“Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
Shylock (Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3)
With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness…?”
As dark nights draw in, the venerable contrarians at the GWPF are still up late commissioning silly pseudo-rebuttals to mainstream science. The latest, [but see update below] which no-one was awaiting with any kind of breath, is by Dr. Ray Bates (rtd.) which purports to be a take-down of the recent #SR15 report. As Peter Thorne (an IPCC author) correctly noted, this report is a “cut-and-paste of long-debunked arguments”. I’ve grown a little weary of diving down to rebut every repetitive piece of nonsense, but this one has a few funny aspects that make it worthwhile to do so.
When they go low, we go “sigh…”.
Peter wrote a short rebuttal himself and notes a remarkable display of chutzpah by Bates. Bates quotes a line from the AR5 SPM:
It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.
And then states “This statement did not necessarily attribute all the observed post-1950 warming to anthropogenic effects”. This is of course true. You actually need to read the next line for that:
The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.
But instead of noting that (or the substantive discussion in Chapter 10 that supported it), he claims that
In contrast to this caution, SR1.5 portrays all the global warming observed since the late 19th century as being human-induced (see Figure 1). This major departure from the Fifth Assessment is presented without any rigorous justification.
This is categorically, absolutely, and totally, untrue. The starting point for SR15 is actually exactly what was in AR5 together with more recent literature. Now, this is not the first time that someone has apparently “misunderstood” these lines. I had a substantial back and forth about them with Judith Curry a few years back (see here, and here). [Unsurprisingly perhaps, she thinks Bates’ report is an “excellent analysis“].
It gets better (and by that I mean worse). Bates then comments on Figure SPM1 of the SR15 and says:
The agreement shown in the figure between the observations (with interannual variations smoothed out) and the mean of the climate simulations (produced by global climate models; GCMs) is close, suggesting that strong confidence can be placed in both the indicated acceleration of the warming and its modelled anthropogenic origin.
… except that, this isn’t what is shown in Fig SPM1 at all. Instead, alongside the observations is an estimate of the attributable warming to anthropogenic effects from Haustein et al. (2017), which is not the ‘mean of GCM simulations’ in any respect.
It gets even better. Later in Bates’ article, he is quite enamored by the climate sensitivity results of Lewis and Curry (2018) but doesn’t seem to realise that their results assume that all of the trends since the 19th Century are forced. The exact conclusion he rails against in the first section!
The other paper he likes for it’s climate sensitivity work is his own somewhat obscure effort (Bates, 2016), which argues for an ECS near 1K, despite the clear evidence that the planet has already warmed up by that, with a net forcing substantially less than 2xCO2, and with an ongoing energy imbalance (as evidenced by observed increases in Ocean Heat Content). This, to be gentle, is pretty much impossible.
Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the estimate of OHC that he mentions. He instead pulls another sleight of hand by referencing a result from Laloyaux P., et al. (2018). This is a paper presenting a new (and impressive) coupled data assimilation scheme from ECMWF, but Bates grossly misrepresents the results. The figure he shows is first panel from their figure 10:
He uses this to claim that “the natural variability of the global SST is greater than had previously been estimated”, when a) this doesn’t show SST (though it is related), b) much of the variance pre-1980 is unphysical model drift, and c) the increases in the full depth OHC actually match direct observational estimated (which is unsurprising since this is a data assimilation exercise).
The rest of the report goes from the sublime (just kidding) to the ridiculous (e.g. using a paper by Nicola Scafetta as an authoritative (!) source – anyone heard of autocorrelation or over-fitting?) and cherry picking the few datasets that minimise current changes. He cut-and-pastes a figure from John Christy that we have oft criticised before. He misreads the climate model tuning paper by Hourdin et al (2017) to claim that all CMIP5 models tuned their results to match the 20th Century trends [Narrator: they did not]. But even if it actually were true, it still wouldn’t impact the results in the first figure he attacks because that doesn’t show the CMIP5 models at all. He appears to be unaware of this.
Overall, this is basically a dialed-in work-for-hire. It’s incoherent, inconsistent, a little bit funny and adds nothing to our understanding of the science behind the SR15 report, or indeed any aspect of the attribution issue.
Since I started with a Shakespearean quote, I’ll finish with another one that is more apropos:
It is a tale
Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Update Jan 2019: The original report from Bates (here) has now been replaced with one that tries to fix the more egregious errors, er… I mean that makes “clarifications that arose in the context of discussions with colleagues”. Lol.
References
- K. Haustein, M.R. Allen, P.M. Forster, F.E.L. Otto, D.M. Mitchell, H.D. Matthews, and D.J. Frame, "A real-time Global Warming Index", Scientific Reports, vol. 7, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14828-5
- N. Lewis, and J. Curry, "The Impact of Recent Forcing and Ocean Heat Uptake Data on Estimates of Climate Sensitivity", Journal of Climate, vol. 31, pp. 6051-6071, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0667.1
- J.R. Bates, "Estimating climate sensitivity using two‐zone energy balance models", Earth and Space Science, vol. 3, pp. 207-225, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015EA000154
- P. Laloyaux, E. de Boisseson, M. Balmaseda, J. Bidlot, S. Broennimann, R. Buizza, P. Dalhgren, D. Dee, L. Haimberger, H. Hersbach, Y. Kosaka, M. Martin, P. Poli, N. Rayner, E. Rustemeier, and D. Schepers, "CERA‐20C: A Coupled Reanalysis of the Twentieth Century", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 10, pp. 1172-1195, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018MS001273
- F. Hourdin, T. Mauritsen, A. Gettelman, J. Golaz, V. Balaji, Q. Duan, D. Folini, D. Ji, D. Klocke, Y. Qian, F. Rauser, C. Rio, L. Tomassini, M. Watanabe, and D. Williamson, "The Art and Science of Climate Model Tuning", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 98, pp. 589-602, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00135.1
This is getting RIDICULOUS! Why do they even waste money hiring people like Bates to do climate denials? At this late and warming point, he could be replaced with an IBot!
