leftie/eco-hippie conspiracy to steal "your" money. I.e. an idiot useful to others.

AJ, Watts is no idol to hold up as an ideal.

On interview, he slagged off BEST (despite earlier saying that no matter what the answer, he could accept the results BEST came up with. Turned out he lied) saying "It is not peer reviewed".

He then quotes answers from papers that WERE NOT PEER REVIEWED.

And the answers he gave were in contradiction to a paper that WAS peer reviewed THAT HE WROTE.

That's right, a peer reviewed paper Watts was second author on said that there was no noticeable difference between badly sited recorders and well sited ones. BUT NOT EVEN HE agrees with the results, preferring to pretend it never happened.

No, Neil he gets his moderator who also doubles with a different account to use the f word liberally.

The mafia don NEVER gets his hands dirty when whetting his beak.

As someone who uses factor analysis/PCA, and has written on the topic, McIntyre's work was not even a beginner's error, it was much worse than that. The data shows one factor, there should have been no rotation, and any attempt to say otherwise is ludicrous. (my grounds for expertise? I've written 7 papers on factor analysis/PCA in psychological research, cited 250+ times, according to Google Scholar). He may be an expert in some areas, in this area he's not even a beginner, and any attempt to claim otherwise just shows ignorance.

Wayne2>

"Lewandowsky took an online survey of convenience that only included anti-skeptic websites yet claims to investigate skeptics. You can’t make a more basic mistake than that"

Actually, one can - and Lewandowsky did. About the most basic principle of applied psychology is that you don't investigate things about which you have a strong view, because, intentionally or not, you will skew your results. Any undergrad knows that. Lewandowsky has either committed deliberate fraud, or demonstrated that he is more incompetent than a typical undergrad in his own field - those are the only possible options. I think it's pretty evident that he is in fact severely lacking in intelligence - does he have velcro on his shoes? I imagine tying laces is beyond him - so it's unfair to conclude anything other than sheer idiocy has been at work here.

For what it's worth, you don't need to be an expert of any kind to judge the Lew paper. Google up a GCSE science mark scheme for coursework - Lewandowsky's paper wouldn't even get a decent grade at high-school level.

Seems Dave is incapable of understanding what the thread is about. It is about scumball McIntyre who is so dishonest that I expect that even AGW deniers like you don't like to discuss his antics.

However, you just come on this thread and start spreading ad hominem comments about someone who you obviously know nothing about and in an area which you also don't seem to understand. Typical denier troll behaviour.

WOW:

Perhaps. And perhaps you are a sock-puppet for our host here - how would I know?

This is beside the point anyway - I have no desire to enter into a slanging match about who is smarter etc. How about you just stick to the data and methods and defend them against SMs claims? Show the data, show the methods in all their full detail and show WHY he's wrong instead of attacking the messenger!

Honestly, if you feel SM (or anyone else for that matter) is striking below the belt, why lower yourself to that standard? If he's so obviously wrong, why doesn't anyone appear to be prepared to show exactly why and where he's wrong instead of attacking the man himself? That's what normally happens in science, isn't it? It would be completely devastating to his case, wouldn't it?

That's all a very serious set of questions, BTW. I remain stunned that such a simple and effective technique never seems to be employed. IMO, that is why such people get traction in this debate - to any interested outsider (such as myself), the whole thing reeks of a clique that simply wants to ignore the annoying outsider and hope he goes away. It comes across as childish and clique-ish crap rather than science, and frankly it looks really, really bad for the consensus side that they act this way, and it comes across as really, really concerning (to me) that no-one who is on the consensus side seems prepared to stand up and say "you know what, the guy has a point - there IS a minor mistake here, we should correct it". Not even ONCE in more than a decade of following this debate have I seen that, even when outsiders with no axe to grind found in SMs favour. How can anyone who claims to hold science in high esteem defend such behaviour?

@ Neil Fisher - you have been looking in the wrong places.

It's telling that you are not more concerned about the appalling behaviour of science deniers than you are about the reluctance of scientists, whose reputations are daily being attacked by same, not thanking them for their efforts to reject science.

On topic, sort of - McIntyre might or might not know general stats but he is not at all familiar with EFA. In any case, as his multiple posts demonstrate, he doesn't give a damn about statistics in this context. Nor about cognitive science. He and others of his kind are using the paper as a distraction from the record melt in the Arctic - and an excuse to trash climate science and foment false rage (particularly among the extreme right wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists who reject science).

The latest suggestion on CA (including by Watts, who recently demonstrated he can't do arithmetic let alone advanced stats) is to harass the DVC-Research at UWA and someone else suggested harassing the ARC. (I don't think their onslaught will get much response other than:- Lewandowsky et al might be interested in this additional swathe of evidence if they are planning follow up research.)

Not that I am an expert but there are some pretty solid looking publish papers being linked at CA that support SMs position. I haven't seen the same from the other side yet.

Wayne2>

“Lewandowsky took an online survey of convenience that only included anti-skeptic websites yet claims to investigate skeptics. You can’t make a more basic mistake than that”

If true, (which it's not as he did contact "skeptic" websites) what makes you think that the anti science mob don't look at nor comment on the mainstream science/reality sites?

Actually the sample might be biased in that from what I've seen, the anti-science commentators on the mainstream science/reality sites seem more rational than those who don't leave the confines of the "skeptic" websites. Mind you that does set the bar pretty low.

"This is beside the point anyway – I have no desire to enter into a slanging match about who is smarter etc"

Except that is PRECISELY what you came here to do.

Except now that you've found you're a jackass and quite a bit dumber than people who try to educate themselves, you're pretending otherwise.

McIntyre is sold body and soul to the fossil fuel industry. And someone who will knowingly lie in their sphere of expertiese (if indeed we take for the sake of argument McI is an expert) has thrown away their expertise and no longer can be classed as such.

Doctors who go round killing patients are no longer called doctors and are stripped of their certification if they bring their profession into disrepute.

McIntyre has done that.

" Show the data, show the methods in all their full detail and show WHY he’s wrong instead of attacking the messenger! "

Since this paper is pretending to show how MBH98 are wrong, how about you see whether M&M are right?

Given there are papers out that destroy the laughable attempt at M&M to recreate a hockey stick (e.g by selecting out of hundreds of random walk simulations those half dozen that look a bit like hockey sticks, but not very much), why don't you prove M&M right?

Or is this all about someone else do the work that has been done scores of times so that they can't do anything else?

Try proving MBH9 wrong:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/ONLINE-PREPRINTS/Millenn…

But if all you're going to say is "M&M did that", then you need to prove them right because this paper:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007…

gets the same answer with different methodologies.

Neil Fisher:
" If he’s so obviously wrong, why doesn’t anyone appear to be prepared to show exactly why and where he’s wrong instead of attacking the man himself? "

I believe that would be this bit here:

"In contravention of normal practice, he forced the analysis to extract two factors. This is obvious in his R command line:

pc=factanal(lew[,1:6],factors=2)

In this and all other EFAs posted on Mr. McIntyre’s blog, the number of factors to be extracted was chosen by fiat and without justification.

Remember, the second factor in our EFA for the climate item had an eigenvalue much below 1, and hence its extraction is nonsensical. (As it is by all other criteria as well.)"

Do you have a defense?

A person who goes by the handle of A Scott did a mangled copy of the Lewandowsky survey on WUWT. I spotted on CA that McIntyre looks like being the one to analyse it.

He said he has to work out how Lewandowsky et al crunched their numbers first. Going by the lack of progress so far, it will be a very long time before the A Scott survey sees the light of day - if it ever does.

I also notice that McIntyre seems unable to cope unless he's told exactly how to do the sums. He's pointing out that A Scott's survey had a different Likert scale (and from the sound of it a bad one - not just adding a neutral response, which is arguably not the way to go for this study, but reportedly having the 'neutral' response double as a 'don't know' response.) McI is complaining that it makes it difficult to compare the two.

While it's not an identical survey instrument, and the mangled scale will work to dilute relationships, I can't see why a competent person couldn't work out associations between 'skepticism', right wing ideology, conspiracy ideation, and the other constructs that were in the original research. (If the results are similar it adds support to the original work. If not it doesn't . ) This discomfort with a differently designed instrument, to my mind adds support the suggestion that McI is not adept at stats for sociological and psych studies.

A couple of points, based on the recent discussion.
1. There are some AGW deniers who read science-based websites (see above). Failing other options, some would participate in such a survey (I remember reading the complaints by some on the blogs).
2. Self-proclaimed statistcal experts may have pockets of expertise, and willingness to attempt statistics, but no-one can be expected ot acquire techniques flawlessly without supervision. SM is no exception, his use of PCA betrays lack of any practical knowledge, and hence, when he tries ot do something new, he is forced to beg for help from the same people he accuses of incompetencfe or dishonetsy (note that dishonesty is the only mortal sin in science). I know PCA well, but if I had to use SEM, I also know the statistician I would be collaborating with for a month or two, until I got up to speed. McIntyre is in southern Ontario, correct? Why hasn't he contacted statisticians at McMaster, Guelph, Toronto, etc., wwho can help him understand the techniques he wishes to use and critique, so he does nto embarrass himself?

The thing that struck me most about McI's approach was he was going about everything back to front. He seemed to look inside R for a formula that would 'fit' the answer that Lewandowski et al provided, rather than work out what EFA is designed to do, why someone would use it as part of an analysis - and then figuring out how to apply it in the context of this particular study.

(From the little I've read, R may not be the best program for EFA - although I understand there are modules that can be added.)

Until/unless he gets a better conceptual understanding of EFA and SEM then I don't think he'll get very far.

He might get further if he took a step back and thought about the research itself - and maybe even took a different approach altogether to the analysis if he thinks it's warranted. I'm not sure he is capable of that sort of holistic thinking.

Sou, like with his search for a pink-noise graph that looks like a hockey stick, he starts with wanting an answer and keeps looking until he finds something that produces the answer he wants, then stops.

Wow, the main question is, of course, why he is so obsessed with this study. It's far from being the first to obtain these sort of findings (eg Kahan et al and others). It's not climate science per se. Seems far removed from his area of interest (unless you include slagging off any scientist who accepts AGW).

Another question is why is he assuming the data is 'faked', and even if a few of the responses were 'scammed', he or at least some others, seems to be of the view that means the study itself is flawed - which doesn't make sense. (He offers no substantive reason for either assertion other than he thinks so.)

Surveys have been conducted since the year dot (well, maybe I exaggerate a tad). They form quite a big part of psych research in general in one form or another. Does he dismiss all surveys? (Maybe it's a prelude to dismissing the results of A Scott's survey of WUWT deniers - lol.)

"Seems far removed from his area of interest (unless you include slagging off any scientist who accepts AGW)."

You just answered your question, sou...

Maybe that's a only secondary reason, Wow. It could be that he wants to raise his flagging profile and attract people back to his blog again. This research seemed to get more traction in the MSM and on denier blogs than other similar research. (He even lowered himself to the extent of writing a piece for WUWT on the subject, which probably boosted Watts' ego.)

McI's been losing relevance after the past couple of years of weather disasters in the USA and the horribly dramatic Arctic summer. He hasn't done anything new for ages. (I imagine most of his potential audience is US based.)

I doubt it will give him much more than a short term bounce.

I would like to extend to you personal invitation to check my feature length documentary on the “cold facts” of Global Warming entitled “The Boy Who Cried Warming,” available in full at www.theboywhocriedwarming.com. The virtual premier has been enjoyed by over 12,000 viewers due to a grassroots campaign effort of handing out flyers and emailing people just like you! We are independent filmmakers without corporate sponsorship, every view counts to us, and we would truly appreciate if you would take a look and (if you enjoy the film) encourage others to check it out. The list of websites mentioning our film growing, and we would be honored if you would join the growing list distinguished sites below:

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Watts Up With That?
Examiner.com
Digging in the Clay
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Junk Science
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Before it’s News
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Jesse Jones
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No need. The reason for people flocking to his blog is to engender support for the fossil fuel industry's PR.

The way things are now, the only ones left are the converted who will never shift until they can find someone else to blame for their destitution.

His need now (or, rather, the need of his employers) is to maintain doubt for the use of the US senate bought and paid for members.

If they can keep the USA doing fuck all about this, they

a) ruin Obama
b) stop everyone else from doing anything substantive about it

the latter being because there are similar greedy fuckwits who will go "Oh, we can't hamstring ourselves in this global market, so we can't go until the USA goes first...".

All these idiots want is to keep the scam going until they can retire, leaving the mess for the next sucker to clean up.

Rather like the rapine of companies in hostile takovers, really. Or, indeed, the stock market itself.

wow and fellow co2 hysterics and climate church fellows

fossil fuel industry and similar bla bla bla from corrupted postnormal climate science is insanely strange. dagw is the biggest public manipulation effort by leftist and green activists around the planet to attract people's awareness in order to satisfy ego narcisstic neurotic profiling dreams of desperate individuals from the hysteric climate church

wow, you are extremely poorly informed, unfortunately.

you should know that there is no anthropogenic warming. what you will never understand, because of missing formation and knowledge in the subject, is that the climate always changes with or without you and your bad co2.

your level of scientific understanding is sooooooo low that i have to go to the toilet now for six hours of continous vomiting

Jessie, it was hilarious.

Though I don't think that was your intent.

Not since Lord Mockton last got up in front of the fat men in the Heartland Institute lectures was such a pile of self-serving garbace made of not merely half-truths but outright rubbish has been noted in public before.

The last time something like this was seen outside the denialosphere was a youtube clip of a little boy with chocolate all round his mouth, being asked by his mother "did you eat the chocolate cake" to be replied with angelic dissemblance "No". Not once, but several times.

Lots of discussion here in a very short period of time. Unfortunately, I think both Coby and all the other posters are missing the point.

It doesn't matter whether or not Lewandowsky or McIntyre are right with their own interpretation of the statistics. Firstly, because whether or not deniers are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories does not change the science one iota. The science is strong, and humans are changing the climate because of emissions of GHG. Of that there is no doubt.

The whole point of this is that Lewandowsky produced a paper of very minor importance and the deniersphere went into paroxysms of indignation about it. It is so funny to watch - watts, mcintyre, nova and all the usual crowd are frothing at the mouth with rage and calling Lewandowsky every name they can think of. Lewandowsky statistical analysis may be flawed (or it may not be) because of biased samples etc, but he now has a huge sample of comments to draw on. And they are as funny as hell!

The deniers have made Lewandowsky's case for him with their comments and indignation. After years of calling scientists 'liars' and 'scammers', and calling AGW a hoax, the deniers are getting a taste of their own medicine, and they don't like it. The irony and humour in this whole situation is wonderful to witness.

My recommendation - stop worrying about whether or not the paper and the analysis is any good. Grab a bucket of popcorn and sit back and watch the fun.

And thank you Stewart, for the most rational comments on the questions posed by Coby - even though I have my own take on the issue.

@ Mandas, it's true that whatever people believe the science doesn't change. What people believe does affect what is/can be done about the situation. (Outliers and cranks aren't important - it's the middle group that makes a difference.)

A better understanding of why people reject facts will hopefully provide some insights into how to communicate science and options for policy response, and enable democracies to come up with workable strategies to deal with the awful situation we've got ourselves into

Sou

I take your point about gaining insights so we can better develop policy responses. However, I think that discussions to that end often start out with the naive assumption that it is possible – if we improve our method of communication – that we will end up convincing all but the ‘outliers and cranks’. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that is possible.

To explain, there are plenty of examples around that demonstrate that people will reject even the most convincing arguments because of culture or ideology, or because they just don’t like the answer. Things like UFOs, the moon landings, 9/11 truthers, Kennedy assassination et al are easy to point to and suggest that it is only cranks that believe this sort of conspiracy nonsense. But there are many, many otherwise logical and rational people out there who totally reject evidence because it does not fit with their preconceived worldview, and the vast majority of them will never change their minds. At one end of the spectrum of evidence rejecters are young Earth creationists and evolution deniers, but there is also a large percentage of the population that still believes in god despite the complete lack of evidence for such a view. How do you communicate science and options for a policy response to such people when they are not interested in facts and evidence – and never will be?

So I am going to stick to my originally stated view. I don’t think Lewandowsky is interested in contributing anything of significance to the issue of communicating science. I just think he is having a bit of fun with deniers. He gave the hornet’s nest a very gently poke, and got a very typical, frothy-mouthed, hypocritical response from people who have no sense of humour about their ideology

And the evidence for that is on his site, here:

http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html

And some of the comments as follows:

“But most of all I'd like to thank our skeptic friends for providing the material in undoubtedly the most enjoyable thread ever in the climate blog wars. To quote the psychiatrist from Fawlty Towers, "there's enough material in here for an entire conference"

“Oh God, the poor souls just can't help themselves. Do they have any idea how completely ridiculous and desperate they look? This thread suggests no.”

We'll have to differ on that score, mandas. There is ample evidence that an understanding of motivation/behaviour can help design strategies that are more effective and more properly, change behaviour. (This is at the heart of the fear of the ultra-right wing ideologues IMO. They are scared of and opposed to 'social engineering' - including what others might think of as being a responsible member of society.)

Examples include encouraging people to quit smoking, drink alcohol in moderation, use public transport, recycle waste, stop littering, keep fit, use sun protection etc etc.

