Diesel_dyk wrote:
Spark wrote:
First off: sourcing Andrew Bolt is not smart. I've seen the guy try to debate climate scientists and he basically fell into personal attacks.
I don't care what Al Gore thinks, I don't care what your 'market whizzes, financial gurus, hedge funds, the ultra rich, corrupt politicians' think, I care what the scientists think and what science says and so do the rest of the intelligent population. And I'm fairly sure that it was scientists who proved that smoking causes cancer. Not the tobacco companies.
However with lines like these:
You look at those tobacco guys and you can see how grant money and employment opportunities can affect scientific judgment in a not so subtle ways. All these guys want to do is get published, get tenure, get grant money for traveling, and make wild predictions that may or may not happen after they retire and are dead. I doubt they will give a crap if they are debunked after they are retired and or dead.
I think this debate is an excercise in pointlessness as it is clear as you have a completely misguided understanding of what science is and what motivates a scientist.
First off no one is above reproach, no one's credibility escapes scrutiny. If there are two groups of scientists one pro and the other con and you are choosing to follow one group of scientists then you've chosen a side, don't think for one instance that the evidence is soooo overwhelming there is only one side, but recently that is the schpiel in the public discourse and there is a mad rush to cut off debate. That mad rush looks like an attempt to change this area of science into dogma. I wonder what they said about Galileo in his day when when he talked contrary to accepted dogma.
But you want to look only at the science, then let's look at the statiscital modeling. This "science" is using statistical modeling and that means that its a soft science not a hard sceince. so just like economics, or sociology the measurement of any data is subject to interpretation and manipulation through the wonders of statistics. And we all know what they say about statistics, "there are lies, dam lies and then there are statistics."
Firstly, I'm well aware that no one is above scrutiny. That's why the peer review system is so important, because that is the scrutiny that is required. I'm aware that science could descend into groupthink but when presented with the evidence and the basic chemistry (and this is what this is, chemistry) of anthropogenic global warming, I think that their claims have basis.
Since the latest thing to come out of the debate are questions about the pro-GW scientists models let's look at those. I read through the emails posted on
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr … cked#63657 and they are very enlightening. Now I don't really care where these emails came from or who broke the news on them,
I care, as Andrew Bolt is notorious for utilising poor and blinkered journalistic process.
but if you want to debate the science then go ahead and read the emails for the sake of debate. And for the sake of debate I'm going to assume the emails as being true and accurate to what these guys actually said and did. If you are not interested in this debtate, then it means that you are not really interested in debating the science behind the numbers and it means that you are only interested in spouting dogma.
I read the emails. While obviously eye-brow raising, they do not, to me, show evidence of a conspiracy. What I see is a lot of people whose models don't precisely predict what's going to happen, and are alarmed at what they see as a problem with their models. Now, what I see here is a product of skepticism gone to irrationality, as now scientists are so afraid of saying anything that could be even slightly misconstrued that they are now toeing the line. In essence, they are afraid that they admit to any doubt about anything at all and the ultradenialists will jump all over it as proof of A. a conspiracy and B. that all of climate research is bogus. This is a patently nonsensical situation and is leads to behaviour which is wholly unscientific, but I think most people are tired of trying to be heard over the yells and screams of "OMG GW BULLSHIT" because they might admit that their model might need more work.
If these guys are in fact using statistic programs to model climate change and they are using econometric modeling as suggested in the e-mails then this whole area of science is open to manipulation and those e-mails, if true, are very enlightening as to how these scientists are coming to their conclusions.
Now, with this type of modeling you can have fudging on the input data, which the e-mails elude to when they talk about various "blips" being ignored or you can manipulate the modeling with different data sets being selectively combined which the emails also talk about.
You can have subtle changes in the model where you go from A=b+c+d to A=b+c+(0.15d) or even (1/d). I took an econometrics class where I did just that. I was to write a paper to look at the Philips curve there was only one problem, the data didn't support the theory, so I went on to force the model to work by changing one variable and that disproved the theory. What I did was invert one variable in the model so it when from (1+x) to 1/(1+x). The inverse on one of the data sets was shown to make the model work which in fact disproved the theory. Anyway, I got a A on that paper and it took the prof some time to find out what I did and he did circle the inversion in my model.
But, and this is key, when I did that paper I had to submit, the paper, my data set, my modeling and the computer statistical analysis.