Given the distance in method, inferential substance, and result between Bates, Scafetta, Lewis, and Curry, and the coherent interpretation which is consistent with properly interpreted observation, calculation, and simulation, how does this kind of thing occur? Is there a subset of journals or reviewers who are selectively drawn or scheduled to review these kinds of papers? I understand that reviewing is often a volunteer engagement, so journals and others can’t be too picky, but, to the degree this can be controlled, doesn’t that argue for some randomization in choice?
Or is it that papers are pigeonholed by subject and needed expertise, and there’s a gaggle of reviewers assigned there, considered qualified to review? Accordingly, such a system might be exploited to define the set of the qualified to be coincident with the set of the favorable, no?
It just seems to me that review and selection of papers is a statistical decision process, and to the degree to which it yields these kinds of results which need to be swatted by responses and letters, there’s something worth fixing about it.
Perhaps primary reviewers need to be shadowed by people less entangled, and there ought to be some compensation from as-near-to-an-impartial-source-as-possible to encourage and justify their efforts? Or is the answer that the entire process ought, in the spirit of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, be open source from the get-go?
I wonder, and I’m interested, as these kinds of collective decisions based upon inter rate reliability are of some technical interest. Could one create a retrospective scoring system for reviewers like that used for political polls or weather forecasts with their Brier Scores?
Dr. Schmidt is too kind. The conmen at GWPF are better described in the passages around the title quote:
“Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog …”
That, to me, is a fair description of their treatment of climate scientists.
Or perhaps a previous passage:
“Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart …”
And in the fullness of time, the phrases preceding the last quote will describe the deniers:
” … a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more …”
That fullness of time might prove long enuf for many ills, preventable except for their obstruction.
sidd
I accept we are all deeply flawed, but what possesses an academic to get involved with people like Monckton of Brenchley, Lawson of Blaby, Ridley of Coal?
Surely a scientist knows the forum for scientific debate is scientific publishing?One concludes Bates is not interested in the science. Appealing directly to the public with unsubstantiated contrary views is purely political.
Recently a NZ denier made a formal complaint:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/109478710/media-council-finds-no-grounds-to-proceed-for-climate-change-complaint
Outcome: “The Media Council does not find Stuff to be in breach of any principle. Finding: No Grounds to Proceed.”
But it’s alarming that members of the public think the GWPF compares in any way shape or form with the IPCC.
Finally, http://www.raybates.net/
What does “current equilibrium” mean? How do you measure surface temperatures from satellites?
This pack-of-lies presented by Bates in this GWPF Briefing 36 is the work of a UK Charity (Charity No 1131448) which thus sucks tax-payers’ money from the unsuspecting British public to fund itself.
And this alleged charity even describes itself as an “educational charity”!!
Well, that’ll learn you!!!
However, within the GWPF’s grand presentation to the world they describe their “mission” saying:-
As they also are bold enough to describe themselves as:-
would it be worth considering shooting-their-fox. What would happen if a paper were sent to the GWPF that set out the case for AGW and the need to rapidly de-carbonise the world’s economy? Perhaps one that pointedly showed the nonsensical nature of the grand statements published by GWPF thus-far? Any nonsense from the GWPF about it being unacceptable for publication by them can then be reported to the UK Charity Commission as demonstrating that the GWPF are a bunch of unreconstructed climate deniers using taxpayers money to spread their lies and in so doing are bringing the Charity Commission into disrepute.
Thanks for the heads-up. I am from Ireland. I’m quite shocked that this kind of denial is still occupying high positions in our country and within being given considerable space in mainstream media. I think it’s time for another article on our website.
I personally don’t like all this scorn.
For me it would be sufficient to just flatly demonstrate the argumentative failures in the paper, and leave it to the reader to shake her head and roll his eyes.
I believe, that in the end, scorn is contraproductive, because it is deepening the already deplorable entrenchment.
Gavin, This my first time commenting on this site even though I’ve been a regular reader for some years.
I really appreciate your posts. Your explanations and clarifications are excellent and incredibly helpful.
Unfortunately I’m afraid I have to agree with Dominik Lenné above. I don’t think ridicule (with its implicit contempt) is a sensible approach in this matter. I understand the urge to try and write in a light and engaging way. You do it very well. I also think it is remarkable that this particular essay/paper is of such poor quality. Unfortunately all of this no longer seems funny. It’s just disturbing. It’s indicative of what people believe they can get away with in these strange times. More importantly, the battle for hearts and minds is a long way from being won.
These posts of yours are not just communications amongst like-minded people. They are seen by many others: many who are incapable of understanding the difference between good and bad climate science. They don’t understand the enormous value of the work that you do. However, they have little difficulty recognising unkindness when they see it. For them that’s all that counts, especially if it’s directed towards someone they think is standing up for their view of the world.
I don’t know the solution. Carefully controlled and well-directed indignation can be wonderful. It can even win hearts. I’m sure contempt is appropriate in some contexts (it’s in our repertoire, so it likely adaptive), but too often, it’s counterproductive. Better to keep it for private communications if in doubt. I’m learning this the hard way too. Thanks for all your work. Have a very happy new year.