By the way - there's nothing to say one cannot get some enjoyment from seeing one's research confirmed in multiple ways :) Prof Lewandowsky's writings and research show that his professional interest is in cognitive science plus he cares strongly about the adverse impacts of global warming. This study fits both. I don't believe it was a flippant piece of research, nor do I think it was a seminal study (and I doubt he does either).

I don't know why you lump in the Kennedy assassination in with UFOs, and in turn UFOs in with 9/11 and moon-landing hoax nonsense.

What's wrong with UFOs? The possibility of undocumented aircraft flying around isn't monstrously low, and the possibility that they are extra-terrestrial in origin might be even smaller, but I think it's reasonable to keep an open mind about the idea.

As for Kennedy....the motives are pretty clear, and even the guy they fingered for it (although he conveniently never made it to a lawyer let alone a trial) was a CIA employee. Shades of Thomas a Beckett there, at the very least...

I don't think deniers are "getting a taste of their own medicine". For decades the only recourse for AGW deniers is conspiracy theory. They've learned only that now, for a generation they've relied upon it.

At most, their learned reaction is being taken advantage of and documented for future generations and the resume of psychologists.

And it isn't "the middle" that are important. Light cavalry attack a larger forces' flanks, removing the numbers bit by bit until the core is alone and irrelevant as a force.

And here the outliers are being shown how DUMB their compatriots are. The most extreme on the rational side will leave as the evidence of the nutbar nature of the core becomes obvious.

Their departure will leave a gap that will be mostly filled by the less self-aware fringe, now the "rational fringe" of the remaining group.

After a while, more hardcore people will leave, either realising they want to be on "the winning side" or just because they're in the core because all the people they know were there or nearabouts, and followed them in. Well, now they're following some out.

Yes, after I wrote that about 'the middle' I had further thoughts. For example, it's the outliers (at both ends of the spectrum) that influence what I believe is referred to as the Overton window. Extremists can pull the middle - and the majority - in one direction or the other.

In the USA it's the cranks to the right of the spectrum who appear to have influenced lawmakers - pulling both Republicans and Democrats towards extremist right wing views.

Shining a spotlight on the craziness of this extremist nonsense, the irrational basis for rejecting science (I don't accept facts because I don't want to pay tax), plus the stark evidence of the damage the shifting climate can wreak (Arctic, weather disasters around the world etc) will hopefully wake enough people up to the importance and urgency of the situation we're in.

Part of the problem is you're thinking of a straight line from "us" to "them".

This is why the US political system is fucked up.

Think of a flat plane of spacetime with black holes and massive objects sitting on it.

You can be extremely IN on point and that may constitute astronomical density.

But you can't go round drawing lines on there and saying "between these two points is "the middle"".

The absolute simplest you should go is to imagine a triangle with you on one vertex and "the two extremes" on the other two vertices.

From each one's point of view, THEY are the moderate.

Imaginging a line and two extremes and a middle where, for some unexplained reason, "the truth" should be is not only unhelpful but actually damaging.

Wow - we're probably talking past each other. The downside of short comments on a blog :(

You don't need to convince me of what you are saying. I am most certainly not of the view that 'truth' must be a compromise middle position on some straight line spectrum..

My comments were in the context of the ability or otherwise of a government to develop and implement sensible policy, given the tendency of elected officials to pander to what they perceive of as popular opinion (or the opinion of their donors, which is not necessarily the same thing) in order to get donations or to be re-elected.

Well, it's a common phrasing of the problem and is, moreover, the underlying process analogised in the Overton Window.

And quite unhelpful unless you have a specific implementation in mind to paint two ends wrong and an intermediate "middle ground" as best.

You can't compromise on the value of Pi without recognising the effect of that error.

We've moved way off the topic here, Wow, but I'll just make this observation.

I'm thinking you are talking science fact (ie "truth" or the closest we can get to it given the information available at the time) while I am talking about policy response.

Policy development and more especially implementation is almost always about compromise, in a democracy at least, but also in many other forms of government (eg the party-based system in China). (The Overton window as I understand it is a convenient way of describing a cluster of public opinions in terms of acceptable policy responses to a range of issues. Eg when I was in the USA in the 1970s, wearing a seatbelt was considered by many people I met to be an infringement of civil liberties. I don't know if attitudes have changed since - or if any states have since passed legislation making seat belts compulsory. IMO there is no 'right or wrong' or 'truth' in any particular policy response in that instance. The facts are there but what you do with the facts can include a range of options.)

There is more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.

However, before good policy can be agreed upon, decision-makers need to agree/accept the 'facts' of the situation.

Apologies, Coby.

McI has published another post, but hasn't yet shown any sign he's learnt about statistics appropriate to cognitive science.

It doesn't have to be scientific truth.

If I say I want to kill you, you say you don't want me to kill you, we compromise on me cutting your legs off.

Compromise?

The political scene (as typified by the illustrations of the Overton Window) relies far too much on some assertion of only one dimension, left to right, and the extremes ALWAYS being wrong and, though it doesn't specifically say so, the median point being "the truth".

All that means is that the nutters then go extreme, asking for the moon, stars and all the creatures therein, knowing that the median point will be moved to "compromise" on the "true middle ground".

It's how the overton window moves.

And it is enabled by this meme that there is a single dimension and extremes are at either end.

Its an infinite plane, with each mass being a position to take. And all the people in orbit around them, occasionally moving off to orbit another nearby idea to go back again when disturbed from that orbit.

There is no extreme end.

There's an orbit never moving away from a point, and that's the only extreme.

Yeah, well that wasn't my understanding of either the meaning or context of the term, Wow. But you could well be correct. It's an american term AFAIK - a different culture to my own (and to some extent, speaks a different language :D) so I'm not the expert here.

In any case, I hope my post clarified what I was talking about, regardless of the definition of the Overton window.

Seconding mandas, Stewart's is the only reply so far that fits the original ask. Coby, I wonder if it might be worth re-doing the thread, this time specifically asking for people competent at the specific stats and moderating to only allow them to post? (So that would exclude my post above as well!)

I think that's probably the only way a thread like this can function: laying out moderation policy to start with and sticking to it. Nowt wrong with having a specific goal for a thread, and this one has only seen the one reply from Stewart that fits.

Coby would be far far better off asking specifically statisticians.

E.g. see if Lewandowski has some spare time or check Tamino's blog, post there to Tamino.

But this post, if it really IS about questioning actual bona fide statisticians, has built in fail.

PS Coby already has a response from a real statistician, included in the thread topic.

Hence, since the claim of error has not been refuted, the mechanism may be opaque, but the reasoning for requiring a high binding count (i.e. if you're going to pick a synthetic value, it should correlate with many other genuine values from which that synthetic one is derived) is pretty clear and incontrovertible and therefore the criticism of McI's work stands.

About all that remains is whether McI is an expert statistician.

Since, as I've said before, someone who will prostitute their expertise to pretend an incorrect result has given up their claim to expertise, this answers that question.

Seems to me the more McI opens his mouth (so to speak) the more he puts his foot in it. If EFA is a 'popular technique', how come there are so few experts blogging on these threads? If 'EFA assumes normality' means it can only work with normal distributions (as McI seems to be saying), why can it be used with non-normal data (which is not uncommon from what I read)? Why does McI keep calling 'fraud', which is a very strong word even if any responses were an attempt at 'gaming' - of which there's no evidence.

Maybe Stewart will pop in again and give his thoughts.

(One of the authors on LOG12 specialises in multivariate design, factor analysis, SEM and psychometrics and has worked in the private sector - validating proprietary instruments and developing psychometric inventories - as well as academia. I'd hazard a guess he knows a bit more about these techniques than McI.)

I thought PCA type analyses did ask for normal data. I'm sure many people use it anyway, but that's the case with a mass of statistics. Non-parametric stats is a pain in the ass as I recall so many people seem to go lalalala when it comes to checking for normality. Doesn't make it right, but that might be why you see so much of it Sou.

The paper talked about here was EFA where you try to find a pseudo factor (made up of a combination of other factors) that can be used to replace those other factors to reduce the number of degrees of freedom that you have to run a component analysis (or any correlation analysis) on, making the job a darn sight easier.

And though you're probably right in saying "that might be why you see so much of this", the point is that you shouldn't be seeing it from somone claiming (or being hailed as) an expert.

Proctologists don't go round claiming expertise in cardiology, though they may have done some work on that in their medical degree.

EFA/PCA doesn't require normal data, that's uneccessary because the statistical tests aren't particularly widely-used, and results are pretty robust (see Buja & Eyuboglu, 'Remarks on Parallel Analysis', 1992).
No statistician is an expert in all fields - and an expert knows where their expertise ends. Bu tthe mistakes McI made are not even novice mistakes, as could be made by someoine unfamiliar with the field picking up a textbook and fumbling. A scientist or statistician would start by wondering where they went wrong, and then work through it, or contact the author with their questions. A real expert knows where to turn for help. Uri Simonsohn has identified actual fraud in science, and puts contacting a statistical advisor as a major step.

Thanks, Stewart.

One good thing - it's re-awakened a dormant interest in stats and thinking about how I might improve some of my work - and develop some other ideas I've been mulling over. Might be time for me to go back to school :D

"Do you have a defense?"

Do I? No, but SM does - that the method was insufficiently and or incorrectly described to allow him to KNOW what was done, so he had to GUESS.

From what he says, the number of factors used was determined by using what the authors now claim is "normal practice" in the discipline. OK, fair enough - yet for them to pillory SM instead of pointing out the REAL reason for the choice is somewhat odd to me. If you would be so kind as to point out where the author has made such a point, I will happily concede - if you cannot, will you do the same? I would hope so.

To be frank, the math and stats are over my head (at least in the detail - I will flatter myself to say that I understand the concepts if not the minutia), however SM lays out what he did so that the interested (and competent) can follow and duplicate his work. It is a pity that the original author cannot make the same claim, isn't it?

wow, why are you everywhere so stupid: "Proctologists don’t go round claiming expertise in cardiology, though they may have done some work on that in their medical degree"

you should said:
"climate scientists go round claiming expertise in atmospheric physics, though they may have done some work on that in their former jobs as lawyers, judges, teachers, partisan green politicians, opera singers, blue collars, investment bankers, housewifes, etc, etc."

wow, you should really work on your intellectual capabilities and missing knowledge

Neil, why on earth would anybody want to "duplicate" Steve McIntyre's work?

Why on earth would "the original author" be expected to facilitate anybody wanting to "duplicate his work"?

I think you're a bit confused about the difference between ignorant amateur-hour blog-driving and academic work.

"SM does – that the method was insufficiently and or incorrectly described to allow him to KNOW what was done"

That, however, seems due to his incompetence at statistics.

Neil Fisher, it is quite common that methodology in a scientific paper is insufficiently clear for those who are not experts in the field. I would almost say it is standard. I remember my first steps into the field in which I am now considered an expert: frustration, errors, and much more, simply because many steps are considered trivial by the experts.

Rule number 1 when failing to replicate a study that is outside your area of expertise is to assume you did something wrong. McIntyre's rule appears to be that if he cannot replicate something, the OTHERS did something wrong.

Also, if you write multiple posts in which you accuse a group of scientists of scientific misconduct (both explicit and implicit, as McIntyre did), don't expect that same group to be very willing to help you.

It was quite funny to see the Auditor being audited...and found wanting. Not for the first time, it should be noted. I remember when deepclimate showed that McIntyre's code mined for the 1% of most extreme hockeystick shapes. Something not described in the method section of his paper. Oddly (well, actually not), none of his regulars called him out on that omission when it was exposed.

"Neil Fisher, it is quite common that methodology in a scientific paper is insufficiently clear for those who are not experts in the field. I would almost say it is standard."

Sure - and when you started, did the experts tell you you were stupid, ignorant, etc etc, or did they point out the error of your ways, show you where to learn etc etc? The latter, right? And if you DID find a mistake, did they complain bitterly that you were still an idiot, or did they say something like "Hey! You're tight - let's see what that means..."? Did they fail to correct the mistake even when it didn't "matter" to the conclusions, or did they "fix" the error? Yeah - exactly, they fixed it, even when it "didn't matter", right? Contrast to Phil Jones' actions - reprehensible in comparison, aren't they? Who is anti-science here?

I have followed this as an interested observer for over a decade and I have to say that the more bullying, obscuration, failure the correct and failure to explain I have seen - and frankly, the more lies - the worse it looks for the establishment/consensus side. Doesn't mean they are wrong, but it sure is suggestive that they cannot be trusted to be objective (NOTE: NOT "cannot be trusted", but "cannot be trusted to be objective" - an all too common failure, myself no doubt included).

Neil Fisher, when I started my science career the experts told me to first get up to speed with the basic literature, ask questions to those close to me, and then try and add my knowledge. Unlike Steve McIntyre I did not go in with the rule "I am right, others are wrong, and this is the way it must be". I have seen very few cases where the experts went in and "fixed" any errors, especially when those supposed errors have little impact and when the field has moved on years ago (as in: no longer using that procedure).

I'm not sure what actions of Phil Jones you are referring to, but if it is the non-sharing of data, I think someone needs to stay away from Climateaudit for a while and work in a lab that has to deal with proprietary information. I have, and under absolutely no circumstance will you ever get access to that data from me. You can go to the actual data owners, and if they decline, well, tough luck for you! It's interesting you don't see the FoI requests sent out through Climateaudit are not bullying (why don't they go to the actual data owners? Oh, that's right, no interest in doing actual work).

Oh, and has Steve McIntyre already sent a correction to GRL for not disclosing in his methodology that his method to show the supposed hockeystick from red noise included an explicit selection of some examples of the 1% of most extreme shapes? And that even then the hockeystick shape was still *much* smaller than the actual signal observed in MBH? No? Gee, and somehow you trust this guy.

when you started, did the experts tell you you were stupid, ignorant, etc etc, or did they point out the error of your ways, show you where to learn etc etc? The latter, right?

I don't imagine that Marco's first reaction was to loudly proclaim that all the experts were wrong and either incompetent or frauds.

Neil Fisher:

I have followed this as an interested observer for over a decade and I have to say that the more bullying, obscuration, failure the correct and failure to explain I have seen – and frankly, the more lies – the worse it looks for the establishment/consensus side. Doesn’t mean they are wrong, but it sure is suggestive that they cannot be trusted to be objective (NOTE: NOT “cannot be trusted”, but “cannot be trusted to be objective” – an all too common failure, myself no doubt included).

This is one of the aspects of professional scientific culture that's hardest for the lay public to understand: why are so many scientists jerks?The best answer I've seen is here. Summary:

"Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. "

I trained to the doctoral level for a career in science, before I found an easier way to make a living. One of the reasons I dropped out was that I couldn't take the heat, but I didn't reject the science because of that. My classmates who stayed are still jerks competitive personalities, but they're now leading the field by virtue of the originality, power and fruitfulness of their contributions, which have held up to the unsparing scrutiny of their equally competitive peers. It's how science is done.

Mal Adapted. The question is not whether there is human nature in science. It is whether there are robust systems to prevent that human nature distorting science and leading to the level of certainty required of research to carry the title "science".

Your argument is that because people are human, it's perfectly OK for referees to favour one side, for policemen to accept bribes for climate researchers to run propaganda attack sites aimed at pushing their own politics.

None of these are acceptable. They might all be a result of human nature, and you can't blame us for being human. But you can blame the systems and processes in science that have failed to maintain the standards that are required for the public to have any trust.

Let's put it this way. Would you be happy for Lewandowski to be tried before a jury of ordinary human beings ... who just happen to be selected from those posting at WUWT?

They are only human? They are only doing what humans do? What on earth could possibly be wrong with having a totally biased jury that is bound to hang draw and quarter this jerk?

So, why do you think it acceptable to have a jury of climate nutters pretending to be scientists deciding what the world should do on the climate?

And to be quite honest, given your answer is it any surprise the public do not trust scientists who as you say are a bunch of jerks?

Morph says: "As for Mr McIntyre’s abilities – well, people considering committing to 7 and perhaps 8 or 9 figure investments in mining used to trust his figures, so I’ll go with the money."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm confusing - convincing investor to sink there money into various mines. . . . . . . has what to do with understanding the complexities of our global heat distribution engine, {you know climate}???

It does have a lot to say about his ability to play with and present numbers and also the finer arts of sweet talking investors. . .

And that has what to do with understanding the complexities of our climate???

Cheers
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com

Morph says: “As for Mr McIntyre’s abilities – well, people considering committing to 7 and perhaps 8 or 9 figure investments in mining used to trust his figures, so I’ll go with the money.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m confusing – convincing investors to sink their money into various mines. . . . . . . has what to do with understanding the complexities of our global heat distribution engine, {you know climate}???

It does have a lot to say about his ability to play with and present numbers and also the finer arts of sweet talking investors. . .

And that has what to do with understanding the complexities of our climate???

Cheers
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com

@citizenschallenge, I fiddled through your junk site and found only stupid "anti-denier" religious fervour from a further warm climate hypcrite?

Are you willing to disclose your political climate agenda? Be honest and tell us here that you are a green activist who hates people like Whatts, McIntyre, Lindzen, Singer, etc. etc.

Yes, the definition of a site is whether it agrees with you, right, kai?

Can a creationist be a good scientist?

illconsidered — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:41:06 +0000

Can a creationist be a good scientist?

I honestly think that while belief in creationism is the antithesis of scientific thought, it is still possible to be a good scientist and a creationist at the same time. This is for two main reasons. Firstly, creationism is a term that covers a wide spectrum of beliefs, from literal 6000 year old earth bible thumping denial of evolution to a more nuanced kind of mysticism that believes somewhere beneath the deep layers of complex and wonderful natural processes exists an unexplainable and supernatural foundation.