If you bother to read those e-mails you will find that that is what they are talking about and they are talking about hiding data, not submitting their data sets, being asked repeatedly to submit data sets on their publications, not submitting their modeling, scrubbing their data sets to drop certain data, scrubbing their data sets to not include certain countries, scrubbing data to drop "blips" in temperature that disprove what they are actively trying to prove, they talk about changing variables in their models to get certain outcomes and they appear to be more worried about being to extreme and also making sure not to be overly cautious. In otherwords they are modeling their conclusions to come within the parameters of accepted dogma. This not the work of science.
Of course not. This is statistics (I have a paticular resentment of statistics) and these things happen.
But that does not invalidate the basic chemistry underlying the principle of anthropogenic climate change.
Now if they were to include the data that they scrubbed out and if their modeling doesn't work then their conclusions are not only faulty I would say that they have basically disproved their theories, not proved them. If they ran those numbers and then tossed those models because of "unacceptable" results, then these guys are not scientists.
If.
Now, I must be niave because I was taught that you hypothecize and test the hypothecize, that its irrelevant if the hypothesis is correct or not. Either way science is advanced through the advance of the knowledge gained in performing the test. Looking at what these guys are doing, they are not acting like scientists, they are acting like whores who use statistics to sell you something.
Of course the manipulation of data is unscientific, but the way you are using it - as proof of a global climate conspiracy somehow related to cap and trade - is equally faulty. I would also prefer to see these emails
in context and not as the result of the chainsaw cut and paste work of a hack such as Bolt.
Another point in the email is that they are showing concern that urban temperatures are rising while ocean tempertures are falling. The fact that ocean temperatures are decreasing is very interesting. What a real scientist would do is model the urban temperatures, and model the ocean temperatures seperately and they try to account for the differences. My hypothesis is that Urban temperatures are rising because of increased construction and the use of concrete that heats up and retains heat longer thus causing a rise in average temperatures in those settings. Cities are getting hotter and its got nothing to do with carbon dioxide. Science is as much about the data you collect as it is asking the right questions.
The urban heat island effect is well documented but your point about falling ocean temperatures is untrue
even if you just look at the emails:
Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming
Unless my maths is completely wrong this implies that the ocean is still warming, just not as much (negative x positive = negative)
Looking at these e-mails it would seem to be very hard for these to be a fabrication and most likely someone on the inside did leak these. Probably a scientist with some integrity.
Or they were hacked, as it was stated originally.
Now, I want to look at some of these quotes that Bolt thinks are evidence of a Grand Conspiracy:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
If my model didn't work I would be inclined to say it was a travesty as well. It does not, however, disprove the theory.
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips—higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.
This quote makes me feel lost because I am completely out of context here. On the surface it looks like straight data fudging but looking deeper (especially "My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this," "Removing ENSO") I think things are much more complicated than this.
In any case, the thing that I most care about about is the fact that they are trying to explain or analyse the blips, which is the main point.
The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
I like how Bolt makes a judgement having shown no signs of having read the paper in question. It could be riddled with errors, for all we know.
> After asking Anjuli I can confirm that government employees cannot receive funding besides travel reimbursement. So for those of you that are GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, the only thing that remains to do is to go through the document once again, make sure your work (past and future) is not misrepresented, and then send me a note with an “OK” or your new comments, specifying that you are a government employee (please don’t let me guess it).
For those of you that are ACADEMICS WITH 12 MONTHS SALARY all that we can budget is a small amount of consulting fees, up to 2 weeks’ worth.
If you belong to this category please respond saying that you are or you are not interested. If you are, then include in the document at the end in the place already arranged for it a statement of work referring to specific tasks as they stand in Section 3 of the narrative, and a bio-sketch (see end of this email for specific instructions).
For THOSE OF YOU THAT CAN GET FULL SUPPORT, please say if you want it or > not, and if you do, then do as I requested above: include in the document at the end in the place already rranged for it a statement of work referring to specific tasks as they stand in Section 3 of the narrative, and a bio-sketch (see end of this email for specific instructions).
I have no idea what this is about or why it is relevant, it looks to me like pay negotiations.
And again I'll ask you speculate on what Al Gore is diong supporting the Chicago Climate exchange while at the same time he owns a coal fired electric generating plant... if you want to refuse to speculate on the swirl of activity surrounding these scientists and what their creations are being used for, then its a little like discussing the Manhattan project while ignoring the role of the military and the political leaders and the ultimate product that was to emerge. You can do it but it looks plain silly.
Frankly I don't care what Al Gore thinks, does, or says. He does not speak for me, I do not get my information from him. As far as I'm concerned he's someone who just happened to have the prestige and power to be thrust into the spot of "spokesperson" for the "global warming movement" (and writing that makes me feel sick), which he does not deserve. He is, as you point out, a hypocrite. I don't listen to him, neither should you.