[Response: Thanks for the comment. But, as you might expect, I don’t agree. People have tried for years to treat this as if this kind of thing were a good faith discussion among colleagues united in a quest for truth wherever it may lie. That is of course the case for 99% of real scientific engagements that occur at AGU and at workshops and seminars around the world. But this is not that. Dr. Bates and his fellows are not interested in that. They never come to the conferences, they rarely present their work to colleagues, the stuff that gets sent to journals is generally of such poor quality that it only ever appears in fringe, off-topic or pay-for-play journals (“The International Journal of Heat and Technology”???). When people treat this seriously, it simply presents to the outsiders an impression that this is just normal science and these are normal discussions among normal scientists. The more polite and uneffacing we are, the more people hold on to the notion that ‘their guy’ is a real part of the community. Well, that’s just not right. Instead, this is ridiculous nonsense that wouldn’t pass muster in an undergraduate classroom. How then should we discuss it? Ridicule and snark are not everyone’s cup of tea for sure, and I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else how to conduct their public engagement, but it has it’s place (cf. Kevin Kruse’s twitter feed). It has the undoubted advantage that one can speak honestly without the usual circumlocutions that academics use to indicate in private that something is ridiculous without ever saying so clearly (and there is a lot of that around). Will that change Dr. Bates’ mind or the policy position of the GWPF? No. Will it indicate to some readers that these “critiques” are in fact ridiculous? Maybe. Might it amuse a few? Sure. Might it persuade some journalists or other commissioning editors that these aren’t trustworthy sources? Who knows? Hopefully. There are 8 million ways to engage in public. This is just one of them. – gavin]
In terms of an intellectual and scientific argument, denial of human-caused climate change is as intellectually bankrupt as denial of gravity. It is absolutely shocking how little by way of objectivity the media has in how they bring on deniers to “balance” news programs, as to have “the two sides” represented. The media doesn’t understand how science works. There are no “two sides”. There is only the science.
I would state further that it is actually as intellectually bankrupt to be a human-caused climate change denier as it is to be a Holocaust denier. I know this sounds harsh, but human-caused climate change denial is as malicious as Holocaust denial, as both forms of denial dehumanize those who are/were vulnerable to threats. In terms of Holocaust denial, those who subscribe to such abhorrent beliefs have virulently anti-Jewish views and do not care what happens to them. In terms of human-caused climate change denial, many of those who have these intellectually bankrupt ideas do not give a damn what happens to those who will face and are facing the brunt of a climate system that is becoming more and more destabilized and chaotic.
It is well beyond time the media treat human-caused climate change denial the same way as the Flat Earthers, gravity deniers, and Holocaust deniers. They must not be given any platform unless their studies pass the peer-review test.
I have to agree with Gavin.
I try to be polite with ordinary denialists. They usually don’t know sufficient science for any discussion to be “fair”, and so I take the discussion to their real objection – somehow the “hippies” are going to ruin their lives. And so we proceed to examine that fear and usually they have to admit the science is overwhelming [aka they have no idea]. They just don’t like the potential solutions and hence are in denial – a very human trait that enables CEOs and salespeople to get out of the bed in the morning.
In the “public” debate, however, we have reached the point of existential crisis. We don’t need Neville Chamberlains, we need Winston Churchills. Ridiculous garbage pretending to be science should be subjected to scorn and laughter. More George Carlin commentary we have in this debate, the better, in my view.
The basic problem is that we are not a very smart species, and what limited intelligence we have is geared toward smoothing out cognitive dissonance that might otherwise cause us difficulties in cooperating with out tribe.
Limited as we are, we have developed methods for overcoming our tribal and personal biases–the most successful of which fall under the rubric of “science”. Even the adoption of pseudo-scientific bullshitting by the science denialists attests to the efficacy of the scientific method.
That there are tribes that reject science is not surprising. It is a disruptive force, and those of us who embrace science are the hooligans that threaten social harmony. However, that doesn’t make the positions of the anti-science fools any more virtuous. Anti-science deserves ridicule because it is ridiculous. We are trying to define a new global tribe with global, empirical norms. There is no room for “alternative facts” among such norms.
The more universally we ridicule the anti-science idiots, the sooner will come the day that they see just how limited and ridiculous their tribe has become. This is not a contest between to parties of good faith. It is a contest between truth and lies. That leaves no room for compromise.
Thanks for the reply above. I know that you give a lot of thought to the issue of communication. I take your points seriously. Thanks for the Kevin Kruse reference. I’m certainly in no position to tell you what to do.
Now something else entirely:
A lot of people seem to have missed this. I didn’t see any discussion on realclimate about it. But there does seem to be a slight change in the attribution statements in SR1.5 that deserve a little attention in your rebuttal of Bates.
This is from the SPM:
A1. Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming5 above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence) {1.2, Figure SPM.1}
This is from the executive summary of Chapter 1:
Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (±0.2°C likely range) above pre-industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (±0.1°C) per decade (high confidence)
As you can see, it’s not just the phrasing that’s different. The statements focus on the likely best estimates, rather than the “extremely likely” estimates for most of the warming. The time period is different too: they are referring to the time period back to the pre-industrial, not just 1950. In many ways the statements are much clearer and more useful than the one in AR5.
Where Bates is wrong, is where he says that this is “a major departure” from AR5 and that it is presented “without rigorous justification”. Justification is given in Chapter 1 (section 1.2.1.3). But one could see how people might become confused and be led to believe that SR1.5 was strengthening the attribution statements significantly. Contrarians will try to argue that it wasn’t in the remit of the SR1.5 report to update these kinds of statements. But I don’t believe this is true. It is a slight update however, and it does seem that they have relied on some papers published since AR5 to support it. I think it would be helpful to mention this in the rebuttal at the beginning of the article.