There is no practical difference between investigating how deeply "God's" thoughts are buried beneath the details and just trying to model the behavior and attributes of time and nature's features, from the grandest principles to the microscopic minutiae.

Secondly, the human brain is remarkably adept at compartmentalizing and otherwise dealing with its own internal contradictions. Clearly more often than not this is a bug, not a feature, but sometimes it is indeed a feature! Thus one can quite easily maintain a separation of one's theology and one's day job.

But can you really trust a climatologist who believes, in the face of mountains of evidence, the following?

We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.

and this:

We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.

Dr. Roy Spencer has signed a statement that includes the above passages, a fact which does much more to explain his error ridden work on the satellite temperature record than an accidental swapping of a negative and positive sign on a crucial corrective adjustment ever could. It is also yet another clear indicator of the false skepticism of the climate denialist community that such an attitude does nothing to encourage a questioning of this man's stated opinions on climate science, opinions that fly in the face of 97% of the domain expert opinions out there and more importantly fly in the face of all evidence.

Hat tip to mandas for bringing this up.

illconsidered Wed, 09/12/2012 - 06:41

Tags

SloppySecondsGate

illconsidered — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:56:28 +0000

SloppySecondsGate

(not an original moniker in the title, someone remind me where it came from so I can give credit where credit is due!)

While I think the approriate response to ClimateGate 2.0 is to ignore it, I also think the mainstream media is doing mostly just that so it is safer to bring your attention to this good rebuttal to the whole affair from potholer54 on YouTube:

I think the most telling quote echoing around the denialosphere right now is this one from Jonathan Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what's included and what is left out.

It's supposed to reveal evil scientists twisting their research and data to support some preconceived message, "presumably global warming is scary, give us lots of grant money." But look what happens when you put in a tiny bit of context:

I think the hardest, yet most important part, is to boil the section down to 0.5 pages. In looking over your good outline, [...] you cover ALOT. The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid what's included and what is left out.

Reality can be so boring....

(note the misspelling of "guide" that may frustrate text searches, like mine just now! So, for The Google: "The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what's included and what is left out". Now at least one relevant page will be returned!)

illconsidered Mon, 11/28/2011 - 10:56

Tags

Get a Grip!

illconsidered — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 06:35:17 +0000

Get a Grip!

Hat tip to Chris S on the last AWOGWN thread for posting the link, here is the video of David Mitchell shredding the "prove it first, then we'll stop the pollution" argument embedded below:

I have argued many times that the "let's do nothing til we're sure" people have it backwards because we are in fact doing something: altering the atmospheric chemistry. Do nothing til we're sure would entail an immediate cesation of all long-lived GHG emissions.

illconsidered Fri, 09/23/2011 - 02:35

Tags

precautionary principal

Video Clip Summary -
1] Do we need to convince people the earth needs saving?
Yes, it's true, but baffling that it is true.

2] Onus is on the people who doubt the existance or extent
of man made climate change to prove it's not worth doing
something about, just in case.

3] Climate Change is happening.
Man is responsible.
Every reputable scientist believes this.
Even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

4] Everyone qualified, says it will make the planet uninhabitable.

5] Describes the action by a parent who discovers a 0.1% chance of a product killing a child who will take back the product instead of rationalizing and continuing to use it.

This would happen until the opposite were proved, that it is, in fact, safe.

6] We should follow this same reasoning (course of action for global warming prevention) until climate change is found to be false.

So, let's review. (Assuming for the moment 1,2,3 and 4 are true)
_________________________________________
- For the child's item -

A] Action is to return the item.
B] Time frame item could cause death - immediate to a few years
C] Each child's item is a one time issue, per parent. (But happens periodically through time.)
D] $$ lost by the parent? - $0 to a few hundred, depending on the return policy.
E] Possible result - home is returned to "before threat" safe condition, child continues to live.

- For climate change -

A] Action(s) is(are) . . .
B] Time frame . . .
C] How often . . .
D] Cost(s) . . .
E] Result(s) . . .

So, David, how come people aren't hopping all over this?

- For climate change -

A] Action(s) is(are) . . .

Systemic reductions in fossil fuel use via progressive taxation on their consumption. (The solution I've always advocated.)

B] Time frame . . .

Until atmospheric concentration of CO2 stabilizes at a level that most experts agree poses minimal risk to the environment.

C] How often . . .

Like asking how often should I should buy life insurance.

D] Cost(s) . . .

Brutal. Horrific. Borderline Stalinist collectivization plan in the Ukraine:

Over time Western consumers would have to suffer the horrors and indignities of energy efficient homes and smaller, fuel efficient cars. NASCAR tickets would go through the roof. The psychic blow to "free" market ideologues is beyond cost.

But do it for the motherland, comrade.

E] Result(s) . . .

Mitigating the well documented risks our current actions pose to the environment.

how come people aren't hopping all over this?

You tell me, Paul.

Its the simplest of sense: risk mitigation by taking steps *that will have to be taken anyway* by some generation in the future.

You and I have had this discussion--which stops being a discussion at the point where you make statements like . . .

. . . as the general idea here is that we need to get off our "fossil addiction", using them up will hasten that, no? --Paul

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/its-sun-stupid.php

. . . and in response to the idea that we should regard the energy needs of future generations?

we must use it [fossil fuel] as fast as possible. (btw - how do you assign property rights to those not born?), Irrelevant (or false premise, I'll have to think about which.) --Paul

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/its-sun-stupid.php#commen…

And defending it to the death in the face of all logic.

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/07/regional_climate_response…

You've shown your hand in this, Paul. You're clinging to this crazy idea that resisting action on climate change is a noble posture against deadly wealth reduction even though that wealth reduction will have to happen *anyway* for someone in the future--that somehow completely ignoring climate change and doing *nothing* to mitigate it is actually the heroic and noble thing.

If you just don't give a shit, just say you don't give a shit, Paul.

Well, Skip,
All valid comments, (especially mine you pulled up)
But they don't answer the question now do they?
I think you can do better.

The question of "why people aren't hopping all over this"?

Since it requires me to answer for *you* and those like-minded, I really cannot answer can, can I Paul?

You tell me: Why aren't you hopping?

It's not really about "like minded" or not.
I would think it would be of real interest to those who think we should be further along the curve by now.

The provider of the video, David Mitchell, can't understand why all people won't "hop on board", yet he unknowingly (apparently) provides the answer.

"The provider of the video, David Mitchell, can't understand why all people won't "hop on board", yet he unknowingly (apparently) provides the answer."

If he provides the answer, why did you ask him in post #1:

"So, David, how come people aren't hopping all over this?"

If he's answered it, then you already know.

Oh, I get it, you were frimpling his udfile and wasting everyone's time.

Paul, please stop trying to be "V" from *V for Vendetta.*

If you think you have a point, will you please just state it in comprehensible language instead of this self-indulgent mosaic of riddles?

Of course Paul could just be honest: http://cdn.svcs.c2.uclick.com/c2/366e0640b794012e2f8f00163e41dd5b?width…

Hmmm.

Lets consider: should we click on a bare link that has no reason for why we ought to click on it, where the domain name means nothing other than looking like a clickspam site? Or should we not?

I'll take option 2, please, Bob.

For those, like Wow who are afeared of the t'internet, the Rabbett has the cartoon in question here: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-truth.html

Now, who's Bob?

Bob was a presenter for a UK quiz show Blockbusters.

And I'm not afraid of the internet, Chris, random links are spammarkers, especially with "uclick" in their name. Why the hell pay spammers?

Actually, the cartoon does provide a bit of a hint.

Let's see if some of the "denialist trolls" (is that the latest or adequate putdown in use?) weigh in.

So your brilliant point is encoded in the video--if we just have the wit to see it?

Paul, this is stupid.

Skip,
Paul said cartoon, not video, so presumably he means Chris's link to the Doonesbury cartoon at RR. "Bit of a hint" is of course vague enough to be worthless, while providing enough of a fig leaf to resemble an actual contribution to a discussion.

From the cartoon and the cryptic reference, Paul is apparently saying that climate science is sound but we are all bound to follow short term economic interests rather than deal with long term risks.

But is this prescriptive or descriptive?

Paul will not say. He likes to take the posture of:

"I'm making a point, unless it's not a good one, in which case I'm not, just to hedge my bets, but if you really think about it, its really clever, looked at a certain way, but you have to really see the subtleties of it the thing, which I'm not going to identify, in case they really weren't there in the first place, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong, especially since now I forgot what I started saying in the first place."

I think that's pretty much nailed every single one of Paul's statements on this blog.

Remarkably kind responses for this group, thanks.

But, come on guys, where's the ol' college try?

And although I'd like to see a few of the non koolaid drinkers weigh in, I'll ask Skip to run on down to the Econ Dept for help.

Now , Skip, you're probably gonna have to vist a real Econ dept, not one of them librul ones, to get real help. (just kiddin, shouldn't matter for these micro issues)

very nice video but i don't understand this point that Everyone qualified, says it will make the planet uninhabitable. overall an interesting video thanks regards surgical Blog

Ever wonder...?

illconsidered — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:00:07 +0000

Ever wonder...?

Did you ever wonder just how it can be possible that the same, thousand times debunked, climate "skepticisms" keep re-emerging, month after month, year after year? Obviously, there are those individuals (like Singer and Soon), organizations (like HeartlessLand), and media outlets (like Faux News) who deliberately lie and misinform with no concern for scientific or journalistic ethics whatsoever, but how is it they are so successful?

Well, it seems simple human nature, of the sort the most earnest and conscientious of us all possess, lends itself to being deceived by whomever yells loudest, even when the verifiable truth follows quietly and obsequiously after.

An article titled "Setting the record straight almost impossible" describes a new study from the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review by Ullrich Ecker and colleagues from The University of Western Australia that shows just how insidiously difficult it is to remove misinformation once it is planted in the mind. If you add your run of the mill everday cognitive bias to that mix, well, we see what grows out of that everday on this particular blog.

This is the abstract:

Information that is presumed to be true at encoding but later on turns out to be false (i.e., misinformation) often continues to influence memory and reasoning. In the present study, we investigated how the strength of encoding and the strength of a later retraction of the misinformation affect this continued influence effect. Participants read an event report containing misinformation and a subsequent correction. Encoding strength of the misinformation and correction were orthogonally manipulated either via repetition (Experiment 1) or by imposing a cognitive load during reading (Experiment 2). Results suggest that stronger retractions are effective in reducing the continued influence effects associated with strong misinformation encoding, but that even strong retractions fail to eliminate continued influence effects associated with relatively weak encoding. We present a simple computational model based on random sampling that captures this effect pattern, and conclude that the continued influence effect seems to defy most attempts to eliminate it.

The full article (paywalled) is here. It is interesting that even strong retractions do not undo the damage, but I don't know if I have ever seen a strong retraction! The standard fare is the blaring, erroneous front page headline (eg ClimateGate) followed by page 27 "oh never mind" blurbs (results of full investigations of Climategate emails).

Subheadings from the ABC.net.au article ("unerasable damage", "unchanging beliefs") do not give much hope to those of us striving to expose climate denialism and explain the technical realities of global climate disruption to either antagonists, sincere enquirers or lurkers. But one line from Dr. Ecker: "If you make them suspicious of why that information was presented in the first place, such as by saying it was a deliberate attempt to mislead you, then they can more readily dismiss it," does give some of that hope back.

Maybe that poor sap in the comments who swallowed Watt's latest bull, after coming here and defending it, just might be a little less likely to swallow the next dose.

illconsidered Fri, 07/22/2011 - 08:00

Tags

Repetition, repetition, repetition. Repeat a lie often enough... and you've heard that phrase so many times I don't need to go any further. One of the things that gets me is that inevitably, when a media source retracts a mistake, they make sure to repeat it in all its detail, which only pushes it deeper into memory. Our brain has no true "erase" function (apart, perhaps, from physical damage or death).

Depressing reading.

(If this study is ever debunked, then will we still remember it?)

Well I think mainly because, 1/4 of the way from 1979 to 2100, the catastrophic warming, melting of glaciers, starving of hundreds of millions of peope 200ft/2ft/2ft sea level rises haven't 1/4 happened or even anything remotely close

A lesser reason is that alarmists are incapable of answering even simple questions (such as mine http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/04/warming-alarmists-hypocris… ) about their hypothesis and have to rely on ad homs, lies, obscenity and censorship. Such things only take you so far before reasonable people realise they are beinmg sold snake oil by charlatans.

Whereas unreasonable people like Neil Craig realize they're being sold snake oil by charlatans without it even happening! Good job, Neil!

A lesser reason is that alarmists are incapable of answering even simple questions

First provide evidence that you have a true question.

Neil, neil, neil.

Your questions have been answered again and again and again.

For example, you were shown to be an incompetent liar regarding the King/Antarctica quote, and your only recourse was just to deny reality and pretend it never occurred.

Guess what Neil. As long as you post on the internet, here or anywhere, that and your other stunning displays of incompetence and dishonesty will follow you. Forever.

Furthermore, the people you are debating with are real researchers. Like Mandas, Richard S., Chris, and others I too have a track record of peer reviewed publication in the finest journals in my field. They and I have a basic demonstration of competence the likes of which a fool such as yourself will never comprehend. You are so stupid you do not even realize that you're nothing but a sidebar joke and an object of well-deserved ridicule.

That's who we are, Neil. And you're just a complete nobody, shagging sheep in Glasgow and pondering what might have been if you'd been bestowed with an IQ over 94. *Your* greatest achievement to date was convincing your case worker you were fit to be de-institutionalized. Yet in your delusion and stupidity you think you can topple a scientific consensus and your intellectual superiors with childish arguments articulated in equally childish diction.

I will give you one commendation, though. In my years of reading and posting on this forum, I have encountered shocking displays of ineptitude and mendacity, from the likes of Snowman, Crakar, Richard Wakefield and numerous others.

All of them were appalling, Neil, yet you have managed to distinguish yourself as uniquely stupid and evil, even among them.

Congratulations.

I don't know why I'm bothering, because it isn't like he'll stop posting his stupid list, but:

1) By the simplest definitions, there has now been statistically significant warming since 1995 (and it is a stupid question anyway because even if the warming wasn't significant when Jones answered it the first time, there was still a warming trend and it was fairly obvious that it was only a few years away from being significant)

2) I accept that there is a CO2 fertilization effect. I would believe that, absent other changes, the current fertilization effect could have induced a benefit of a few percent. 10% is plausible, though I would like to see an analysis show that. It gets complicated, because CO2 fertilization also stimulates weeds, doesn't stimulate C4 crops nearly as well as C3 crops, and CO2-induced climate changes (drought and flooding) can have negative effects that would cancel out the positive fertilization effect. I therefore definitely disagree with the second half of the statement.

3) The hockey stick was a decent first attempt with some methodological imperfections. But "good science" includes making mistakes while learning, and watching subsequent studies improve on the original. I think it is good practice to make algorithms available, and I don't know to what extent Mann has done so (I think his latest papers include substantial supplementary material).

4) Please give me a link to Al Gore's statement about South Sea islands. As has been pointed out to you before, the Pachauri "voodoo" comment was not about the 2035 date, but rather about a very poor chapter in an Indian report which claimed that there was no influence of global warming on glacial retreat. So, no, Pachauri's statement was not untruthful, only your representation of it was.

5) While some geoengineering solutions might be cheap, their side effects could be ruinous, and most don't fix the acidification problem. Nuclear is certainly not cheap. And while I support more use of nuclear power, I wouldn't call it free of environmental problems either.

6) There's plenty of intra-alarmist criticism.

7) Here's a list provided to you at another website: "nd regarding nr 7, with my own interpretation of what Neil actually meant, let's mention Gordon Bell (Microsoft), Winslow Briggs, Corey Goodman (venBio), William Rutter (Synergenics), and Mary Lou Zoback (RMS - Risk Management solutions). Four names I found on a letter from NAS members sent to Nature, who are not being paid by the government. They also happen to work at organisations that have no link to the climate field. That is, you can't even claim they might benefit from hyping AGW.

That's more than two. In fact, adding William, we're already up to five..."
When I go to AGU conferences, I don't go around asking people what their funding sources and belief about climate change are. And, unsurprisingly, most climate scientists are academics, and academics depend on grant money, so a high percentage would get some money from the "state". Many also get money from industry.

But one line from Dr. Ecker: "If you make them suspicious of why that information was presented in the first place, such as by saying it was a deliberate attempt to mislead you, then they can more readily dismiss it," does give some of that hope back.

Funny apparently how all of the commenters above have blatantly ignored this tidbit, right after reading it. It's good we don't ignore the science of climate change, but why do we repeatedly ignore the findings of psychology researchers when we respond to global warming denialists?

For goodness's sake, why oh why do we continue to believe naïvely that people like Neil Craig will be persuaded by a dry boring litany of facts, when psychology study after psychology study has shown not to be the case?

Why in the blazes aren't we thinking about how to use the insights from psychology to improve our spreading of the science?

To this end: http://ijish.livejournal.com/29235.html

-- frank

Re: Post #5
Well said. This is an excellent riposte to a denier so mendacious and ignorant that one almost wishes he were fictional â it is depressing to think that such a brainless, jaundiced idiot could exist.
I see no point in your further debating this deranged mind. The least a denier can try to be (to help compensate for the grief they bring) is entertaining or flamboyant. Or even cogent or articulate for Christâs sake. NC is so far out there itâs like trying to converse with a madman.