I think the tone of the article, and responses is generally good. It’s ‘reasonably’ polite but scornful enough to get peoples attention and viscerally communicate the seriousness of the situation. Lawyers operate like this, and the stakes are high so they know how to persuade people.
The only thing I would question is the shakespearean reference to an idiot as being a bit of an ad hominem. Insults as in blatant ad hominems don’t persuade people, and are really about social dominance. Me the top monkey, you get into your place. Any book on communications skills will tell you this.
Scientific American has this excellent article about the art of communications and persuasion:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convince-someone-when-facts-fail/
I bailed on arguing with deniers years ago. They are either stupid, corrupt, crazy, or all three. The only reasonable response to them is utter mockery and disengagement. If someone has the time to refute their absurd claims with links and evidence, they come up with their own links to LaLa land sources like Michaels or The Oregon Institute. Time for another Climate Villains series, but I need a new illustrator this time, Ian is busy.
Paul Barry:
Thank you, Gavin, for your reply inline to Mr. Barry. I also want to acknowledge good comments by Stephen Berg and Robin D Johnson.
To be clear, Mr. Barry, I don’t mean to dismiss your comment as “concern trolling”. The political effort to abate climate change by decarbonizing the global economy may be a battle for hearts and minds, and some scientifically-naive members of the public* may indeed be put off by what they perceive as ridicule and snark from scientists. Yet I believe that science, as a cultural adaptation for explaining and predicting reality, succeeds only to the extent it keeps us from being fooled. Gavin’s response confirms my understanding of science as a social institution founded, in part, on intersubjective verification (‘peer review’ in the broad sense), in which trained, disciplined competitive skeptics recognize their peers by the quality of their empirical work, and won’t allow them to fool themselves!
I, for one, wish neither myself nor my fellow energy consumers to be fooled about the earth’s climate. Having trained to the ‘semi-doctoral’ level for a scientific career before finding an easier way to make a living, Mr. Barry, I recognize my reliance on actual experts to speak truth, even if it inconveniences somebody. I’d be disappointed if Gavin, from his office as a high-profile climate expert, failed to call out pseudo-skeptics seeking to fool the scientifically naive about AGW.
For the reasons Gavin mentions and others, I regard the GWPF’s so-called climate experts as professional providers of public disinformation for the private benefit of their wealthy clients, whose fortunes derive from socializing the climate-change cost of fossil fuels. Why shouldn’t mercenary AGW-deniers expect public scorn and derision from genuine climate experts? IMHO, Gavin has a duty to denounce Ray Bates without equivocation. Denialist speech may be permissible, but it can’t be considered respectable!
* Although a solution to widespread scientific naivete is beyond the scope of Gavin’s post, I like John Nielsen-Gammon’s Scientific Meta-literacy proposal. Replies to the Forced Responses thread?
I may not have expressed myself well in my first comment. Going by some of the others, it looks like my position might have been misunderstood. Apologies for the sloppy expression.
Perhaps I over-reacted to the Macbeth quote and the punning on Bates’s name. I still don’t like it. It’s too personal and unkind. It sound ad hominem and I think it weakens the piece. Of course it’s perfectly understandable and forgivable. And the tone of rest of the article, as nigelj, points out, is good.
What I tried to say (and expressed very badly) was that I do, very much, approve of indignation. In other words I completely agree with being angry and critical of people like Bates etc. And of course, witty lampooning is part of the exercise. Please don’t stop.
Perhaps my distinction between indignation and contempt was not clear. Are both of these types of scorn? If we say, for the sake of argument, that they are, it would seem that the latter type is much more divisive and polarising than the former. The former usually focusses on the behaviour, rather than the person.
Finally, to be consistent, I should make a correction: I don’t quite agree with Dominic Lenné’s comment after all – because some kinds of scorn, as I just said, are quite okay.
So some progress has been made. At least I’m wiser. And I even looked up what “concern trolling” means because I didn’t know. Sinister! Apologies again for the confusion.
Mal Adapted @15
Amen
I generally agree with Paul Barry but I think Gavin is equipped with the knowledge to thoroughly debunk Bates’s points and does just that along with the put-downs. One (the put-down) without the other (the explanation) has no value, but the combination does.
And he has also further discredited Curry, of course, by association. That she thinks Bates’s work is an excellent analysis speaks volumes when we see how low quality it is, from just the points that Gavin raised, as well as the referenced article by Peter Thorne.
Many URLs incoming.
The International Journal of Heat and Technology, mentioned in the Response: to Comment 8 above, is a highly respected journal in the fluid flow and thermal sciences. The journal has been published since 1983. Renewable energy is a frequent subject matter for articles in the journal.
Some information about the Editors for the journal is summarized in the following.
The current Editor-in-Chief is Professor Enrico Lorenzini, University of Bologna.
Among the Associate Editors are:
Professor Adrian Bejan. Google Scholar Profile gives his citation count to be 62,270. Very likely among the highest in all of engineering for publications since the 1970s.
Professor S.G. Kandlikar. Google Scholar Profile gives his citation count to be 18,292.
Among the Editorial Advisory Board are:
Professor Sylvie Lorente. Google Scholar Profile gives her citation count to be 11,712. She is frequently a co-author with Professor Bejan.
Professor Geoff Hewitt. I do not find a Google Scholar Profile for Professor Hewitt. This Google Scholar search will provide a list of publications with URL links. His cv at Imperial College of London also provides a list of publications
Professor Hewitt has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and other notable organizations. He was awarded the The International Energy Prize in 2007.
Professor George Yadigaroglu. I do not find a Google Scholar Profile for Professor Yadigaroglu. This Google Scholar search will provide a list of publications with URL links. Professor Yadigaroglu
passed earlier this year.