So . . . not bad for a preening faux-intellectual?

The least a denier can try to be (to help compensate for the grief they bring) is entertaining or flamboyant.

I used to agree, Mlax.

But its talk like this that tends to bring Snowman out of the shadows, as he always fashioned himself the Great Wit who could circumvent factual and logical debate through his fourth rate rhetoric. He was the worst thing to come out of the UK since Chumbawamba.

Nonetheless I'm glad your visit to this site finally held some return for you.

Pough 4 I have put the questions, 7 of them, repeatedly and they are on the link I posted so your claim not tom know of them rings hollow. However I will put them up again. If alarmism is true it will be possible to put an honest, responsive and supportive answer on all of them. If it is not a deliberate scam you will at least be able to put such answers to 3,4,6 & 7.

I look forward to your efforts since nobody, either on scienceblogs, or elsewhere has been able to do so.
-------------------
1 - Do you accept Professor Jones' acknowledgement that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995?

2 - Do you accept that the rise in CO2 has improved crop growth by around 10% & that the consequent influence on world hunger is more beneficial than any currently detectable destructive action of alleged global warming?

3 - Do you accept that the Hockey Stick, as originally presented by Mann and the IPCC contained calculations that were inconsistent with good science and that Mann's refusal to make calculations and algorithms available for checking were inconsistent with scientific principle?

4 - Do you accept that many claims from people and organisations on the alarmist side, from Al Gore's claim that South Sea islands had already been abandoned due to rising sea levels and Pachauri's claim that any dispute that the Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2025 was "voodoo" were untrue and insupportable even at the time.

5 - Do you accept that there are a number of geoengineering solutions which arithmetically can be shown would work (including stratospheric dust, the geritol solution or even just replacing CO2 burning with nuclear power) which would work at a small fraction of the cost of the war against fire, or in the case of nuclear, at negative cost?

6 - Do you accept that the refusal of alarmists to denounce fraud or telling of obvious untruths. on their side, or even its active support or covering up, detracts from the credibility of the entire movement?

7 - Of the alleged "consensus" - can you name 2 scientists, out of the roughly 60%, worldwide who are not paid by the state, who support catastrophic warming & if not can you explain how something can be a consensus when no member of a subset of 60% of the alleged consenting, consent?
---------------------------------

Skip you have been caught lying time after time. I have to doubt your claim "I too have a track record of peer reviewed publication in the finest journals in my field" since even within the undemanding halls of alarmist "scinece" you should have learned that scientific hypothesis are not supported by accusations of sheep shagging or other obscenities. If you had ever been off ther farm you would know that Glasgow is an urban metropolis and that sheep are rare there.

You have, however, once again, demonstrated what levels of ignrance, dishonesty and obscenity the parasites who support this fraud feel they have to rely on.

I once again invite anyvody remotely honest who claims both decency and belief in this scam to advise "Skip" that his behaviour is improper. I do not expect any alarmist to do so though if there actually were any honest, decent and scientifically inclinded alarmists they would be lininmg up to do so.

M 6 "even if the warming wasn't significant when Jones answered it the first time, there was still a warming trend" that is a tautology - if there isn't significant evidence for a warming trend claiming it is true anyway is incompatible withn respect for the facts.

Your answersc to 2,3 & 5 generally support my case.

Gore's remark is from his "inconvenient truth" film. It was proven a lie in the British court case, along with other lies. I am sure you are capable of googling if you are interested.

I would like some links to alarmists denouncing Mann's fraud, or Jionses' or Pachauri's or King's.

When those names were putn up I asked for evidence that they had held these views personally & still do & that they got no government funding. Though that question was censored I did put it on another "scienceblogs" site where it remains unanswered. By now I am sure somebody with access to the emails of these people could have contacted them and got them to say they currently believe in catastrophic global warming - if they did.

The other posts are just lies masquerading as ad homs, proving my point about the dishonesty and contempt for facts of almost all alarmists.

Skip you have been caught lying time after time.

You cannot document one. Thus it is you who are the liar. You can doubt my academic track record if you wish; I in turn will doubt your alleged non-affiliation with suburban Glasgow sheep.

Neil Craig, rather than discuss the answers to your questions that others have given (and repeatedly), you just keep on spamming these questions.

What is it that makes you ignore the answers you are given? Is it stupidity? Malice? Inability to understand basic English? What is it?

I look forward to your efforts since nobody, either on scienceblogs, or elsewhere has been able to do so.

Yes they have. On numerous websites. And even in comments directly to you. You're either not looking, not reading when you do look, or not not understanding when you do read (or you, as has been pointed out, are a liar).

Re: your first question about Jones. Here's the original interview.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Have you actually read this? Seems very straightforward to me. If you don't see why this makes your question irrelevant, see here for explanation.

skepticalscience.com/phil-jones-warming-since-1995-significant.html

skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm

Short version

Phil Jones is saying there is a warming trend but it's not statistically significant. He's not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He's discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period.

So at the time of Jones BBC interview, the trend was not significant at the 0.05 level. It was significant at close to the 0.06 level though. Within 12-18 months of his statement to the BBC the warming since 1995 was within the 0.05 significance level, which highlights the importance of using long-term data to detect trends.

Therefore, to answer your question literally, "Yes, we did accept that". In fact, no-one disputed it since we can do our own calculations to double-check.

What was disputed though was how people interpreted it as "there's been no warming, period" when that was and very clearly is NOT the case, and is obvious to anyone who actually read the interview.

And now since you are honest, you will now remove question 1 from your list and never ask it again since it has been answered.
-----------------------------------------

Some of your other questions, incidentally, are not questions but baseless accusations like "Have you stopped beating your dog yet?", when the person in question doesn't even own a dog. e.g. 3, 4 and 6. Other ones like 2 are simply silly--please give a citation from the scientific literature and PLEASE read it before you post it to ensure it says what you think it says, and that it's conclusions don't contradict your question.

Incidentally, re: 6, almost all of the mistakes the "skeptic" community harps on were found by working scientists, not the "skeptics". A mild but very recent example is here:
tamino.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/how-not-to-analyze-tide-gauge-data/

This happens in the scientific literature all the time. It is the very nature of science and scientists. The first person to disprove AGW and show what is causing the modern day warming is likely to be the next Nobel science winner because fame and money don't come to those who parrot the party line, but to those who overturn a consensus or elucidate a whole new field of exploration.

Pough 4 I have put the questions, 7 of them, repeatedly and they are on the link I posted so your claim not tom know of them rings hollow.

I was actually quoting you being evasive. I've seen your questions more times than I want to count. I've seen them responded to, also, in spite of your continual claims that nobody has ever answered them. In fact, someone answered them just a few comments above your latest claim that they have never been answered.

@frank #7:

...why oh why do we continue to believe naÃ¯vely that people like Neil Craig will be persuaded...

We don't. He's far too nutty to be convinced of anything, and even if he were convinced we don't really want nuts on our side. Nobody takes him seriously.

Case in point is this week's blatant misreporting by The Australian on sea level rises.

This has been picked up and carried onto a variety of denialist websites, completely uncritically, and none of the corrections of the original author of the actual study will ever see the light of day on those sites.

Sites I found this story uncritically reposted on have a teasingly familiar ring to their domain names. Australianclimatemadness, awesternheart, climatechangedispatch, climatedepot, dprogram, freerepublic, globalwarmingnewssite, impactofcc, independentnewshub, itsfaircomment-climategate, nwotruth, openyoureyesnews, ozconspiracyhouse, prisonplanet, thegwpf, truthiscontaigous, whatreallyhappened etc etc.

RE: Post #9
Skip, I imagine you are suitably robust to survive my barbs, or those of any similar dickhead. In any case, I take the opportunity to apologise to you, and by extension to Mandas.
Your mentioning of Chumbawamba in relation to Snowman is not only humorous but also vey apt (and did you really have to suffer that awful pop group in the US also?). Their signature song is essentially the anthem of the denier: âI get knocked down, but I get up againâ.
Damn; that awful tune is going to be in my head for days now.

Daniel you address only popint 1 and wrongly. If the meaurements cannot be tweaked to show statistiocal significance enough to support a warming claim for 15 years, something which cannot honestly be denied, then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place.

I note neither Daniel, pough, Marco, Dylan, Minx or the author have suggested that their is anything wrong with "Skip" obscenity as an alternative to scientific argument. I assume all of you consider this to be entirely appropriate behaviour among "peer reviewed scientists" in "the finest hournals" rather than Skip being some silly little bioy who has just learved to write dirty words. I fear you may be correct about the all the parasitic "scientists" paid to promote the warming scam.

I suppose I should be glad that while the site author here believes obscenity to be a sitable method of debate he does not completely follow the example of the disgusting PZ Myer's of Pharngula who not only promotes obscenmity but censors the victims.

I await any aty response to the questions which is both responsive and truthful. All thiose claiming to have seen such could, of course, if they were being truthful, produce such answers.

"I would believe that, absent other changes, the current fertilization effect could have induced a benefit of a few percent. 10% is plausible"

However, it would then follow on that all that GM production that Monsato and others say is needed has had to date NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER. That the intense farming with high levels of fertiliser and insecticides has had NO EFFECT. That the cross breeding of plants to get higher yields has had NO EFFECT.

I wonder why Whiner here insists that the multi-billion-dollar-a-year expense of agribusiness has been such a waste.

"then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place."

It's only deniers like yourself who insist catastrophic warming should have already taken place.

0.12C per decade is within the projections of the 1991 models of climate, so the prediction for warming was seen.

Neil, you have received full responses to your questions. You just ignore them, because they do not fit your ideology. Likewise, you demand we stop someone supposedly being 'obscene', but fail to acknowledge the repeated distortions and lies you put on this forum. There is nothing but disgust left for people who behave like you do.

pough:

...why oh why do we continue to believe naïvely that people like Neil Craig will be persuaded...

We don't. He's far too nutty to be convinced of anything, and even if he were convinced we don't really want nuts on our side. Nobody takes him seriously.

Then what exactly do we think we are trying to accomplish -- by ignoring all the good advice from psychology researchers?

Ecker et al. wrote:

If you make them [credulous people] suspicious of why that information was presented in the first place, such as by saying it was a deliberate attempt to mislead you, then they can more readily dismiss it.

So my question, again, is this: why do we repeatedly ignore this advice, right here on this very thread which mentions it?

-- frank

Neil Craig:

Here's a little exercise for you (and all undecided folks).

Step 1: Look at this diagram.

Step 2: Try to find the box in the diagram that says "do research into the issue at hand", or "design experiments to decide the issue at hand", or "do fact-checking", or something similar.

Step 3: Last, try to answer this question: what colour is the box?

Have fun.

-- frank

Of course, frank, that request also seems to fall foul of your evidence for why that request is correct: you've said it many times and you've not been listened to.

So why do you continue to ignore his advice on this and other threads?

Wow:

If your answer to "why do we ignore good advice" is "yeah, we ignore good advice, so get over it", then you're being an idiot. Yeah, I called you an idiot; get over it.

-- frank

And I'm ignoring your advice, as well as many others.

Get over it.

Oh, and any advice someone gives in honesty is believed to be "good advice" by them. This doesn't make it good advice, just one believed by the giver to be good.

A pastor may give good advice to abstain from sex before marriage, but there are other pieces of advice to give that are just as good.

So I reject your "why do we ignore good advice": it isn't good advice. Just your advice.

Which is being ignored.

Live with it.

Wow:

So I reject your "why do we ignore good advice": it isn't good advice. Just your advice.

...based on the findings of a peer-reviewed study by psychology researchers, no less.

And you're ignoring it.

Sorry, Wow, you're still an idiot.

-- frank

I'm not refuting the papers.

That they are true doesn't make your advice good advice, nor does it mean I have to take it.

Wow:

I'm not refuting the papers.
That they are true doesn't make your advice good advice, nor does it mean I have to take it.

Sure, you have the right not to follow advice based on the findings of scientific studies. But that still makes you an idiot.

-- frank

Well, ok then Mlax. Let there be a dickheaded truce between us.

Although I will enjoy some final schadenfreude over this last piece of karmic justice:

. . . that awful tune is going to be in my head for days now.

Frank:

I appreciate where you're coming from, but two points:

1. I used to be a Christian Fundamentalist but engagement with the other side rescued me from this folly. It *is* possible to purge dogma.

2. Now relieved of any moral requirement to turn the other cheek, I can engage on topics like this out of pure malice. Neil is too stupid and stubborn to learn, but he can experience humiliation and pain. I have no qualms about contributing to its infliction.

skip:

1. I used to be a Christian Fundamentalist but engagement with the other side rescued me from this folly.

Care to describe how that happened? I'm all ears.

-- frank

Different topic for a different forum.

But I always get asked the question so what I ought to do is have a cut- and paste-able summary of my "anti-testimony".

@frank #21

Well, ignoring the fact that I'm far from a professional in any kind of science so I don't feel any real need to be an actual communicator in this debate....

I don't think that Neil is purposefully misleading; I think he's honestly nuts. So the only thing we can really do - for all the people who are not as nutty as Neil who happen to be reading, not for Neil - is point out how nuts he is. That way, the source of the misinformation is nuts and therefore suspect.

Other sources might be purposefully misleading and they're the ones we should be pointing out seem to be saying something they know isn't true. And I think that does get said. But for folks like Neil I think the best we can do is point out his errors for others and have a laugh.

BTW, I think there is far more Morton's Demon and Authoritarianism going on in the denialist world than pure profit. So how does the advice apply when someone isn't knowingly spreading untruths? If we make the claim that they are lying on purpose when they're not, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

pough:

Thanks for clarifying. What I would say is that the talking points ultimately came from sources whose very purpose is to mislead.

-- frank

pough

We don't really have to point out how crazy and deluded Biel roaig is - he makes it apparent all by himself. And this thread is a perfect case in point.

For a full expose of his delusions, first read post #6 by M, then read post #10 by the delusional one himself.

Notice anything? Yes, that's right. 4 posts and just under 24 hours after M answered his 7 cherry-picked and delusional strawmen, Beil complained (once again) that no-one had answered his questions. And that on top of the many other responses he had received (god - even I answered them twice, as has skip, wow, chris, et al).

That's why I believe frank is right on this issue. Beil is an idiot troll. It is in his genes, and no amount of evidence, logic or conditioning will ever change him. Trolls are fine in their own environment - under bridges where they can prey on unsuspecting goats. But outside of that environment - particularly in the rarefied atmosphere of a scientific debate where their minds are woefully inadequate for the task, they are nothing more than pests.

Being a wildlife scientist, I know that sometimes there is nothing else to do with a pest other than to kill it in order to improve the environment for others. And the best way to kill a troll is to deny it oxygen.

To be clear - I never bothered to answer the questions, just pointed to where they'd been answered elsewhere.

Get the facts right mandas you fascist commie whore!

Trolls are fine in their own environment - under bridges where they can prey on unsuspecting goats.

And get your facts straight here, too, Mandas. Its *sheep*, not goats.

skip

You should know better than to disagree with a goat-herder.

Remember the story of the three billy goat gruffs who had to cross the bridge under which lived a troll who threatened to eat them? If you don't, here you go:

http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/10/three_billy_goats_gruff.ht…

Marco 20 you are obviously lying about my questions having been answered in an honest responsive manner otherwise you would have no difficulty replicating them here.

I note that ad homs and obscenity remain the stock in trade4 of all the lying thieving fascist parasites here. As expected. Clearly any claim of any supporter of the warming fraud to have any shred of integrity would be false. I do not do them the courtesy of assuming insanity - the lying theiving scum know exactly what lying thieving scum they are.

I note that ad homs and obscenity remain the stock in trade4 of all the lying thieving fascist parasites here.

Pretty much says it all.

"I note that ad homs and obscenity "

Such as:

"lying thieving fascist parasites"

PS stop typing one-handed, you're going blind.

Neil said:

"Daniel you address only popint 1 and wrongly. If the meaurements cannot be tweaked to show statistiocal significance enough to support a warming claim for 15 years, something which cannot honestly be denied, then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place...."

Alright, Neil, I have never responded to you before, so I will give you a patient response.

Your statement, above, is wrong on many levels, and indicates you have not got a good handle on statistic significance, the nature of scientific inquiry, the motives of scientists, or even the relevant issues which cause better informed people to have dire concern about climate change.

1) The statement by the scientist which you interpreted as not showing "statistiocal significance enough to support a warming claim for 15 years" was, I will admit, easy to misinterpret. Indeed, I wrote a comment on a post here that the guy mishandled the question.

That said, realize that this was an off-the-cuff statement during an interview about a very specific data set of only 15 years, a time span which is very short considering the amount of natural variation of the phenomenon studied, to say nothing of the nature of climate change itself, which is a gradual process which requires much longer time spans for proper study.

Now, that 15 year span was cherry-picked by deniers in the first place, a short segment of a much larger data set chosen simply because its trend was different than the longer, and therefore more accurate longer span. Now, this data set, even taken out of the proper context actually DID show statistical significance. It just didn't show a full 95% confidence.

Let me explain this. When statistics are run on a data set, the variation of the data is assessed for how confident we can be about whether the result or conclusion we draw about the data is because of an actual effect, or is just due to random chance. It is a convention in science that we want to have a certain amount of confidence in the result - the numbers must be good. Over the years, the convention - and it really is arbitrary - for many areas of science is that the numbers must be so good as to have a 95% confidence level, that is, there is only a 5% chance that the conclusion we draw from the data is wrong and due to mere chance. We then call this result "statistically significant" and wait for other research to duplicate this result one or more times before we tend to believe it.