[Response: Fine. But a usual journal for understanding the attribution of climate change? Hardly. It’s a standard way of getting nonsense into press because the reviewers aren’t as expert in the field. Scafetta papers almost never appear in field appropriate journals. – Gavin]
Icebergs do not exist; they are a figment of the imagination of alarmists.
We didn’t hit anything; that bump was just a patch of rough water.
We’re not sinking; we’re just riding low in the water.
There’s a leak in the hull, but leaks are a normal part of sailing in ships.
If we just speed up, we can make it to port before we sink.
I demand first place on a lifeboat because I’m smarter than everybody else.
@Dan Hughes #19. There is a difference between appealing to authority and deferring to a consensus of experts.
Just a reminder: a consensus is not part of doing science, it’s a consequence of doing it right.
Bates may be a big gun but his ammo is all blank. That’s why he targets the fools who march with the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Concerning the merit of Bates’ publications, Bates position on AGW was covered in a couple of Irish magazine articles ( here and here) to which Bates took exception. So he took it to the Press Ombudsman. He lost. In a subsequent interview with Desmog Blog, Bates suggested a 2016 paper of his demonstrates he is not a denialist climate contrarian. Mind the citations of that 2016 paper are few (the Knutti et al citation is just a listing not an actual citation) and not by the most promising authors if you wish to shake the lable of ‘denialist’.
And his appearance as the author of the paper under discussion in the OP which is published by the Gentlemen Who Perfer Fantasy GWPF Briefing Paper No 36 is surely a very poor decision for somebody struggling to dodge the denialist label. Back in the day, I went through the first three GWPF Briefing Papers (the resulting six posts linked in the last one here). GWPF Briefing Paper Nos 1-to-3 were more than ‘wrong’. They were purile nonsense from start to finish. And so they remain with Bates’ GWPF Briefing Paper No 36 simply providing yet-more nonsense for denialists to mine for support.
Of course, simply branding a paper as “nonsense” may be thought as a bit of a cop-out but there is actually a lot of work required to give this denialist stuff a proper going-over: just within a single paper the errors and misrepresentations just go on and on and on and on. However, I am minded to give this Bates bullshit a short exposé which some here may find of interest.
@15…”I regard the GWPF’s so-called climate experts as professional providers of public disinformation for the private benefit of their wealthy clients, whose fortunes derive from socializing the climate-change cost of fossil fuels.”
Why not just call them “propagandists”? The OED defines ‘propaganda’ as “Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.” and ‘propagandist’ as one who disseminates propaganda.
Deniers deny the science. Propagandists distort the science. Liars lie about the science. “Gutty” words are better descriptors for such persons. And much more honest to my mind.
I think with climate denialists we have a group of disaffected souls driven by various motives including industry vested interests, political dislike of so called big government, scientific cranks and conspiracy theorists. They have a marriage of convenience called “a think tank” or “lobby group” and work together to disseminate the propaganda.
The common theme is they have stubborn positions. You won’t convince many of these people, although reminding them of their idiocy might shut them up.
The people you might convince are the great silent majority, so normal people towards the middle of the bell curve with normal levels of scepticism about things. Those people mostly don’t respond well to insults. You need to remember that.
jgnfld:
“Propagandists” is a good word. I’m sure there are other “gutty” descriptors for the GWPF’s experts-for-hire. Knock yourself out 8^D!
“Gutty” words describing GWPF voodoo?
You mean like utter wankmongering cockwomblery…
10: I don’t think it is about not knowing sufficient science, the science has been out there for decades. It is about personal identity and associated ideology. They reject mainstream science because they don’t want it to be true, because it conflicts with their lifestyle choices, or it conflicts with the type of people they associate themselves with, or it is aligned with the type of people they hate.
You can’t persuade someone the truth of something when their identity/ideology demands it be false.
It is worse than this, because even amongst the general public who do accept the science, how many of them are actually taking steps to reduce their own carbon footprint, or supporting/voting for political parties that take a strong position on moving towards a sustainable society? It is very easy to talk the talk, show me the percentage of those who are taking action.
the whether: the before whether needs to be deleted.
Why not make a little list and invite our perennial skeptics to each look into one of the claims, provide a couple of hints, and see if they can work out why they’re suckered into believing that particular story?
Mosf of them can read and think, if they want to.
Gavin,
Perhaps you would like to comment on this comment linked as https://wp.me/aQRhu-W4 regarding the use of Gistemp in SR1.5? (Linked in order to include text from the GISS website and from Hansen et al 2010 as images)
As promised @22, a short(ish) exposé of (some of) the bullshit in Bates-authored GWPF Briefing paper No 36. (Do note that the “Foundtion” bit of the GWPF which is responsible for this Briefing Paper is supposed to be an educatonal charity. That they remain so whilst still exclusively producing such bullshit as this Bates’ paper is surely bringing the UK Charity Commission into disrepute.)
The content of GWPF BP36 is a bit scatter-gun-like, so running though from beginning-to-end is probably not the way to provide a concise summary. So let us summarise GWPF BP36 using its conclusions, (although this will mean a serious amount of its egregious content will go entirely unreported.)
GWPF BP36 concludes with four statements.
(1) Bates tells us SR1.5 has increased the strength of the AGW message presented in AR5 but Bates insists “no rigorous justification for this departure has been provided.” Strangely, Bates kicks off this whinge (it is no more than that, a couple of sentences long) by complaining that SR1.5 has “a lack of focus on a purely scientific analysis.” Yet it is evident within this ridiculously brief coverage of the issue; his talk of differing periods of analysis and the quote he uses shows that Bates does not himself use the definitive IPCC AR5 WG1 10.1.3.1.1.3 as the AR5 reference for this particular bit of his fake scientific judgement.
(2) Bates tells us that since AR5 “considerable evidence has accumulated suggesting that global warming is more of a long-term threat than a planetary emergency,” evidence that was apparently “not passed on” in SR1.5. This new evidence is described comprising two considerations, firstly “observational results suggesting lower climate sensitivity “ and secondly “results indicating a greater contribution from natural variability to explaining observed global temperature trends.”
(2a) The first of these descriptions covers “not passed on” evidence that is far from “considerable.” It is covered by Bates in his section entitled ‘Some recent independent estimates of climate sensitivity’ which provides just four references. One pre-dates AR5, one is addressed by SR15, one is Bates own work and the last is Mauritsen & Stevens (2015) ‘Missing IRIS effect as a possible cause of muted hydrological change and high climate sensitivity in models’. Ignoring Bates’ own work, the remaining single paper can surely not be considered “considerable evidence” especially when it describes its thesis as “a controversial hypothesis.”
(2b) The second of these description of “considerable evidence,” being since AR5 in 2013 suggests it is not referring to all the nonsense about pre-1960 wobbles or satellite data that Bates presents.
Thus on this consideration of natural variability which Bates presents as “considerable evidence … accumulated” in the period “since the Fifth Assessment,” there is no more than two papers which report the same piece of work – the CERA-20C reanalysis. Yet neither of the two papers referenced (Buizza (2018) ‘ERA-CLIM2 outcomes boost NWP and climate work’ (within download here) & Laloyaux et al (2018) ‘CERA‐20C: A Coupled Reanalysis of the Twentieth Century’) report this work as providing evidence in any way contradicting previous versions of such work. Indeed, Buizza et al (2018) reporting the same work says specifically regarding the 0-300m OHC reanalysis (the aspect of this work that is of concern to Bates) that in comparisons with earlier reanalyses there is no contradiction but that “overall good agreement has been found.” Laloyaux et al (2018) stresses that the results are work-in-progress. And there are no signs of anybody other than Bates jumping up & down on this matter. It has all the signs of a non-issue resulting from a fake line of reasoning, (such fakery being quite evident within Bates’ paper).
(3) Bates tells us that since AR5 there has been some “some very important information published by climate modellers” (very important because IPCC rely on models for projecting AGW temperature increases) which has also been “not passed on” in SR1.5. In addressing this issue, Bates purports to overturn IPCC SR15 Chapter 1 section 1.2.1.3 ‘Total versus human-induced warming and warming rates’ which sets out the attribution of AGW. Ignoring the content of 1.2.1.3, Bates instead refers to two papers, the rather short opinion piece Voosen (2018)‘Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny’ and the lengthier Hourdin et al ‘The art & science of climate model tuning’. On the strength of these two papers, Bates concludes that GCMs cannot be used to provide evidence that recent warming is the result of AGW (and that this finding thus overturns SR15 section 1.2.1.3). Yet neither paper presents such a finding. Indeed, Bates misrepresents Hourdin et al by suggesting it “makes plain” that ” modellers … in practice … tune their models empirically so that they reproduce the observed 20th century warming, while giving a value of equilibrium climate sensitivity that lies in ‘an anticipated acceptable range’.” Hourdin et al say no such thing. Bates fails to present any evidence for his bold but fake argument on this issue.
(4) Bates final conclusion is that sustainable development, poverty eradication and reducing inequalities are “not dependent on unsettled** climate science.” This is an unsupported assertion being made by Bates. Because it is the last ‘conclusion’ set out by Bates, perhaps it is believed to be fully supported by the preceding three conclusions. Whatever, this fourth conclusion is not provided with any actual reasoning.
(** The adjective “unsettled” is being applied to the “the essential aspects of climate science” suggesting the totality of IPCC work is essentially “unsettled,” in other words ‘yet to be settled’ in the scientific sense.)
More on Response: to Comment #8 above and to Comment #21
I am not addressing any particular author(s) or any specific paper.
I am addressing Gavin’s characterization of a specific journal when he said:
They never come to the conferences, they rarely present their work to colleagues, the stuff that gets sent to journals is generally of such poor quality that it only ever appears in fringe, off-topic or pay-for-play journals (“The International Journal of Heat and Technology”???).
Specifically the part that says: . . . that it only ever appears in fringe, off-topic or pay-for-play journals (“The International Journal of Heat and Technology”???)
International Journal of Heat and Technology publication fee policy: This journal does not levy any charges to authors for submission, processing, or publication. How can the journal be characterized as pay-for-play when there is no pay for anything involved? The journal has been published since 1983 and has a truly outstanding editorial board. It is not a recently-on-the-scene, fly-by-night journal created to collect fees from authors who are flush with cash.
I did not mean to “appeal to authority” by listing the qualifications of the Editorial Staff. Instead I intended to indicate that such highly qualified personnel can be expected to apply the highest standards to any paper submitted, including selection of qualified people to provide reviews that uphold the standards of the journal, whatever the related subject matter. It is common practice for editorial staff to provide the abstract of submitted papers to several potential reviewers to firstly determine that the potential reviewer knows that they have sufficient expertise and experience in the subject matter to provide an acceptable review.
I think the phrase ‘pay-for-play’ is, (1) not well defined, and (2) generally thrown into discussions without specifying the nature of the ‘pay’.
For examples: (1) many journals have standard page charges, on a per-page basis, whatever the length of the paper, (2) some journals charge for pages beyond some established norm: the AGU, is an example, (3) many journals charge for figures that have color, and (4) some journals also change for elaborate tables. I guess we are to assume that anyone applying the ‘pay-for-play’ card has never for any publication paid any charges. I wonder if that assumption is correct in the present case?