Over time, scientists have gotten lazy about how they communicate this statistical confidence. We set the bar rather high at 95%, and if a result does not reach quite that high ( such as the 94% result when the aforementioned 15-year data set was used), we misspeak and say that the result does not reach statistical significance. But this is NOT true. What should be said is "The result did not reach a 95% confidence level".

Now, the result, even on that cherry-picked 15-year time span WAS statistically significant! What the scientist should have said during the interview, knowing he was talking to a lay audience, was "Even looking at that 15-year segment, which we would NOT consider a prudent thing to do because 15 years is too short a time period to draw the best conclusions, is that we can be 94% sure that warming DID occur during that time period."

Let's be clear here. 94% confidence is a very significant result! It is just not up to the very very high bar that scientists normally use. To put it into perspective: 50% confidence means there is a 50/50 chance the effect is real. Obviously, that sucks. But 94% means that 94/100 of the time, the result is not a mistake.

So, don't misinterpret a few poorly chosen words by one fellow during an interview. The result was significant at a 94% confidence level. The fact that he was responding to question which was posed only to hopefully trip him up should demonstrate to you the basic dishonesty of the "climate skeptics" community. They took the most deceptive set of years they could, using too short a time scale to be of any real significance anyway, and then ran with the poor answer by the scientist, in order to deceive untrained people like you into thinking that something of importance had been admitted.

That catastrophic levels of warming are almost certainly on their way is a deliberation made by very professional people, highly trained and careful scientists. And based on thousands of peer-reviewed reports, with independently duplicated results offering conformation of principles and conclusions drawn. This is an enormous body of evidence, coming from many independent and corroborating lines of investigation.

For you to think that one 15-year data set looking at one aspect of the puzzle, as miscommunicated by one guy on a radio(?) show could or should be interpreted as having any kind of scientific significance which would lead an objective and informed observer to conclude that: "there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place." is shocking evidence of your misapprehensions. Do you now not see how misinformed you have been, and just how sadly manipulated a victim of the climate misinformation brigade you are?

Neil Craig wrote :

"Do you accept Professor Jones' acknowledgement that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995?"

"If the meaurements cannot be tweaked to show statistiocal significance enough to support a warming claim for 15 years, something which cannot honestly be denied, then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place."

These two comments seem to show a disconnect between each other and the reality of the situation.

What we have is :

The original BBC question to Jones, which has been shown to contain a cherry-picked start date (originally suggested by Lindzen, if I remember correctly ?), cannot statistically/logically be answered because there aren't enough years in the sample to be able to determine a statistically significant trend. Simple as that.

However, Jones DID answer honestly and made a valiant attempt to explain why he had answered in the way he did, and why it wasn't possible to determine statistical significance using such a short time-period.

This has been further explained here and all over the internet and I don't believe there is any rational disagreement as to the veracity of such explanations.

However, it seems that some people (here, Neil Craig) cannot apparently grasp why there can be no statistical significance over a 15 year period, even though there IS still a warming trend. And, they seem to be unaware that that trend IS now statistically significant, or prefer to ignore it.
Why is that ? I am genuinely puzzled.

Anyway, Neil Craig's question can be answered very simply, although I'm sure many others have tried :

'Yes, Professor Jones' acknowledged in 2010 that there had been no statistically significant warming from 1995 to 2009, because the time-period given wasn't long enough to be able to determine true statistical significance. However, this year (2011), Professor Jones has now stated that the warming IS statistically significant, because the trend is positive (as it was when he answered in 2010) and there are now enough years to determine the statistical significance of such a trend. Do you accept Professor Jones's updated acknowledgement ?'

JM:

That was an articulate and lucid summary of the points which have been made numerous times on this and other fora regarding this most heinously mined of quotes.

I predict Beil will simply not read it, call you a "fashiss thoeffing parzite" and declare his question still unanswered.

Sit back and enjoy!

Don't let yourselves be goaded, folks. Direct the confused to skepticalscience.com, or invite them to join you in constructing an argument tree (e.g. at wrangl.com)

("once and only once" is the programmer's mantra; it's a good one.)

2 questioners making actual contributioms.

Both of you used the phrase "cherry opicked" to describe the choice of 1995. That is quite wromg and as I explained elsewhere that fact that it was not cherry picked was probably why Jones felt he had to actually answer. 1998 was the warmest year and had that been chosen the correct answer would be that there had been net cooling since (to what level of "significance" I don'y know but you can see it on a graph - that is why only very high levels of significance have validity).

However if there has been a marginal warming, well within historic parameters that does not affect my main point - "If the meaurements cannot be tweaked to show statistiocal significance enough to support a warming claim for 15 years, something which cannot honestly be denied, then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place."

I don't see how I could make it much plainer that there is a differecne between minor warming and catastrophic warming. The answer to #1, if it means anything, is an acknowledgement that the apparent warming is so slight that it cannot reasonably be taken as ecvidence of catastrophe. I look forward to answers 2 - 7.

Ginger your statement that a 15 year term is too short to count gives away the entire warmist case. The alarmists graphs have regularly started at 1979 - 16 years earlier than 1995. Unless 16 has some mystical significance missing from 15 that means they have no basis for their claims. All the moreso since 1979 most definitely is a "cherry picked" year. Up till then the ecofascists, including Hansen, had been saying we had to stop burning because it was producing a cooling trend.

-----------------
Having answered you politely perhaps you might now courteously acknowledge that the use of lies, ad homs and obscenities by alarmist "scientists", as repeatedly demonstrated on "scieneceblogs" is incompatible with respect for science.

------------------
Wow nothing of what I said of you is obscene. It isn't even ad hom because the fact that you, Skip and others have repeatedly proven yourselves liars etc and that it has proven impossible to find even 1 alarmist not being paid for it, is very relevant to whether anything you say can be believed.

"Both of you used the phrase "cherry opicked" to describe the choice of 1995. That is quite wromg "

No, it was quite right:

Richard Lindzen: Look at the attached. There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995. Why bother with the arguments about an El Nino anomaly in 1998? (Incidentally, the red fuzz represents the error âbarsâ.)

Best wishes,

Dick

So you see, the date was CHOSEN out of all the others to produce a required result.

Cherry picking:
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.

So you see, it's correct: the 1995 WAS a cherry-pick.

"there is a differecne between minor warming and catastrophic warming"

There is. Why do you keep obsessing over "catastrophic", though?

"then there is certainly no catastrophe level warming taking place."

Again with your marcarbe absorption by catastrophes. YOU and other denialists are the only ones banging on all the time about catastrophic warming.

"The alarmists graphs have regularly started at 1979 - 16 years earlier than 1995."

Yup, alarmists like you and fellow denialist celebrity Roy Spencer.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Why does that graph start in 1979? Because that's when the Satellite was put up into space.

"Unless 16 has some mystical significance missing from 15 that means they have no basis for their claims."

Unless you're lying out your arse again with the temperature trends starting from 1979, of course.

Oh, look! You WERE! Whatasurprise.

"Wow nothing of what I said of you is obscene."

You mean apart from the "the stock in trade4 of all the lying thieving fascist parasites here." girly-scream you keep parading around here. Apart from that, you mean.

Oh, and this:

"repeatedly proven yourselves liars etc"

When you've never yet managed to do anything other than scream "LIAR" like the drama queen you are to show your "proven".

Skip and others have repeatedly proven yourselves liars . . .

I will ask this other question for approximately the fourth time.

Can you document *one* lie, by me or anyone else on this forum?

You actually have to *quote* the lie--i.e., the way Marco and I quoted and documented *your* lie about King's nonexistent statement about Antarctica being the only habitable land by 2100.

Neil, you have to document a claim to a lie, or you are the liar.

I couldn't resist. A video which shows how to deal with people like Biel Roaig:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLEo7H9tqSM&feature=player_embedded

I regret neither of the people who made reasonable arguments have felt able to dissociate themselves for the wholly corrupt lying fascists obscenities, Wow and Skip here. That even the rational among alarmists cannot bring themselves to denounce liars shows how corrupt the movement is.

I'll ask for the *sixth* time, Neil:

Can you document--that is, directly *quote*--a single lie by anyone on this forum who has debated with you?

(In other words, a lie like yours regarding King's nonexistent Antarctica quote.)

You can't just say "corrupt lying fascists obscenities" or some such stupidity. You have to quote the "lie" directly.

Neil Craig, do you accept Professor Jones's updated acknowledgement concerning the confirmed statistical significance of the positive temperature trend ?

"I regret neither of the people who made reasonable arguments"

Ah, the old "I'm *trying to be reasonable and not call people in a heap but you're all a bunch of lying ecofacist thieves!!!!" gambit.

They've made the same arguments as all others have here. Ones you then ignored and complained that nobody was answering you after they posted.

And you;re the one banging on about catastrophes and worldwide conspiracies.

But projection is a necessary technique to someone as vile and unpleasant a personality as yourself, whiney. After all, if everyone else is a lying scumbag, then you're no worse than the next man, right?

Does he agree that the trend even at the time was positive, JM?

He won't answer, though, he'll just go "you're all lying scum whereas I've never insulted ANYONE".

Neil,

1)Your conclusion that no catastrophic warming could be taking place was dependent on your faulty premise that no significant warming was taking place. I explained why your premise was unfounded. Are you still insistent that catastrophic warming can not be taking place?

2) I would like to ask you a question. I find that deniers all seem to have a mental blind spot, against which they erect a blockade of obfuscating distractions, often based on a reliance on various temperature measurements which seem to them to contradict the idea of global warming. If they do not see linear temperature increases, they conclude that the case for warming is disproved.

My hypothesis is that this fallacious dialectic of deniers is based on a lack of appreciation of the difference between heat and temperature. Neil, are you confident that you know the difference between the two terms?

My point, which I admit is pet, is that there is a smoking gun in the warming debate. And that is the undeniable evidence of the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration, which is in stoichemical equivalence to the amount predicted by simple calculation of the amount of fossil fuels burned by humanity over the past 200 years.

So, we have increasing CO2 levels, which are increasing, as predicted according to stoichemical mathematics. This CO2, we know by undeniable physical chemistry, MUST increase the amount of *heat* (not temperature)radiated back onto land, sea, and sky. As you no doubt are aware, neither matter or heat can be destroyed. So, my question to you is: Where do you think all this enormous amount of extra heat is going, if not to cause global warming?

It seems to me to be foolish beyond measure to quibble about a small temperature anomaly here or there, when your first and real task, if you want to dispute AGW, is to explain how a constant and enormous injection of extra heat into the geosystem will NOT result, eventually, into increased temperatures. You have untold gazzillions of kcals to account for. Do you think they magically just disappear? Do you have a proposed mechanism to explain where they go?

It is completely and thoroughly not surprising that all this heat will NOT result in immediate and linear *temperature* increases on land, sea, and sky. The Earth is a dynamic system which buffers such increases in complicated ways. But make no mistake - that indestructible *heat* is constantly accumulating. As a denier, it is your responsibility to explain why that heat can not increase temperatures eventually, because the laws of physics demand that they MUST do so.

So, you've got some 'splainin' to do, Lucy - I mean, Neil. What is your explanation for where that heat goes?

Ginger

1) I am still insistent that the catastrophic warming, 20 ft sea level rise, disapperance of snow, spread of tropical diseases, hundreds of millions of climate refugees, riding out of the 4 horsemen and Antarctica becoming the only habitable continent are not visibly happening. Not even 25% of the way to visibly happening as they would be if the theory were true.

That there may be some questionable evidence that you have (or had 16 years ago) a mouse in your backyard is not absolute proof it is going to turn into an elephant.

2) Have you noticed nay "blind spots" among eco-Nazis (I assume since you use the term "denier" you don't mind me using its reciprocal).

I know nobody on the sceptical side who disputes the rise in CO2. However even alarmist calculations show that this would producev a rise of only about 01,-0.6 C - the rest being the assumptionn of numerous positive feedbacks and no negative ones. An assumption for which not only is there no evidence but the actual evidence (eg that the Medieval warming did not result in a runaway effect) stronlhy suggests feedbacks are mainly negative. If you have evidence that the Medieval Warming really did result in Earth developing a runaway greenouse effect making the planet uninhabitable I would really like to see it - if you haven't stop ppretending this is scientific.

As regards the "where does the heat go" claim - you may not be aware of it but the surface of the Earth is very thin, proportionately thinner than the paint on a beachball. If Al Gore and realclimate arec to be trusted it is millions of degrees even a couple of miles down. Obviously they aren't but it is 10s of thouands further down and there is 4,000 miles of it to the centre. The idea that a variation of a degree or 2 in the atmosphere would destabilise all that is clearly loony.

I not, with regert, that neither of you have been willing to dissociate yourselves from the out and out loonies.

On the where does the heat go line I have just read this

âNASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earthâs atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASAâs Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASAâs Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.â http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmis…

On the where does the heat go line I have just read this

"reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing"

The journal may have peer reviews, this does not mean the paper has been peer reviewed.

Funny how all the IPCC models are automatically wrong and fail to include enoiugh "stuff" to be useful, but Roy's simplistic model that doesn't include anywhere near the same number of factors and, overall, is an exercise in curve fitting (which is ripe for GIGO), which is great for interpolating between points WITHIN the set fitted against, but has no predictive powers in and of itself, is for Niel, absolutely right.

"20 ft sea level rise"

Which isn't predicted to have happened yet.

Funny, isn't it: that the future hasn't happened yet is, for whiner here, proof that the prediction about the future is wrong.

"disapperance of snow, "

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110324104143.htm

Oh, look, it's happening.

"2. However even alarmist calculations show that this would producev a rise of only about 01,-0.6 C"

You're really set on calling people alarmist when you don't like what they say.

Yes, for a 32% increase you'd get about 0.6-1.6C warming. Then after another 32% increase you'd get another 0.6-1.6C warming. Then after another 32% increase...

After a while, whatever value you'd put on "catastrophic warming", you'd reach it.

It's called "mathematics". Learn some.

"If Al Gore and realclimate arec to be trusted it is millions of degrees even a couple of miles down."

Snrk. If you believe the denialists like Plimer, ClimateRealists et al, you'd believe the sun is made of iron!

"The idea that a variation of a degree or 2 in the atmosphere would destabilise all that is clearly loony."

However, a TREND of 2C increase in the atmosphere will, at some point get to a temperature that will destabilise the climate. Refusal to admit this is lunacy.

PS Note the name of the piece:

nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html

See how the denialists are stickers for accuracy!

1) It was NASA data, not NASA's paper. Roy Spencer isn't NASA

2) It doesn't blow a gaping hole in Global Warming theory, even Roy grudgingly admits it doesn't disprove the IPCC claims

3) The dogwhistle "alarmism". Apparently, telling people "Saddam has weapons of Mass Destruction" isn't alarmism. Telling people "Muslim extremists are trying to blow up planes" isn't alarmism, but saying "If we continue like this, we're going to destabilise the climate with disasterous consequences for our current way of life" is alarmism. The only apparent difference seems to be that if it's backed up by solid data and is accurate, then it's alarmism.

. . . Antarctica becoming the only habitable continent . . .

Having told a big lie you keeping repeating it, Neil.

Who's the real Nazi, Joseph Geobbels?

I not, with regert, that neither of you have been willing to dissociate yourselves from the out and out loonies.

Perhaps we simply prefer to align ourselves along lines of spelling and grammar competence. I not, with regert, indeed.

I note with regret that Neil Craig cannot answer the following question, that has now been put to him three times :

Do you accept Professor Jones's updated acknowledgement concerning the confirmed statistical significance of the positive temperature trend ?

Over on the 'Another Week of GW News, July 24 2011' thread, at post #1 on 28 July at 10:23AM, Copernic posted a link to a paper by Roy Spencer from a Forbes article. Here is the link again:

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmis…

On that same day - 28 July 2011 - at 5:43PM, I posted the reaction from real climate scientists about the so-called paper that was so bad it could not get published in any reputable journals. It was rejected by journal after journal, but was finally published in 'Remote Sensing' - which not speak well for the integrity of the climate science in the paper.

The overall reaction of climate scientists to the Spencer paper is best summed up in this quote:

â....mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated....â

Even Roy Spencer himself said this about the paper:

â....Spencer agreed that his work could not disprove the existence of manmade global warming....â

Despite all this occurring on 28 July, the clueless one - Biel Craig - finally found out about the paper the next day (I have to wonder - does he even read other posts before he writes his illiterate nonsense?), and posted a link on 29 July at 4:09AM (#59) to a "Yahoo" news story about the paper.

Well done there Beil! Not only are you so oblivious that you were one day late with your comments re a paper that had already been linked and debunked, but you are so totally clueless that you couldn't even find a link to the paper itself. Obviously you didn't read the paper (as skip has pointed out - you have NEVER read a science paper in your life), instead relying on an on-line news source for your entire opinion. But I guess that's modus operandi for a birther who got his opinion on that issue from WingNutDaily isn't it?

I wonder what Biel makes of this quote that he himself provided (twice it seems!):

"...The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed...."

Let's just assume for one minute that the paper hasn't already been debunked and that it is 100% accurate. If climate change isn't happening as deniers like Biel like to claim, why does the study and the study author agree that it is? Because there is zero doubt that is the case. They say anthropogenic CO2 IS causing the globe to warm and the climate to change - just that it is less than what others predict.

So go on Biel. It is your link (a day late). You obviously think the study is accurate (even though you haven't read it and wouldn't understand it if you did). So I guess you now accept the fact that the climate is changing huh?

"telling people "Saddam has weapons of Mass Destruction" isn't alarmism"

No Wow it was alarmism. Moreobver it was false alarmism, like the false Antarctica claim, the evacuated south sea islnads claim, the 20 ft sea level rise claim, the global cooling claim and indeed all the others made by "environmentalists" over the last 50 years. Alarmism is not inherently a bad thing, only false alarmism. Knowing that your alarmism is false is the only reason you could have for objecting to the term.

JM I have not duplicated his calculation so I cannot say. Have you? If not have you any absolute proof that the man who admitted distoring to "hide the decline" and therefore represenmts the highest standard of climate alarmist science is, this time, being infinitely more honest than previously?

Mandas the climate has been changing for the last 4.5 billion years. I challenge you either to link to where I said it had stopped 30 years ago or to apologise for suggesting I had. Obciously if you are remotely honest you will do one or the other anmd obviously if you don'tthen evert alarmist with any honesty will denmonce you for it.

As every single "environmentalist" with any trace of honesty has previously done, thereby proving that there is not a single "environmentalist" who is not a wholly corrupt, lying, thieving piece of filth.

like the false Antarctica claim,

You were the only one who made a false Antarctica claim.

the man who admitted distoring to "hide the decline"

When you cited this you did not even know the difference between instrumental record and tree ring proxies.

link to where I said it had stopped 30 years ago or to apologise

Mandas never said that.

there is not a single "environmentalist" who is not a wholly corrupt, lying, thieving piece of filth.

To live in your mind must be torture. At this point you are reduced to a fascinating case study in lunacy.

I'll repeat the unanswered questions, Beil:

Have you ever written and published a research article?
Have you ever read a research article?
Where *in quotes* did I or anyone else on this forum lie? (You have to *quote* it, not invent it in your mind as you just did with Mandas.)

And the King non-quote is really the highlight of your depravity.

Neil, King *never* said what you claimed. Never. And here you are demanding an apology for something *Mandas* never said.

What happened to you? Did someone put paint chips in your haggis when you were a boy?

Neil Craig wrote : "JM I have not duplicated [Phil Jones's] calculation so I cannot say."

OK, could you show how you duplicated Phil Jones's previous calculation, so that you were able to agree with (and keep re-posting) his assertion that the warming at that time could not logically be statistically significant ?

"like the false Antarctica claim"

YOU made that false claim, Neil. YOU! I guess that makes you a "wholly corrupt, lying, thieving piece of filth" by your own standards.

Ahh, the pinnacle of climate science discussion by the worlds foremost Eco warriors.

I can hardly wait 'til next weeks saga begins.

JM @ 70:

LOL.

Nice one. I am quite sure Beil doesn't even understand your question.

And you know what, Paul?

Do you think Neil deserves "better" treatment than the responses he's getting?

What's your honest opinion of Neil's arguments?

Please, Paul. Just like my similar question regarding Crakar, I am asking you to render your personal assessment of the quality of Neil Craig and his . . . . "arguments".

"King non-quote is really the highlight of your depravity"

I think, in my lifetime. I have managed a little more depravity than correctly quoting the British Government's Chief Science Advisor.

JMurphy petrhaps you could first provide a link to the peer reviewed publication of Jones' latest recalculation. After all if I am being asked to accept that he has got it right this time it must have been peer reviewed and those saying so must have read it mustn't they. Mustn't it? It would also answer the anonymous Skip's little question.

I have managed a little more depravity than correctly quoting correctly quoting the British Government's Chief Science Advisor

How many Glasgow sheep were involved?

Neil, as I said before:

King never said Antarctica would be the only habitable land by 2100.

You are repeating this stupidity over and over and over and it just shows the improbable melange of witlessness and dishonesty that is your personality.

skip,

Isn't it really irrelevant?
Does it really change what is happening?
What is unfolding in reality?

Is the actual temperature record not available in any number of formats for any person wishing to look?

Consider it a compliment that I value your opinion on the matter.

Neil Craig, you are not making sense, I'm afraid.

First you seem to accept that Phil Jones's original statement (which you keep re-posting) is correct, and you keep asking whether everyone else agrees with it.

Then you say that you can't agree with Phil Jones's subsequent statement because you haven't made the calculations to prove it to yourself - implying, obviously, that you HAVE made the calculations for the original statement.

Finally, you can't provide those calculations but, instead, ask for information concerning the subsequent statement, including peer-review sources - even though the original statement, like the subsequent one, was a simple statement of statistical fact.

Can you actually back up your original assertion concerning Phil Jones's original statement, by providing the calculations you used to prove it to yourself, or can't you ?
Simple question, which requires a simple answer. Can you provide the information or not ?

"skip,

Isn't it really irrelevant?
Does it really change what is happening?"

Can I ask whether your concerns answer the above queries?

If we treat Whiney McWhiner with the contempt he demonstrably deserves, is it really relevant? Does it change what's happening? If not, why complain?

"Moreobver it was false alarmism, like the false Antarctica claim"

Yup, that claim YOU made was false.

"the evacuated south sea islnads claim"

That claim is yours and false. There HAVE been evacuations. A burning building isn't safe because people are only BEING evacuated and haven't all left yet.

"the 20 ft sea level rise claim"

If Greenland and the WAIS melt, there will be a 7m sea level rise. The claim of 20ft is, in imperial measures, correct.

"Knowing that your alarmism is false is the only reason you could have for objecting to the term."

Hence all your alarmism about how it's a conspiracy, Whiner?

I guess that YOU don't like YOUR alarmism and therefore project that onto everyone else, just like all your other character defects.

"JM I have not duplicated his calculation so I cannot say."

So you duplicated his earlier calculation? Or can you not say and that's why you're asking?

"that the man who admitted distoring to "hide the decline" "

Since you don't know what that means, how do you know it has any pertinence here?

"the climate has been changing for the last 4.5 billion years."

And the reasons for that is in climate science. The same causes for that changing climate demonstrate the fact of AGW.

Just because forest fires were started by lightning thousands of years before mankind doesn't mean arson doesn't exist.

"where I said it had stopped 30 years ago or to apologise for suggesting I had."

All over this thread you've said it's cooling since 1998. All over this thread you've said there's no warming since 1995.

"thereby proving that there is not a single "environmentalist" who is not a wholly corrupt, lying, thieving piece of filth."

And again proving your protestations that you NEVER use bad words to describe people, like everything else you say, false.

JMurphy I take it you are aware that Jones has not produced the alleged calculation that everybopdy is expected to accept as gospel - sight unseen. I do not see why I or anybody else should do so.

Your point about being equally accepting of everything he says has a superficial attraction. However thinking about it you will see that, human beinges being what they are, it is reasonable to assume that when somebody says something not their advantage they have no reason to lie but when they say something to their advantage they might be.

If you do not accept that you presumably think that because it is generally believed George Bush when he acknowledged being President he must therefore be assumed to have been telling the truth about Iraq's WMDs. I disagree.

Skip you have deliberately altered what you claim I said in your "quotation" duplicating a phrase. I assume such dishonesty is also something you learned while publishing "peer reviewed" climate lies in "the finest journals".

PaulineM - indeed - if we were visibly 15% of the way to catastrophic warming and Antarctica being the only habitable continent then the hypothesis would be proved. We aren't, not even close and so it isn't, not even close.

Wow your claim that King never made the Antarctica claim is clearly a lie. As is the evacuated south sea islands one. I assume everything else is but couldn't be bothered.

Whiner, you've managed to accept Jones' earlier work. Why not now?

Because it doesn't conform to the story you'd like to be true.

So you ignore it.

And it's rather ironic, though you're too dumb to notice, that your whining about Skip rewording your claim is actually in response to your revisionism of skip's claims.

"if we were visibly 15% of the way to catastrophic warming"

That would make it 5 1/3 C degrees of warming for catastrophic warming. At that temperature change, last time, the ice caps were nonexistent and the sea levels 50-80m higher than they are today.

So we ARE at 15% of the way to catastrophic warming. Yet still you whinge that it hasn't happened yet. Wonder why you're still in denial.

"your claim that King never made the Antarctica claim is clearly a lie."

You were the one lying, whiner. The paper doesn't claim what you claimed and that's been proven in the Open Thread.

I guess you don't ever get tired of lying. After all, you probably consider yourself on a Holy Crusade.

Greenland and the WAIS melt, there will be a 7m sea level rise. The claim of 20ft is, in imperial measures, correct.

Neil Craig, as others have pointed out and shown here (and as I have now realised), you are posting a stream of incomprehensible and bizarre assertions, and it is obvious that you cannot answer the questions I have asked of you, seeking more information as to how you have arrived at some of your beliefs.
Fine. I hope it is obvious to all reading - if there are many left - that you are going round in circles, avoiding having to explain yourself or back-up your beliefs. That is a good definition of being in denial.

human beinges being what they are, it is reasonable to assume that when somebody says something not their advantage they have no reason to lie but when they say something to their advantage they might be.

The finest example of projection Beil has produced to date.

So, back to Paul in MI:

Paul, I will make this more concrete for and invite you to look at this quote by Beil:

Skip you have deliberately altered what you claim I said in your "quotation" duplicating a phrase.

Here is a perfect example of Beil at his best.

What do *you*, Paul, think of his claim? Did Beil distort, or did I?

Again, Paul, I genuinely value your opinion on this.

JMurphy I am still awaiting your link to Jones' peer reviewed publication of his new calculations, which you wished me to accept sight unseen. That or your acknowledgement that it doesn't exist.

Hope that is simple enough for you to understand.

Wow's contention that 15% of Greenland, the Himalayas, Antarctica has melted clearly represents the very highest standard of accuracy to which any alarmist aspires.

And of course, no attempt to answer the simple questions which would be easily answerable if alarmism wasn't a deliberate fraud.

Neil I am still awaiting your link to any statement on this thread in which I or anyone on it "lied". That or your acknowledgement that it doesn't exist.

Hope that is simple enough for you to understand.

Your contention that King said Antarctica would be the only habitable land by 2100 clearly represents the very highest standard of accuracy to which any denier aspires.

And of course, no attempt to answer the simple questions which would be easily answerable if you weren't a deliberate fraud:

Have your ever published a research article?
Have you ever read a research article?

Neil Craig, can you explain why you blindly accepted Jones' prior statement of more than a year ago?

Wasn't in a peer reviewed science journal either...

I have twice done so Marco. I suggest you let somebody capable of teading to read & explain it to you.

Skip ditto.

I note none of the obscene, lying, thieving Nazi animals here who make up the alarmist movement believe, agter 88 posts, that it would be possible to answer the simplest question about alarmism without making it glaringly obvious that it is a deliberate fraud.

If you have twice done so, then putting a link to ONE of them will be easy, won't it.

Unless you've been lying again, you naughty little child.

"question about alarmism without making it glaringly obvious that it is a deliberate fraud."

Yes, your questions ARE a deliberate fraud.

somebody capable of teading . . .

LOL.

What a dumb ass.

And still no answer to:

Beil, have you ever "tead" a research article?

LOL.

91 posts - no attempt to answer.

It hardly seems necessaty to puty up a link but since Wow insists here it is.

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2011/07/ever_wonder.php post 81

Now, before I answer5 any fufurther stupid questions, first lets have your5 apolofy for saying I hadn't Wow and for being a a lying thieving Nazi parasite. And denuciation of lying thieving Nazi parasites from other eco-Nazis.

LOL.

What sort of idiot links the very thread he is posting on?

The same idiot who allows himself to cherry pick his Jones quotations based on his knowledge of human beinges[sic] being what they are.

How does someone get so incomparably dumb?

If anyone wants to read my post again they can find it at

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2011/07/ever_wonder.php#c4720134

post number 93.

LOL.

Neil, stating that one is to his advantage and the other is not, is being outrageously stupid, especially since ANYONE CAN REPEAT HIS CALCULATION.

I had to scream, there, because you are clearly not capable to understand basic English (abundantly proven on two threads now).

Moreover, any normal person would think that someone who is willing to state something that is not to his advantage (I don't see why it would not be, it's not like he said something that was a shocker to anyone other but ideological idiots like you or Watts) is trustworthy in general on the same topic.

Oh now I get it.

Neil actually *was* being sarcastic, and I missed it. I instinctively doubted any such subtlety was possible from someone who refuses to "answer5 any fufurther" questions.

It might show a higher level of *mens rea* in his dishonesty than I might have previously acknowledged.

> Now, before I answer5 any fufurther stupid questions

I believe you meant

"Now, before I answer any questions"

Posts 91 and 93,
Skip - fucking legendary! I really did LOL at those! Classic!
While I acknowledge the efforts and supreme patience shown by all, this is surely officially now an exercise in futility. How can you rationalize with a madman?
Christ, he makes Richard Wakefield look like Albert frickin' Einstein . . .
Maybe ignore him for a few days and he'll take his soapbox and go shout his lunatic ravings on another street corner?

Well, if slowly, spotted Skip.

97 posts and no answers.

98 posts and you're still whining about the answers you've been given.

asThe broader issue is the politicization of the scientific review process. I have been dealing with this issue since the publication of my controversial paper in 2006. I have dealt with this by addressing the editor and telling them that I expect this paper to be controversial. I list examples of reviewers on both sides of the debate that have made public statements on the topic, and requested that they not be reviewers, and requested an extra effort to identify impartial reviewers. In my two most controversial papers (most recently the uncertainty monster paper, which is now in press), this has worked well.

Interesting spam above! I neutered it so I can leave it to comment on...

It is actually copied material from Judith Curry's blog, a very recent post, and though non seqitur here, it is generally on topic for the blog! Hard for a non-human to detect, isn't it? They get more and more devious.

Coby

We have been dealing with cut and pastes from denialist blogs for ages! It was the standard modus operandi of crakar.

The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World

illconsidered — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:18:15 +0000

The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World

The natural world is complicated. Therefore, so is the science that tries to understand it.

Complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity are all a part of the story that describes processes that are as extraordinary as they are mundane. While these are the very characteristics of scientific study that motivate professional and amateur alike, they are also the characteristics that give delayers, doubters and liars in the climate debates ample material for confusing and misrepresenting reality.

One such complexity is the interaction of infra-red or long wave radiation (IR or LW), the ocean surface and the atmosphere. This is what gives rise to one of the more esoteric arguments in the climate change denier's arsenal, the argument that the Greenhouse Effect does not operate over 70% of the earth's surface, the portion that is covered in ocean rather than land and therefore ocean warming can not be a result of an enhanced GHE from rising CO2. Since ocean heat content is by far the lion's share of climate system warming...um..Not the IPCC.

The grain of truth in this line of reasoning is that ocean warming is primarily from solar short wave (SW) radiation, the visible light, that freely propogates through the atmosphere and penetrates 10's of metres into the ocean's upper layers. This sunlight directly warms the ocean waters just as it directly warms the earth's surface. Recall now that the greenhouse effect is what happens next: all warm bodies, land and water, emit longwave radiation and these IR photons are trapped and re-radiated by greenhouse gases (H20, CO2, CH4 among others). Roughly half of the energy the surface of the earth tries to send back out to space returns this way. So, the GHE increases down-welling LW but not SW energy. Well, it just so happens that this returning LW energy, unlike its SW cousin, does not penetrate water beyond a few micrometres and therfore it can not directly warm anything but an insignificant portion of the upper ocean layers. No increase in SW radiation, no ocean warming.

To be honest, I am not sure what is so compelling about this argument. Firstly, the climate we inhabit exists in the bottom of the troposphere over land, so while not insignificant, warming of the ocean is not our primary concern. Secondly, energy is not destroyed, so absorbed directly or not, the fact is it is having its escape from the earth's surface, be it land or water, impeded and this must show up as warming somewhere. Logically, some of it must be finding its way back into ocean water via some means or another. Skin layer water molecules that evaporate rather than allow the IR energy to pass through will immediately or eventually give that heat up again as they condense back to liquid form. This results in warmer air which can transfer its heat via conduction. Admittedly, this is probably a minor factor as the heat capacity of air is so much less than water, but that heat does not just disappear. And finally, whatever is going on, the fact is that the heat content of the upper ocean is rising, as expected in an enhanced greenhouse environment. A truly inquiring mind would search for the mechanism that explains the reality, not declare that reality is impossible so... "drill baby, drill!"

Well, it turns out that reality is possible and is happening for a reason, no matter how complicated or surprising. The reason is that that very thin skin layer of water on top of the ocean surface is a strong controller of the heat flux between atmosphere and ocean. Specifically, the size of the temperature gradient between the surface layer and the bulk temperature of the mixed water below it determines how well heat can propogate through it. Now, there are two possible directions heat might propogate. In polar regions or winter in temperate climates, the air is much colder than the water and so heat will flow out of the ocean, whereas in the tropics or summer temperate climates the air will be warming the ocean, drawing energy out. If increased down welling LW is causing a warming of the skin layer, then in the first situation, where the ocean is warmer than the air, the gradient is ~~increased~~reduced and in the second, where the ocean is colder, the gradient is ~~reduced~~increased. The larger the temperature gradient, the faster heat will move across it.

This image and caption, taken from a RealClimate article on this subject, shows the relationship we are looking for:

Figure 2: The change in the skin temperature to bulk temperature difference as a function of the net longwave radiation.

Please check out that RC article and the first couple of screens of comments for the rather gory details.

Because of the principal of larger temperature gradients causing faster heat transfer, by warming the skin layer, down welling IR will decrease the heat transfer from warm ocean to cold air and increase the heat transfer from warm air to cool water, both of which effects contribute to warmer upper ocean waters. Ocean waters warmed by the direct sunlight find that, in an enhanced greenhouse environment, more of this heat is retained rather than passed into the atmosphere.

It is a bit of a brain twister, I'll admit, but it is all consistent with well known physical properties of energy transfer and well established observational evidence of warming upper oceans.

illconsidered Fri, 06/24/2011 - 10:18

Tags

sea surface temperatures

sst

sw radiation

Thanks Coby. I read the final posts on the previous thread and finally understand what Vernon was driving at.

If someone truly wants to understand this issue, then this link provides some reasonable reading:

http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/science_plan/Ch3.pdf

Simply speaking, ghg do not warm the oceans - they prevent it from cooling. But then, that is such a simple concept that I am surprised that some people don't get it.

Awesome. It took me some time and several reads (the article and comments on RealClimate helped a lot) but I think I understand it now. Basically the LW radiation heats the top layer of the ocean which reduces the temperature difference between that layer and the rest of the ocean. That, in turn, "insulates" the ocean from the atmosphere and heats up. Would it be fair to characterize it as an "oceanic greenhouse effect"?

I love this complex mechanisms. It is humbling to realize that nature is always has some other Ace under her sleeve (or under her skirt, that slutty mother nature).

Coby,

Theis a repeat of a blog entry at RC which has never appear in the peer reviewed literature that I was able to find. If you can find where it was published than I would like the link to that if possible. I find it hard to believe that on this site a singe reported test that was presented in a blog that has never been peer reviewed is presented as the answer to a pretty significant issue with the GHG theory. All the peer reviewed papers I could find all agree that LW down dwelling radiation causes cooling on the ocean. The only place I have found that makes the claim that it warms the the water is from the RC site and now you.

Basically, do you have any peer reviewed literature that supports this claim or is it just an unsupported claim from RC being repeated?

"to a pretty significant issue with the GHG theory"

Except... it _isn't_ (and shouldn't be) a significant issue with standard physical theory except with a few crazy people. If you turn up the air temperature in your house, does the bathtub warm up?

"All the peer reviewed papers I could find all agree that LW down dwelling radiation causes cooling on the ocean. "

Please point us to some.

Vernon does not disappoint, he says exactly what I predicted he would say in the previous thread:

Anything anyone says to answer your questions gets the same response. "It is all wrong because it does not say what I want it to say".

If you turn up the air temperature in your house, does the bathtub warm up?--M

The point seemed so simple and obvious that I was afraid to ask it. Did I miss some key subtleties earlier?

The simple answer to this one is that the oceans are not 33K colder than the atmosphere, for reasons which should be patently obvious.

However, your explanation is a little off:

The reason is that that very thin skin layer of water on top of the ocean surface is a strong controller of the heat flux between atmosphere and ocean. Specifically, the size of the temperature gradient between the surface layer and the bulk temperature of the mixed water below it determines how well heat can propogate through it. Now, there are two possible directions heat might propogate. In polar regions or winter in temperate climates, the air is much colder than the water and so heat will flow out of the ocean, whereas in the tropics or summer temperate climates the air will be warming the ocean, drawing energy out. If increased down welling LW is causing a warming of the skin layer, then in the first situation, where the ocean is warmer than the air, the gradient is increased and in the second, where the ocean is colder, the gradient is reduced. The larger the temperature gradient, the faster heat will move across it.

If the temperature gradient is increased in the case where heat is leaving the oceans, and decreased in the case where it is entering, that should lead to an overall cooling effect, not a warming. But the gradient which matters here is that between the skin and the ocean bulk, not that between the skin and the atmosphere.

[Thanks, Martin, I inadvertently swapped "reduce" and "increase" in the passage you quote here, I have ammended the article... - coby]

Coby,

All the peer reviewed papers I can find agree that the net down dwelling longwave radiation on the ocean surface leads to an global average of -66 wm2 which is cooling. (I have no desire to publish a list of papers for those to lazy to do their own research.) Yes Ian is right, presenting me an regurgitation of an unpublished, non-peer reviewed, blog post is going to get the same reaction I gave it the first time.

Please explain how GHG theory, which says that down dwelling LWR causes the surface to be warmer than it would be with out the GHGs in the atmosphere works over the 71 percent of the earth that is not solid? Where increased down dwelling LWR cools the surface of the ocean, where the only warming comes from SWR which will, unlike LWR, penetrate the surface.

Basically, how does cooling the ocean surface cause ocean to retain more heat.

Since 3/4 of the Earth's surface is water the idea that it is not of importance to the alleged catastrophic warming of the globe seems bizarre.

These 7 questions seem to go to the heart of the warming scare since if any of them cannot be aswered in a way that supports alarmism then there is no case to answer. For some reason Mr Mann has declined to answer them privately (as indeed has every other warming alarmist asked:

1 - Do you accept Professor Jones' acknowledgement that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995?

All the peer reviewed papers I can find agree that the net down dwelling longwave radiation on the ocean surface leads to an global average of -66 wm2 which is cooling.

Average of *what*, Vernon? Just the surface of the ocean? Just the ocean? The entire climate system? Clarify, because as per Coby's conservation-of-energy argument in the lead post this is counter-intuitive as written and requires clarification.

(I have no desire to publish a list of papers for those to lazy to do their own research.)

That's just brilliant, Richard Wakefield: "My proof is out there; if you don't dig it up that's your problem."

I might try your line in my next article submission in lieu of a lit review. Incredible.

Moderator: Post#9 is copypasta spam spreading on scienceblogs.

Skip,

Let me think... the ocean, what do you think this discussion is about? They teach this in schools, for example on page 5 of this presentation used at Yale:

http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~avf5/teaching/ResourcesGG535/Lecture9.He…

Since you may not understand the chart, down dwelling LW is "net infrared radiation", which is negative. The only source of warming is the SW from the sun. LW radiation cannot penetrate water more than a few microns at most. All LW radiation does is promote evaporation which is cooling, not warming.

Ok Vernon I will read your link but this better be good.

All the peer reviewed papers I can find agree that the net down dwelling longwave radiation on the ocean surface leads to an global average of -66 wm2 which is cooling.

So what? It's the change in down-welling LR due to increased GHG concentrations that's relevant. Whether that's a change from positive to more positive, or negative to less negative, is entirely irrelevant.

For some reason Mr Mann has declined to answer them privately (as indeed has every other warming alarmist asked:

Liar. They've been answered repeatedly on multiple scienceblogs. In fact, everywhere I've seen you post them, they've been answered. You just don't like the answers, so you pretend they were never given.

Vernon, looking at the global heat balance diagram on pg 3 of your link in @12 I see the same number (net 66 W/m^2 heat lost) for downwelling LW radiation. This would be the value for QLW in the equation on page 5:
Q = QSW â QLW â QS â QL

Fine, we can take that as agreed. It does not mean what you are implying and also it obviously must be a negative number as Q in an equilibrium state must be 0, QS and QL are small numbers and QSW is large.

The oceans warm primarily via incoming SW and do not emit SW therefore not outgoing LW must be positive (net incoming must be negative) for a balanced equation.

You need to suggest some plausible mechanism whereby holding QSW steady and increasing downwelling LW does not make Q greater than 0, which represents a warming imbalance.

I would also like to point out that:
"down dwelling LW is "net infrared radiation", which is negative. The only source of warming is the SW from the sun." is not in and of itself correct. Just because *net* is negative does not mean it has no positive component, which it does.

I did not know that, Coby, although it makes perfect sense.

The other thing I noticed was that the graph was sourced from an IPCC resource by Houghton and I believe Kevin Trenberth. And yes this does appear to be the source of Vernon's -66wm2 figure, although the graph refers to the whole energy budget of the atmosphere not just the ocean. This is less than a prohibitively cumbersome list of "peer reviewed literature" but wave that point and accept it face value.

Because while I don't claim to understand the scientific nuances of this issue yet, the sources themselves are inimical to any notion of incoming solar radiation having a net cooling effect.

In fact if I'm not mistaken the graph is taken straight from the SAR (1996)--and Trenberth not specifically involved-- and the percentages added for purposes of the slide show you linked, Vernon.

When the bottom of this has been gotten to I seriously doubt we're going to find any vindication of a cooling effect of sunlight striking the ocean.

First, I never suggested there was a cooling effect from sunlight, which is SW, striking the ocean. I am pretty sure that I said the opposite of that, that SW is from the sun is the source of warming. Second, if the ocean was a solid, then I would agree Coby, but it is not. It is a liquid that has some pretty special properties. Namely that it will absorb all the LW in the bandwidths of GHG produced down dwelling LW, which means not only is the first few microns the only place that down dwelling LW can be absorbed but it is also the only place that radiates LW. That being said, water pretty much does not cool by long wave radiation but by evaporation. This causes the surface to cool and since the surface is cooler, it sinks and warmer water moves to the surface to be cooled or evaporated.

That is why what you posted and RC posted would be a clear break from all previous studies that I have read, however, other than at RC as a blog post, I have not found that presented in the peer reviewed literature. Since it has not be peer reviewed, I am sticking with the peer reviewed science.

All that is said to make this point. I have found no study that shows that down dwelling LW does slows the cooling of the ocean. Please point me towards that.

The greenhouse effect over oceans was measured as early as 1999 using the ERBE programme.

Raval and Ramanathan (1989) used ERBE
clear-sky LW fluxes over oceans to validate
climate model calculations of the greenhouse
effect. They demonstrated that the water vapor
content of the atmosphere is thermodynamically
constrained by the surface temperature. Figure
5, adapted from their results, shows the
greenhouse effect or warming of the Earthatmosphere
system by atmospheric gases as
related to sea surface temperature. The ERBE
data verify the magnitude and variation of the
greenhouse effect with sea surface temperature.
The upturn of the curves at high temperatures
indicates that the model's estimate of a rapid
increase in atmospheric warming at high sea
surface temperatures is confirmed by the ERBE
results. While the validity of their investigation
has been strongly debated, the analysis does
illustrate the value of ERBE data in climate
process studies.

More recent measurements have been made by the CERES satellite program.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19990064139_199910…

Ian,

I read that and and then tried to access the actual study, but I could not. The Raval and Ramanathan (1989) abstract "The greenhouse effect is found to increase significantly with sea surface temperature." I will freely concede that as SST increase the GHG will increase, that is the expected outcome when SST cools mainly via evaporation. But want I did not find was any statement that an increase in GHG caused SST to increase. Where is the change in GHG to change in SST relationship, I did not find it in this document.

Because WV changes with SST would appear to be an self evident. What is not evident is how an increase in GHG will cause SST warming and what the mechanism is. Do you have any studies that address this? I cannot find any.

[comment moved to the "Open Thread" thread]

[comment moved to "Open Thread" thread]

Coby,

How about moving the Mandas - Neil craig off topic discussion off this thread.

Vernon, if you, as you claim:

Do you have any studies that address this? I cannot find any.

you must be lying in your comment in the previous thread where you claimed:

Please, I have read that paper and many more.

http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/JO/pdf/6305/63050721.pdf

I suggest that you actually read it and hopefully you are intelligent enough (tough call I know) but you will see that your questions are answered there. Specifically read the section where the authors showed that under windy conditions the heat from the skin layer is rapidly mixed over the top meter or so.

Intelligence and honesty do not seem to be strong suits in your shoddy hand of cards.

Vernon:

Can your position on this be summarized in terms its key implications for the theory of anthropogenic global warming?

I have a number of other questions but first I need an answer to the why-I-should-give-a-damn query.

[comment moved to the "Open Thread thread]

Ian,

Your still unable to converse with anyone that disagrees with your near-religious dogma with out tossing out adhoms.

I read the paper you pulled the first quote off of, then I looked up the source from the paper you quoted. I am guessing you did not look that up. As I stated, it is behind a pay wall but the abstract was as I quoted. The point being, finding a correlation between the water temperature and water vapor over water is not earth shaking. Showing how increased greenhouse gases warm the water would be. Ian, the surface is cooler than the water below it and from the same document, "the skin layer exists even in windy conditions (Donlon et al., 2002)." additionally that publication when on to say "During windy conditions, the variation of SSTskin is almost the same as that of SSTdepth, and SSTskin is a little cooler than SSTdepth and SSTsubskin due to the skin effect and the absence of the diurnal thermocline." So, your basically mixing cooler SSTskin with SSTdepth to warm it with colder water? That is the mechanism where down dwelling LW warms SSTdepth?

Vernon,

Why are you still asking these questions, and as skip has asked, how about you tell us what the point?

Have you even read the nasa paper I provided at post #1, and in what way did that not address the issue?

mandas,

Because as far as I can tell from all the published literature, down dwelling LW does not act over water the way it does over solid land. Everything I have read says it does not, including that NASA paper you provided. Over land the down dwelling LW forces the surface to radiate more out going LW so that TOA remains in energy equilibrium. That does not happen over the ocean, which is my point. I have not seen where this is addressed.

I am not sure what you guys are talking about.

Vernon,

Are you saying that the AGW theory is slightly flawed in that the increase in CO2 that absorbs OLR leaving the surface and then re emitted back down only has an effect on the land? The downward re emitted energy that strikes the oceans merely heats the surface, this heat is then released as WV thus cooling not warming the oceans?

Mandas,

I read your PDF and could not find an explanation for the above, mind you i am not an expert so maybe i missed it (quite possible). If the PDF does describe this in detail can you be a bit more descriptive?

Vernon

A quote from the NASA paper:

".....More than half of the annually-averaged solar energy entering the climate system is absorbed by the ocean (Sellers 1965). The fate of that oceanic heating is illustrated in Figure 3.1. Although the upward flux of longwave radiation from the ocean surface is large, it is nearly balanced by the downward flux from the atmosphere, and the net radiative flux is therefore dominated by solar radiation. Ninety percent of the net radiative heating of the global ocean is balanced by evaporative cooling, with the remaining ten percent coming from sensible heat exchange
with the atmosphere...."

Now that appears pretty clear to me. There is a balance between the upward flux from the ocean and a downward flux from the atmosphere, with evaporation playing an important role. The numbers are shown in Figure 3.1.

If you want more on the subject, they provide a reference (Sellers 1965), and there is also a reference on Figure 3.1 (Hsiung 1987). I also suggest you have a look at the reference list for the paper - there are a lot more similar sources quoted which might provide the information you are after (or you can look at the references used in the references).

That's how we do a literature search and review - its standard practice in science. Give it a go - I pretty much guarantee you will find what you are looking for.

This may be related to this issue

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/06/more-evidence-that-global-warming-i…

mandas,

I am sorry but you are not getting the point and I can find no literature that explains how down dwelling LW forces the ocean to warm.

Gee, I have been doing literature searches and so far I have not found what I am looking for and no one has been able to point it out either, sorry but that includes you.

Vernon--fluids, warmed on the surface, mix.
Fluid: convection
Solid: conduction
That's what you're ignoring, the rate of change.
That's why you have not found what you are looking for.
Because you're ignoring it.

Hank,

So you are saying that warming the top of a liquid causes it to move down? That is novel idea and I have not considered that, no wonder I cannot find a paper promoting that.

This of course ignores the fact that down dwelling LW does not penatrate the SST Skin and the SST skin is actually cooler than the water below it, which is in the literature.

Vernon, you are lying again. Lying since you claim to have read the review I linked you to.

If you had actually read that paper you would have seen that, yes the actual skin layer is cooler than the subskin layer but both are warmer than the "sea temperature at depth". This, of course, only happens on extremely calm days. Winds cause these layers to mix and thus the heat created by the LWR in the skin gets mixed into the deeper water. Note this is physical mixing and not convection hence your confusion.

Once again here is the link, please read it carefully:

http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/JO/pdf/6305/63050721.pdf

Pay particular attention to Figures 2 and 7.

Ian,

Since I answered you in #28, but I guess your reading comprehension is really poor. Figure 7 shows how the models attempt to address the ocean's vertical temperature profile near the surface. It does not address how downdwelling LW warms anything. Figure 2 address how warming in the upper METERS are mixed by wind, however, since you did not comprehend my post in #28 I will repeate what I posted then in the hope that you understand it this time:

[F]rom the same document, "the skin layer exists even in windy conditions (Donlon et al., 2002)." additionally that publication when on to say "During windy conditions, the variation of SSTskin is almost the same as that of SSTdepth, and SSTskin is a little cooler than SSTdepth and SSTsubskin due to the skin effect and the absence of the diurnal thermocline." So, your basically mixing cooler SSTskin with SSTdepth to warm it with colder water?

So how does down dwelling LW warm the ocean?

Vernon, down welling IR warms the ocean by inhibiting its loss of heat to the atmosphere as per my tortured attempt to explain in the OP.

Let me be as understanding of your position as possible and say I think this is in fact an interesting and non-intuitive issue. I also think many people (not all) are not getting what your point is. However, I have a couple of questions that move beyond this grey area.

First question is what do you think happens to the energy that downwelling IR brings to the ocean surface? If as you say, and plausibly IMO, it can not be directly absorbed, where does it go (please trace your proposed path until it escapes to space or is somewhere we can reasonalby be assumed to know the rest on our own)?

Second question is, granting for the sake of argument that you are correct that there is no peer reviewed research directly targeted at the effect of increases in downwelling IR on skin, subskin and subsurface ocean layers, how does this affect the policy relevant aspects of global climate change? Is it therefore not happening? Self-limiting before dangerous? So ill understood that we should just keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere?

Or is it really just an example of complex details still needing to be better understood but not altering the general understanding of climate sensitivity etc?

Vernon

I am getting it - but clearly you are not.

No-one is saying that down dwelling LW radiation warms the ocean. But I have said - as it also says in that paper from NASA and as coby has also said on a number of occasions - that down dwelling LW radiation inhibits the loss of heat from the ocean. The figures and equations are in the NASA study, and are in the reference that is quoted in the NASA paper.

It is really simple. And the more down dwelling radiation, the less the heat loss. But that's just simple physics.

> So you are saying ...

Vernon, you're such a gem.

Crakar, (at 33)

. . . and what it says is that the "missing heat" they were using to make the models play out with rather "high sensitivity" and positive feedback scenarios wasn't really missing after all.

It was never there.

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/last:121/plot/hadsst2nh/last:121/trend

Thats exactly right Paul.

Now we have Vernon stating he can see no evidence to suggest LW down dwelling radiation will warm the oceans but Coby et al are saying it will or it has already begun.

Hello Coby,

Thank your for having this post to discuss this. To begin with, I agree that this is a complexe, interesting, and very non-intuitive issue. The reason I think it is important is because this is one of the complex details, that if is not understood, could prevent us from determine the climate sensitivity with enough fidelity to actually determine what the actual sensitivity is, not just a broad range from "no big deal" to "end of the world." Without establishing what the climate sensitivity actually is there will be no way to make rational choices about the future. Anyway, that is why I think it is important and it seems to be a really interesting problem.

First, in order to have a proper discussion less establish the terminology and some basics, the Greenhouse effect works be absorbing OLW and reradiating a portion back to the surface. Whether you say it inhibibs cooling or warms, both are technically true, so lets not play games with words about this. I agree that is the greenhouse effects works on land, pick the terminology you are like.

Over water it gets more intersting. Fully understanding that volcanic activity, fresh water run off from land, and a few other very minor sources can warm the ocean, the principle source of energy is from is solar SW. Most the energy is absorbed in the first meter but some can reach several hundred meteres. This is pretty much the only way the oceans get warmed and most of this happens in the tropics. There are four ways for the ocean to cool: conduction, convection, OLW, and latent heat.

The ocean surface structure is discribed in the literature as having an interface (the top), skin (~10-20 microns), subskin (~1mm), temperature at depth (~1m), and foundation (~5-10m) to use the proper terminology.

First about OLW and DLW, both only happen at the skin and interface but there is no way to measure the interface with current technology that I have found in the literature.

These are the basics, do we agree on this much? If so, I will go into the interesting part.

Vernon, there is not enough to disagree with in your set up to prevent goin on to the interesting part, please proceed.

I will however state a directly relevant quibble and tangentially relevant objection just for the record. The quibble is that "warms" and "prevents cooling" actually is a bit more than word games given the level of detail we are trying to unravel, we may need to return to that. The objection is that climate sensitivity can be constrained by things other than detailed modeling, most importantly by using our best understanding of past climates. I personally think this provides some of the strongest evidence of ~3oC for 2x CO2.

That said, have at it...

I am a little surprised that we are having this conversation. I had thought that the fact that down dwelling radiation cools the oceans is well established. The reason is simple: it promotes evaporation. However, this is not the end of the matter. In an earlier post, Coby asks the reasonable question, what happens to the heat? The answer is that when the evaporated water condenses and forms globules the latent heat is released into the atmosphere. Down dwelling radiation does not inhibit the loss of heat from ocean, as Mandas proposes. In fact, it has precisely the opposite effect.

However, I am surprised that there appears to be nothing in the literature on so fundamental a point. Am I missing something? Is my analysis wrong?

"...the fact that down dwelling radiation cools the oceans is well established. The reason is simple: it promotes evaporation."

Not so fast. Before we go any further, we have to be certain of all the factors in that 'equation'. The molecules that do gain enough energy to escape surface tension are very much in the minority - the ocean surface doesn't just evaporate the whole of its skin at a time. What about all the other molecules at the surface of the ocean that have gained energy, but not enough to change state and escape the surface?

What effect does the changed energy state have on that much larger aggregation of molecules? They've gained energy (from some form of radiation) but not enough to change their liquid state. The usual physical expression of that situation is an increase in temperature.

No?

snowman

'....However, I am surprised that there appears to be nothing in the literature on so fundamental a point. Am I missing something? Is my analysis wrong?...."

Yes. Read the NASA study I linked to in post #1

You're right, Adelady, when you declare that not all molecules gain enough energy to escape the surface tension. However, those that do draw their energy partly from from collisions with others. Thus the net effect is a loss of energy and a cooling of the oceans. Columbia University in its lecture notes on the subject says the following:

'Much of the radiation from the atmospheric gases, also in the infrared range, is transmitted back to the ocean, reducing the net long wave radiation heat loss of the ocean. The warmer the ocean the warmer and more humid is the air, increasing its greenhouse abilities. Thus it is very difficult for the ocean to transmit heat by long wave radiation into the atmosphere; the greenhouse gases just kick it back, notably water vapor whose concentration is proportional to the air temperature. Net back radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter.'

It is easy to be misled by this and to seize upon the phrase 'reducing the net long wave radiation heat loss of the ocean'. The point, however, is that energy is then lost through evaporation, and not by direct radiation. The conclusion is that it all boils down to a loss of energy of 66 watts per square metre (or meter, as the Americans say). Again, I think the mechanics of molecular collision are well known and uncontroversial.

Mandas, the study you refer to does not seem to address this point.

Hank: "Vernon--fluids, warmed on the surface, mix.
Fluid: convection
Solid: conduction"

Fluids also have conduction.

It's just that convection in a fluid or gas with a negative potential temperature gradient is much higher than conduction.

"Thus the net effect is a loss of energy and a cooling of the oceans."

Except that a cooler ocean (and since water vapourises at 100C, the vapour IS hotter than the ocean) will condense water vapour out of the air and its deposition will dissipate the latent heat into the water body and warm it.

And a warming ocean still doesn't lose more H2O as vapour than it's increased energy content as heat allows. Therefore the ocean REMAINS warmer, just not as warm as it would without evaporation taking place.

'sfunny how denialists and other half-wits always leave out large sections of inconvenient truth, yet complain bitterly about how AGW hasn't taken EVERYTHING into account.

Isn't it.

"I am sorry but you are not getting the point and I can find no literature that explains how down dwelling LW forces the ocean to warm."

It doesn't force the ocean to warm. It warms the ocean. As in "if the LW downwelling were not there, the ocean would be cooler". As in "if you walk outside on a cold night with a coat on, you'll be warmer than you would be in a t-shirt".

LW radiation is absorbed by the ocean.

It warms the ocean.

A warm ocean emits LW radiation upward.

That cools the ocean.

Net cooling is less with the GHG present creating more downwelling LW than without it.

YOUR persistence seems to be merely a restating of the G&T paper "proving" that there is no greenhouse effect, merely dropping it being impossible on land.

Coby,

Sorry for the delay, but I have had a bug the last few days and just making it to work is about all I have been up to. I will answer in a day or two.

Just read this (a bit behind, yes), and a few things bothered me, so here's my non-expert take...

First, terminology. The literature apparently uses "coolings" and "warmings" to refer to fluxes leaving or entering the system; don't think of it as temperature change--only the sum of all the relevant energy fluxes corresponds directly to a temperature change. A lot of confusion seems to be about this, and the apparent paradox that the easiest way to shed more energy is by getting hotter.

So lets follow the energy flux; using the numbers and such from the discussion thread, we have 340 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere, with about 170 W/m^2 absorbed at depths typically a few meters in the ocean. This energy is re-radiated as long wave IR, and is almost immediately reabsorbed--water is a greenhouse liquid, so the mean free path for LW is tiny. This is essentially a diffusion problem, where most of the LW goes to heating the water around the absorption depth (which is why the SST is relatively warm). The LW that actually escapes to the atmosphere is emitted near the surface, and its spectrum reflects the temperature of the "skin" and "subskin" SST, not the SST at depth.

The surface typically radiates 390 W/m^2 of short wavelength IR, of which about 324 W/m^2 returns as back radiation. The 66 W/m^2 difference is the cooling capacity of LW escaping to infinity. Since increasing GHGs increases back radiation, this cooling capacity becomes smaller with increasing GHGs. For the oceans, the back radiation will be absorbed at about the same depth it radiated at--the mean free path doesn't care about direction--so that part is actually fairly analogous to what happens on the surface of the earth, though the part that determines the effective surface temperature is different, and the equilibrium more complex.

When the ocean skin loses cooling capacity from LW radiation due to increasing GHGs, it has to offset it, primarily by increasing evaporation, but also by increasing outgoing LW radiation. To do either the skin has to get on average warmer--the molecules that evaporate, the ones that "get away", are the tail of the kinetic energy distribution; to increase the population in the tail, the entire distribution has to move up. Hot water loses more energy from evaporation than cold does--is that really in dispute? However, increasing the skin temperature decreases the cooling capacity available to the SST, due to reduced heat diffusion rates and reduced convection--so the SST has to get warmer to compensate.

The 66 W/m^2 difference is the cooling capacity of LW escaping to infinity. Since increasing GHGs increases back radiation, this cooling capacity becomes smaller with increasing GHGs. -- Dan

Dan, your post is very dense and I think I get it for the most part, and everyone is using this number as a given and I am willing to accept it. But I genuinely want to get to the bottom of its origin. If its a stupid question I am willing to look stupid.

The only documentation I have seen of it was in the lecture notes Vernon cited, which were based on a graph of the whole atmospheric-oceanic energy budget from--as far as I could tell--the IPCC Second Assessment Report. It was not referencing outgoing LR radiation from the ocean exclusively--*as far as I could tell*.

Again if I look dumb, fine. I have no problem admitting when I don't get something. But where the bloody hell does this --66Wm2 figure come from in the "peer reviewed literature" in the first place?

If everyone else is floating along fine, my congrats, but it would really anchor my ability to follow this discussion if someone would resolve this for me.

Humor me, please.

Happy Independence Day, all.

skip

As I have been trying to say all along, the link I provided at post #1 (yeah I know - right at the very begining) has all the information on this issue.

Here's the link again:
http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/science_plan/Ch3.pdf

Click on it, then go to the fourth page (it's page #118 in the document) and have a look at Figure 3.1. There are all the relevant numbers. You will note that the amount of ingoing and outgoing radiation varies with latitude, and hence the net radiation flux varies with latitude (its positive to about 20 degrees).

Then, if you are really interested in more info, the source for the data is cited (you know, just like in real science). The source on the figure is Hsiung 1986 - and if you then scroll to the end of the paper you get this:

Hsiung, J., 1986: Mean surface energy fluxes over the global ocean. J. Geophys. Res., 91, 10,585â10,606.

If you type that into Google scholar, you get this link:

http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/1986/JC091iC09p10585.shtml

So - as I said right at the very beginning of this thread:

"...If someone truly wants to understand this issue, then this link provides some reasonable reading..."

Is there anything else I can help with?

No, thanks.

Let me check this out and sorry for missing it before.

Not having a go at you there skip. I tried to point this out to several people who were asking questions and trying to make points on this issue - but I guess the reading of science is not a common trait among many posters around here.

Skip, try this diagram:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/abstracts/files/kevin1997_1.html

for energy fluxes.

Dan:

"only the sum of all the relevant energy fluxes corresponds directly to a temperature change. A lot of confusion seems to be about this"

Manufactured confusion. Keeping a "debate" alive by "misunderstanding".

"The 66 W/m^2 difference is the cooling capacity of LW escaping to infinity."

The problem here is that that 66 is just a difference between two radiative components. You're forgetting the convection and evaporation. They get a look-in too.

If anyone wants to know a little more on the issue of the energy budget of both the land and the oceans, this paper provides a pretty good overview:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf

Oh, and a short version of the "problem" with that -66W/m^2. See the graph here:

http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/energy-budget-trenbert…

(note: science of doom has done several posts explaining the graph too)

Figures in W/m^2

Solar radiation absorbed by surface: 168
SW radiation absorbed by surface: 324

Total absorbed: 168+324 = 492

SW emitted by surface: 390
Convection losses by surface: 24
Evaporation losses by surface: 78

Total lost: 390+24+78 = 492

Absorbed = Lost

No lost "-66W/m^2"

Swap LW for SW. The radiation from the atmosphere is Infra-Red, the radiation from the atmosphere is likewise IR.

There was some discussion with snowman regarding coral reefs on another thread (I can't remember which one) before he crawled back under his rock. He spouted the standard denialist dogma about there being no climate change, but if there was it wouldn't be a problem etc.

I would like to draw everyone's attention to probably the scariest paper I have ever read, here:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCMM/Publications/21706633/HoeghGu…

The paper is supported by this statement from Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of the authors of the paper and Professor of Marine Studies and Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. He is one of the world's foremost experts on coral reefs. In an article about the state of coral reefs around the world, he stated:

"...The current distribution of carbonate coral reefs around the world today is associated with concentrations of carbonate ions of 200 Âµmol per kilogram water or more. In this case, there is a natural gradient towards reduced carbonate ion concentrations and more acidic oceans at higher latitudes. This is primarily due to the fact that cold water can contain a lot more carbon dioxide. The significance of this threshold for carbonate ions is that these are the concentrations that you get in tropical oceans when carbon dioxide increases above 450 ppm. Given that these levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are likely to be associated with at least a 2Â°C increase in sea temperature, it appears that coral reefs will largely disappear if atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide exceed 450 ppm....."

Take careful note of that - he is suggesting that even under the conditions that we are currently aiming for to contain climate change - and which we are unlikely to achieve unless things change very quickly - then coral reefs around the world will all but disappear. If this is true - and the work is supported by a number of other studies so it appears to be valid - then the consequences over the next hundred years or so are not just going to be bad, they are going to be unimaginably catastrophic.

This is not just about tourism and nice places to see, if corals disappear the whole ocean ecosystem will collapse. Think about that for a moment. Then think some more. Then start worrying.

Yup, got my powers mixed up! That should have been 25 billion tons.
There are a large number of water usage sites which give estimates for various activities:

Evaporation from reservoirs: 275cubic km/yr
(275 billion tonnes)
World industry: 90 cubic km/yr.....90 billion tonnes
(which includes the world's 63,590 power stations)
Agriculture 1870 cubic km/yr ( listed as evapotranspiration as they can't tell the difference)
So a reasonable estimate for AWV added to the atmosphere is 2200 billion tonnes a year which otherwise would not be there. Which is a lot more than the CO2 added.

> A study of satellite data on clouds and water vapor indicates that prior predictions of substantial Global Warming are wrong.

Really? Several other studies show they're right.

> The study introduces a new method to diagnose the total radiative feedback parameter.

So it's new. Why is it right?

> A completely independent analysis reveals that there is insignificant net positive feedback.

Yeah, you're pretty gullible, aren't you.

GTB:

Can you at least cite your source(s)?

So a reasonable estimate for AWV added to the atmosphere is 2200 billion tonnes a year which otherwise would not be there.

So before the reservoirs were built and the farms were irrigated it was all just barren desert? What is the mean residence time for water vapour in the atmosphere?

waooooo there are scientist all around.. nice ;-)

*What* are you?

hey skip are you a reader or a blog admin because your comments are all around this blog?

Surgical Blog, Global Technology Blog, etc seem to be bots cutting and pasting from can.mailarchive.ca for December 2008.

It seems to be a pretty good one, even addressing other posters by name and being borderline on topic.

If Turing had known how low real human dialogue would sink due to the internet, I think he might have had to devise a better test of AI!

Would it not be better to stop bitching in the last few comments and get back to the main topic of "The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World"

Comments like 'Yup, got my powers mixed up!' were in the original, which is why I think it is not a live person.

Would it not be better to stop bitching in the last few comments and get back to the main topic of "The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World"

Even if you are talking with a machine?

Yes, Richard Simons, I agree that Comments like 'Yup, got my powers mixed up!' were in the original, which is why I think it is not a live person. Would it not be better to stop bitching in the last few comments and get back to the main topic of "The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World" Even if you are talking with a machine? waoooo, good post!

Hey, it's fun to imitate a machine imitating a person! I'll leave the comments but neuter them...

Yeah everyone - stop bitching!

Miss me while I was away? In case you didn't, I have been travelling and overseas for the past 5 weeks - as well as being in hospital a few times. But it's nice to be home.

Did you disgrace anymore American women on this latest holiday?

Not this time skip. We went to Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as doing some diving along the east coast of Australia. And took my wife with me, so I had to be a good boy.

How was your xmas?

In hospital?

A few times?

You really should look after yourself better - rather than getting all those people to wait on you hand and foot.

Seriously. Hope you're well and staying well.

Hi Adelady,

Yes, I was testing the different state health systems across the country by being admitted to hospital. So far SA is coming a distant third behind Qld and NSW. Had my appendix out in Toowoomba and discovered I have cavernomas in my brain in NSW. Maybe that's my problem.

Hi mandas, I is too bad you are in these problems, but here i want to recommend my post on Surgical Blog related to Brain. may be it will be helpful to you.

As if we'd click on a pointless and probably spam-laden link...