Note that the International Journal of Heat and Technology does not charge for any of these.
I get the impression that ‘pay-for-play’ generally refers to journals that have Open Access options to various degrees, in which there is a flat rate change for allowing free/open access to the published paper; the AGU is an example. The existence of such options does not in any way ensure that a submitted paper is of inferior quality. It seems to me that in this sense ‘pay-for-play’ always means, without exception, that a paper of known inferior quality has been submitted and published. The first obstacle to such a meaning is an assumption that the journal editorial staff will always let such papers slide through the process simply because of the charge. The second obstacle, assuming the editorial staff lets the paper get into the review process, are the reviewers themselves. The reviewers are not aware that the submitted paper is intended for paid-for open access publication. Not to mention that qualilfied reviewers will alway apply the standards of the journal to all papers submitted for review. Journals that offer Open Access publication options clearly state that all submittals will be held to the same standards.
The Response to Comment 8 includes also this phrase: . . . they rarely present their work to colleagues . . . . How can anyone know to whom among an author’s colleagues work has been presented. In the present case in which author(s) seem to be held in distain/contempt, I think it is unlikely that the work of these author(s), and their colleagues, is closely followed at all.
I think it would be useful for Gavin to explicitly illustrate the specific aspects of the International Journal of Heat and Technology that are consistent with his characterizations.
re: 32.
The International Journal of Heat and Technology? The “journal” that publishes papers on astrology? Yeah, lots of scientific credibility there. smh
#32 Dan Hughes,
One of the characteristics Gavin lists is “off topic”. Are you saying that this publication has published a lot of papers on climate science?
No reason not to assume, as I did immediately, that that was the (obvious) characteristic he was talking about.
Note the use of the word “or” Dan. And the Oxford Comma, which makes it clear that the phrase expands to “fringe, or off-topic, or pay-for-play”.
That journal is clearly off-topic. As gavin pointed out, submitting to off-topic journals, where the editors and reviewers, however distinguished, may let nonsense or a scam slip though their fingers out of ignorance, is a standard tactic by those who know their efforts won’t cut the mustard in reputable, on-topic journals.
He did. In his inline reply to #19.
#32, Dan Hughes–
I think Gavin was fairly clear that the “Journal of Heat and Technology” falls under the heading “off-topic”, not “pay-for-play.”
“How can anyone know to whom among an author’s colleagues work has been presented.”
*Publicly* presented. The number of conferences is not voluminous, and the point of presentation is to spread knowledge, not to be a ‘science ninja.’ Those who regularly attend conferences know who ‘often’ presents.
Heard a bit of wisdom dropped the other day referring to a study on engaging constructively with people on topics of race and bigotry (discussed on NPR re mining Google data). Shorter version: People respond better when their curiosity is engaged than when they are lectured. This makes some intuitive sense to me.
In any case, I think a worthy, overarching consideration for context is the so-called culture war, which as far as I’m concerned is no more a metaphorical thing than is cyber war. As taxing it may seem, it’s not something that will just go away if you ignore it — sort of like AGW itself.
Says here, anyway.
It gets even better. Later in Bates’ article, he is quite enamored by the climate sensitivity results of Lewis and Curry (2018) but doesn’t seem to realise that their results assume that all of the trends since the 19th Century are forced. The exact conclusion he rails against in the first section!
Isn’t the intended point that the Lewis and Curry estimate, if accurate, shows that the role of other factors (whatever isn’t included in the list of forcings) has been underestimated?
[Response: Not as far as I can tell. LC assumes that all long term temperature changes are forced (and with more than a few other assumptions) in order to back out sensitivity. They nominally use the IPCC best estimate of forcings, so they aren’t claiming any ‘missing’ processes. If they relaxed that primary assumption (i.e. there was more uncertainty in the forced response than they assumed), the error bars on their sensitivity would expand proportionately (I think). – gavin]
It’s kind of an aside to the criticism of Bates’ paper, but what are the relative contributions of human CO2 emissions, deforestation, urbanization, and processes independent of humans?
[Response: Since the PI, you can get up to ~10% attribution to solar (with some uncertainty), everything else is anthropogenic. Divvying up the human related parts is more ambiguous since there are positive and negative factors, and depends a little on how you define things (by process or by net effect). e.g. does ‘deforestation’ include the CO2 emissions or just the land surface changes? – gavin]
from the Bates Report: As pointed out above in relation to Figure 2, the SR1.5 report uses the agreement between the modelled GMST and the (smoothed) observed GMST in the period 1960–2017 as evidence that the observed warming in this period was entirely GHG-induced. However, two very important papers published since the Fifth Assessment Report – neither of which is referred to in SR1.5 – give reasons to seriously question the above line of reasoning. These papers are:
• ‘Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny’, by Paul Voosen14
• ‘The art and science of climate model tuning’, by Hourdin et al.15
14. Voosen P. ‘Climate scientists open up their black boxes to scrutiny’. Science 2016; 354: 401–402.
15. Hourdin F et al. ‘The art and science of climate model tuning’. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2017; 98: 589–602.
Where exactly has Bates gone wrong here?
[Response: His characterisation of Fig 2 is just wrong, so nothing follows from that. While interesting, the Hourdin et al paper doesn’t impact Fig 2. The Voosen piece is not a paper. See also Schmidt et al (2017) for more discussion about tuning. – gavin]
I just did some regressions using the newest TSI data from the SORCE instrument, plus reconstructions back to 1850. By itself, TSI accounts for 14% of variance of dT (NASA GISTEMP), but with CO2 added in, the TSI term completely drops out–no significance.
Re #1 – “At this late and warming point, he could be replaced with an IBot!”
Yes, and still 40% of Americans will believe him, no matter what he says.
Can you guess which 40%?
What do you propose to do about that?
38 & 39: Gavin, in line
Thank you for your responses.
The climate is modeled as a control volume (or mass, it doesn’t matter much). It has input, output, and capacitance. It is math-modeled exactly the same way that an engineer models a control volume, whether that be a central heating system or a combustion engine. Engineers, uniquely among scientists, have experience with successes and failures of control system models. That experience is that the empirical manifestation of the system often produces surprises, what you might call emergent phenomena. No engineer who has worked with control volume math models would express complete confidence in an extrapolated projection from an untested math model. They just wouldn’t!
So the irony here is that “Heat and Technology” is exactly the kind of journal where climate scientists should be presenting their model results, because the audience is the most likely to spot problems.
[Response: Well then it’s all doubly ironic because they didn’t spot all the nonsense in the Scafetta paper then. -gavin ]
Just wondering Gavin what you think of the Laloyaux et al. reanalysis for ocean heat content.
[Response: Coupled data assimilation is hard, but this seems like a good step forward. It’s premature to be using their derived products (like trends in OHC) as definitive – especially with the obvious drifts as you can see. It’s appearance in the Bates piece is purely cherry picked opportunism. – gavin]
I have another Shakespearean quote for you, Gavin: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
It’s not so much a question as to whether your continual resorting to ad hominems, putdowns and personal attacks is justified, it’s what such extremely defensive behavior reveals about your own insecurities and immaturity — especially when we see you resorting to the same invective time after time, whenever your certainties are challenged.
Your critique of the Bates paper strikes me as superficial, laced with nit-picks, and the usual dismissals of any references, peer-reviewed or not, that tend to support the view you find it so difficult to tolerate.
What’s more, you fail to address what, for me, is Bates’ most telling point:
“1850–2017 are shown in Figure 3. It can be seen that prior to 1960, global cooling took place over the 25-year period 1945–1970. [According to many sources the cooling period is even longer, extending from ca. 1940 through ca. 1979.] Prior to that, between 1910 and 1945, there was another period of significant global warming. This early 20th-century warming occurred before manmade GHGs exerted a major influence. Prior to that again, there was another multidecadal period of cooling. Figure 3 clearly indicates the existence of substantial natural variability of GMST that is independent of GHGs.
The fact that the SR1.5 report uses only Figure 2 to convey information on the observed evolution of GMST in its Summary for Policymakers provides an immediate indication that the report is not scientifically impartial.”
[Response: But the first paragraph isn’t controversial. No-one disputes that there is internal variability and other forcings apart from GHGs. That Bates (and apparently you) think that is relevant is extermely telling. The fact is that these effects have fingerprints that can be quantified and looked for in the real world. And every time people have done so competently they find that they are not responsible for the long term trends. It’s not hard. – gavin]
I made essentially the same argument some time ago on this forum, only to be dismissed. I’m sorry, but the evidence supporting the very clear lack of relation between CO2 levels and global temperatures during almost all of the 20th century is right there on the books, no matter how anyone tries to spin it. In any case, Bates is not arguing the validity or meaning of the data per se, but the misleading nature of the SR1.5 report, in which this key evidence is conveniently excluded.
As for the 21st century, the dramatic difference between the steep temperature rise we see in Bates’ figure 3, during the last 20 years or so of the previous century, and the far more gradual increase evident from the same graph in the first 15 years or so of the 21st is also overlooked, in both the SR1.5 report and Gavin’s very selective critique.
#43 Matt Skaggs,
I’m having a little trouble with some of your word combinations, so I may not be correctly understanding your suggestion, but I disagree about this being an appropriate journal.
Let’s put on the other shoes. With all due respect to Gavin, are you really saying that you would hire him to design “a central heating system” or “a combustion engine”??
I wouldn’t; I think he’s probably really good at all kinds of mathematics that might be relevant, but without the specialized physical knowledge involved, it wouldn’t be much use.
There is obviously some overlap of applied mathematics in many disciplines, at all levels of science and engineering, but it hardly makes everyone equally qualified to do the other person’s job.
Victor, #45–
Not “dismissed”–elaborately and repeatedly debunked in detail, as explained in multiple ways by multiple respondents, and supported by numerous specific references.
Unsurprisingly, that ‘argument’ is still wrong today.
Weaktor,
First, dude, learn what an ad hominem actually is. We do not dismiss your arguments with ad hominems. We dismiss them because they are trivially false and silly.
We dismiss you with insults because frankly, being such a silly person, that is all you are worth. People have wasted many hours of time trying to educate you as to why your arguments are silly, but you have shown repeatedly that you are not interested in learning.
It does not matter your motivation is self-importance, cowardice or stupidity. You just aren’t worth our time.
Victor @45
“Your critique of the Bates paper strikes me as superficial, laced with nit-picks, and the usual dismissals of any references, peer-reviewed or not, that tend to support the view you find it so difficult to tolerate.”
Look in the mirror Victor.
My concerns as a layman:
Both men have been wrong in their predictions. Both men are insufferably arrogant. The guy on the street thinks they are buffoons and have no credibility. In my humble opinion, they have damaged science immeasurably. By not denouncing these clowns, Tony Heller does a good job of using them as surrogates to slap Gavin and company down.
[Response: Judging from this comment, and your tweets, it’s probably totally pointless to respond to you, but it’s late, and I’m currently not working, so why not. In order: