It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing. And that has been a huge shift in the Overton window for climate change.
In any public discussion there are bounds which people who want to be thought of as having respectable ideas tend to stay between. This is most easily seen in health care debates. In the US, promotion of a National Health Service as in the UK or a single-payer system as in Canada is so far outside the bounds of normal health care politics, that these options are only ever brought up by ‘cranks’ (sigh). Meanwhile in the UK, discussions of health care delivery solutions outside of the NHS framework are never heard in the mainstream media. This limit on scope of the public debate has been called the Overton window.
The window does not have to remain static. Pressure groups and politicians can try and shift the bounds deliberately, or sometimes they are shifted by events. That seems to have been the case in the climate discussion. Prior to the email hack at CRU there had long been a pretty widespread avoidance of ‘global warming is a hoax’ proponents in serious discussions on the subject. The sceptics that were interviewed tended to be the slightly more sensible kind – people who did actually realise that CO2 was a greenhouse gas for instance. But the GW hoaxers were generally derided, or used as punchlines for jokes. This is not because they didn’t exist and weren’t continually making baseless accusations against scientists (they did and they were), but rather that their claims were self-evidently ridiculous and therefore not worth airing.
However, since the emails were released, and despite the fact that there is no evidence within them to support any of these claims of fraud and fabrication, the UK media has opened itself so wide to the spectrum of thought on climate that the GW hoaxers have now suddenly find themselves well within the mainstream. Nothing has changed the self-evidently ridiculousness of their arguments, but their presence at the media table has meant that the more reasonable critics seem far more centrist than they did a few months ago.
A few examples: Monckton being quoted as a ‘prominent climate sceptic’ on the front page of the New York Times this week (Wow!); The Guardian digging up baseless fraud accusations against a scientist at SUNY that had already been investigated and dismissed; The Sunday Times ignoring experts telling them the IPCC was right in favor of the anti-IPCC meme of the day; The Daily Mail making up quotes that fit their GW hoaxer narrative; The Daily Express breathlessly proclaiming the whole thing a ‘climate con’; The Sunday Times (again) dredging up unfounded accusations of corruption in the surface temperature data sets. All of these stories are based on the worst kind of oft-rebunked nonsense and they serve to make the more subtle kind of scepticism pushed by Lomborg et al seem almost erudite.
Perhaps this is driven by editors demanding that reporters come up with something new (to them) that fits into an anti-climate science theme that they are attempting to stoke. Or perhaps it is driven by the journalists desperate to maintain their scoop by pretending to their editors that this nonsense hasn’t been debunked a hundred times already? Who knows? All of these bad decisions are made easier when all of the actually sensible people, or people who know anything about the subject at all, are being assailed on all sides, and aren’t necessarily keen to find the time to explain, once again, that yes, the world is warming.
So far, so stupid. But even more concerning is the reaction from outside the UK media bubble. Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators – Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts. Their point apparently seems to be that since much news print is being devoted to a story somewhere, then that story must be worth following. Indeed, since the substance to any particularly story is apparently proportional to the coverage, by not following the UK bandwagon, US journalists are missing a big story. Yulsman blames the lack of environmental beat reporters for lack of coverage in the US, but since most of the damage and bad reporting on this is from clueless and partisan news desk reporters in the UK, I actually expect that it is the environmental beat reporters’ prior experience with the forces of disinformation that prevents the contagion crossing the pond. To be sure, reporters should be able and willing (and encouraged) to write stories about anything to do with climate science and its institutions – but that kind of reporting is something very different from regurgitating disinformation, or repeating baseless accusations as fact.
So what is likely to happen now? As the various panels and reports on the CRU affair conclude, it is highly likely (almost certain in fact) that no-one will conclude that there has been any fraud, fabrication or scientific misconduct (since there hasn’t been). Eventually, people will realise (again) that the GW hoaxers are indeed cranks, and the mainstream window on their rants will close. In the meantime, huge amounts of misinformation, sprinkled liberally with plenty of disinformation, will be spread and public understanding on the issue will likely decline. As the history of the topic has shown, public attention to climate change comes and goes and this is likely to be seen as the latest bump on that ride.
RE #947 (two moon and Gavin’s response)
The FOIA requests and calls for more openness can be sincere at times, but these requests can be end runs around the rules that allow government agencies to do their work. In agencies’ legal proceedings there are a series of rules and statutes that allow public participation, but with the right to participate there are limits that make it possible for an agency to do the work it is required to do.
There should be some statutes or regulations that address the question of science done at agencies or is publicly funded. An umbrella law similar to the Administrative Procedure Act in the U.S. that addressed scientific research would be a first step. It could be allow for openness and data sharing while allowing scientific progress to continue.
CC @ 912:
Science isn’t a popularity contest or an opinion poll. There =is= an answer, and it’s the answer no matter how much you agree with it, like the people spreading it, or feel like the “cost” is appropriate.
There are areas where Climate Change is 100% settled. Thanks to increases in greenhouse gases, the amount of energy in the atmosphere is going up. That’s what greenhouse gases do, and they are very good at it, and the science is 100% settled. What that means will actually happen isn’t 100% settled.
One projection is wetter winters and hotter, drier summers where I live. If projections about increased tropical storms pan out, it could be that extra moisture from those storms makes its way here. We get the outer rain band edges of very large hurricanes, even if they are hundreds of miles or more further south, so I suspect scientists don’t know =exactly= how all that will pan out.
Other projections are based on human behavior. Will people keep consuming massive amounts of fossil fuel energy? Maybe. I’m putting my money on “No”, others are putting it on “Yes”. Which is right? That’s not a science question — the science question is “what happens in those scenarios?” If people keep burning fossil fuels, there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere, and it will retain more energy, because that’s what greenhouse gases do.
939, Barton Paul Levenson: What’s the physical mechanism behind your 60-year cycle?
&&&
I’m suspicious of simply Fourier-analyzing a noisy data set. That was essentially how Aristotle and then Ptolemy developed their epicycle schemes.
Your example shows that a period can be known, well-modelled, and reliable, without its mechanism being known. To go a step farther, Newton developed his system without positing a hypothesis about the mechanism of gravity, yet gravity is reliably modeled (up to a point) with his equations. Einstein also declined to hypothesize a mechanism for gravity. If mechanisms are known for gravity, they are of very recent origin, but you don’t need to know the mechanism to guide interplanetary exploration.
For other examples, circadian rhythms and their distortions have been known and well-modelled for decades, without their mechanisms being known, although parts of the mechanisms have been elucidated in the last 15 years.
For another example of not knowing a mechanism, or even the source of energy, consider Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis and physicists refutation of it. Recall, the physicist did not content themselves to say that the energy source and mechanism were unknown, they claimed positively that the energy source and mechanism did not exist.
Of course you are wise to be skeptical of the results of curve-fitting. On the other hand, you should be skeptical as well of the autocorrelation of the residuals, or at least ask about it: what physical process creates the autocorrelation, or processes? If they residuals are stationary, they can be represented by equivalent Fourier or autoregressive models. To say that one is real and the other isn’t is — how shall I put this? — “non-physical”. In the case of circadian rhythms in blood pressure, the autocorrelated residuals are created by the body processes that control the pressure, and those have been studied to some degree. The mechanism that generates the circadian rhythm in blood pressure, and the circadian rhythm in body temperature as well, is not known. What happens inside some cells is known partially, but how that translates into control of large physiological systems is not yet known.
@940 Barton Paul Levenson,
I count 2 false statements (and 1 insult) in your comment. First, post-modernism is not an accurate label. You demonstrate my point of inadequate understanding when you claim so (this is the same as when you guys detect inadequate knowledge on physical sciences from visitors at this blogg, it is rather easy when one has expertise in the domain, e.g. to mix up meteorology and paleontology would not be very smart). Second, it is not anti-science, but science, that employ the usual empirical methods. Both of the label and especially the insult demonstrates your lack of sincere interest. Therefore I rest my case!
I quote another post from this blogg: “Galileo pointed a telescope at the planets and reported what he observed”. When one instead point the telescope at scientists and report what one observed … the reaction is often rather hostile. Why is that so? Is this an scientific reaction? Or do scientists react as mere humans? Or do they get upset because only some aspects of science are emphasised? (I see many resemblence here with the sceptical reaction). If the latter, there is reasons for the bias: For example, to emphasise what is normally neglected in scientists self-understanding (and that the emphasis is due to a disciplinary trajectory of knowledge development). However, the objective (not for me at least) is not to reduce science to mere power struggles, culture, interests, etc. This is part of science (one just have to use turn around the Galileo telescope and zoom in), but not all that science is. When sociologists claim this is all there is, I call that social reductionism, and I am opposed to that.
I did not get disappointed simply because you guys disagree, but because you are not open enough for sincere discussion. Instead it turns into a disciplinary trench war (and yes, I do know that I contribute, I am also too much of a warrior). To understand and still disagree for good reasons is valid. To not understand but still claim something being utterly wrong is not valid. You all know this, from your encounters with the sceptics …
In fact, the way you guys respond (as ”empirical objects” for me) do validate central parts of my theories (and also nuance other parts). That is quite good, cause it is valuable input that strengthen my theory and empirical results from expert interviews in the two papers that I am writing (on sceptics in Sweden and the interface between mainstreem science and policy in Sweden) and ease their publication. Still, I would prefer more of falsification, since I study aspects of science that I would like to mitigate (e.g. the reinforcement of disciplinary borders and stealth issue advocacy).
Gavin (938), there’s actually a solid but unwritten law of business that says much of the real important stuff gets worked out standing at the urinal.
caveat: don’t anyone take this as agreement with Dan’s comment.
942, SecularAnimist: What else have you got? Anything other than more ignorance?
Last recommendations:
1. The volume on model selection by P. Lahiri is really good. Some of the contributors were teachers of mine.
2. Alessandra Canepa (2009), “Inference in Cointegrated VAR Models”.
3. S. Johansen (1995), “Likelihood Inference in Cointegrated Vector Autoregressive Models”.
Cointegrated VARs came up last week.
Good dissection of a rightwing thinktank’s report on the stolen email here:
http://climatewtf.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-skeptics-distorted-cru-emails-in_20.html
The amount of spin by the thinktank would be surprising, if anything these guys do could surprise. They lead off by accusing the researchers of trying to find anything useful in a data set, determining it’s too noisy, and deciding there’s nothing to publish — insisting that all negative results have to be published in science.
And from there, having begun clueless, well, you can imagine.
“What? We agree you’re very unlikely to be right???”
No, I am absolutely right since I said it could be either or. When you are saying either side could be right then how can you possibly be wrong? The thing I agree with you on is that the more assumptions you make the less likely you are to be right. You should read more and perhaps learn there are more references to be explored then the caps lock key.
Dave G says: 25 February 2010 at 6:42 PM
Further to your thoughts, if folks are upset because they can’t see every last detail regarding scientific research suggesting we may have to reroute a lot of money, where’s the clamor regarding backroom, secret planning for the ongoing fiasco known as “Operation New Dawn” aka the biggest CF ever launched? Estimated total cost in the neighborhood of $3 trillion, but we still don’t know the details of how we made this giant smoking hole in our budget, because though it was the public’s business, it’s all “secret.”
So much for “skeptics”.
943 Everything done by a civil servant in pursuit of his/her public endeavor is public property.
You may be on to something. I, for one, would LOVE to read Sen Inhofe’s email.
[Response: Congress is not, funnily enough, covered by the FOIA. I wonder who decided that. – gavin]
943: Everything done by a civil servant in pursuit of his/her public endeavor is public property.
Then why have the proceedings of Dick Cheney’s meeting with top energy execs been kept from the public? Why are cost projections for nuclear power plants receiving billions in federal subsidies allowed to be declared “proprietary information” and hidden from the public?
922 Ray
You say “And for the record, Jones did not say there had been no statistically significant warming in 15 years. Rather, he said the trend was not statistically different from zero–meaning that the mean slope was within 2 standard deviations of zero. That is not unexpected for a 15 year trend given a noisy system like climate. See: XXXX….
Sorry Ray, as someone wrote in response to one of my comments – Projection. You are interpreting what he said and adding meaning that I, and other layman, wouldn’t do. He knew that a BBC article of this nature would get massive coverage and he must have known that you guys would be reading his words. He had all of the time he needed to say exactly what he meant and avoid any confusion. I understand that you are unhappy with what he has said so you want to reinterpret it and, secondly, Phil Jones (sensibly and logically) is choosing words in the context of a career and financial security (who wouldn’t).
Phil Jones’ conduct is being questioned (fairly or unfairly) and it would therefore be sensible of him to “defend”. A more “neutral” stance of the type displayed is exactly what I anyone would perhaps do in his position.
You say “Your point 3–the whole “science is settled” issue is a canard. Some science is settled”.
And Phil Jones said “It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view.
Again, you are adding detail and interpretation, naturally, because of your position on these issues. My interpretation is clear. My Prime Minister et al, have chosen to take the line that the science is settled and if I don’t agree I am a denialist and flat earther. This is very different to Phil Jones’ stated position.
When asked when he would return to CRU, Phil Jones replied that this would be for others to say. This suggests that even if he has “stepped down” entirely voluntarily, he thinks that whether he can return to his career is out of his hands. Whilst we debate, split hairs and produce acres of print, Phil Jones’ is fighting for his reputation and his career. None of us could have imagined that a respected academic going about their normal business could end up being thrust to the fore and end up with a global spotlight them. For what it is worth, at a human level, it is grossly unfair. Unfortunately, the academic research that he has been involved with, and the results thereof, is having huge consequences for governments and the spending of trillions of dollars – hence the level of interest.
You say “Charlie, I think you need to re-examine that step where you say A lies, therefore I won’t believe B. Might be a weak link in the logical argument”
We agree! It is a weak-link and I don’t know how to square the circle. I am left with my instincts – a very unscientific and therefore potentially illogical conclusion.
Maybe Realclimate needs to have a “wolf-watch” section. Your contributors could then post “crying wolf” tags to any ridiculous pro AGW stories that are published. When Pachauri says someone is making up “voodoo science” you immediately nail him and disassociate yourselves from his comments. When Al Gore makes one of his very unscientific pronouncements you post something that says he has gone too far …. just a thought.
Message to GAVIN
There are some comments above from some very reasonable people that entirely disagree with me but are unhappy with the way CFU responds sometimes. Don’t worry and please don’t censor him.
I have a brilliant mental image of some lonely old guy that lives in a shack somewhere. He gets out a bed and puts on some smelly old dressing gown and then with sticky up bed hair and wild eyes, before he even has his first drink of the day, he goes online to put the world to rights. He doesn’t have any friends – only online enemies and he spends his days venting his frustration at all the commies, capitalists, deviants and foreigners. If you know the chap, please don’t destroy him – or my mental image of him. I am old enough and ugly enough to take care of myself.
CFU: “you shouldn’t have been in the position of asking it.”
AB (916): This is not your first strongly anti-democratic statement.
BPL: Read my lips: Scientific truth is not determined by majority vote. Period. Democracy is a great political system; it is not an epistemology. We don’t use the rules of baseball to decide court cases about gerrymandering; nor do we use the proper structure of a sonnet to criticize Rolling Stones lyrics. You use the tool appropriate to the job. Democracy is meaningless when applied to anything other than a political system.
“947
two moon says:
25 February 2010 at 6:18 PM
943: Sorry, but I’ve been a civil servant for 33 years and you are wrong in principle”
No, he’s right in both principle and in practice.
“Everything done by a civil servant in pursuit of his/her public endeavor is public property.”
No it isn’t. Else I would own copyright.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
Assinine statement made out of a Big Lie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
A common tactic when facing people who are reasoned.
1) They make a reasonable statement, you come out with a completely whacko one and the “compromise position” is nearer what you REALLY want (cf double the time it takes to complete a job, double the price of offer when haggling, etc, but TIMES TEN!)
1a) If they don’t compromise on a dumb solution, complain that they aren’t compromising (if I want to kill you, you don’t want me to kill you, do we compromise on me cutting your legs off? No? Why no compromise?)
1b) If they try the same thing with you and go nutcase the other side, trying to gauge where the compromise position will be somewhere reasonable, you will cry “look at these nutjobs!”
2) Such a huge whopper of a lie is hard to even comprehend as to where it comes from, therefore it’s hard to refute since there is no discernable genesis of that idea that can be reasoned against.
3) You don’t care about reputation or reason. So why not go hog wild, eh?
PS do I own the US Army Apache Helicopters, two moon?
After all, the were done with taxpayer money, and I’m a taxpayer.
Charlie Chutney,
First, what I am doing with Jones’s quotes is showing that they are not inconsistent with what you would read climate scientists saying on this very blog. Did you even read the post by Tamino? Do you have any training in statistical reasoning?
Re: trillions of $$ of expenses. This is misleading for several reasons:
1)The majority of this expense would be incurred anyway since we have to replace our fossil-fuel energy infrastructure as we run out of first petroleum, then natural gas and finally, coal, oil shale and tar sands, all likely before the end of the current century. The question is whether we want to change energy infrastructures multiple times in a century, with all the disruption and dealing with vested interests that implies. It might be considerably cheaper in the long run to go directly to a sustainable energy infrastructure based mainly on renewables, perhaps supplemented by nuclear power.
2)The actual expenditures are a few percent of Global economic activity.
3)The cost of remediation will increase dramatically the longer we ignore the problem.
4)Many of the measures contemplated actually save energy and resources.
5)A concerted research effort will be needed to implement a sustainable energy infrastructure. However discoveries in the course of this effort will find their way into new technologies and actually spur economic growth.
It would appear that you have been getting your information on the costs of this issue from an unreliable source.
Charlie: “We agree! It is a weak-link and I don’t know how to square the circle. I am left with my instincts – a very unscientific and therefore potentially illogical conclusion.”
I guess the question is whether you are interested in reaching a logical conclusion based on the evidence. If so, science can help. If not. Good luck.
S.M., your point appears to be that the climatologists should be using econometric methods. If so, you might want to actually discuss this–do you have a blog, or know one where it would be topical? If so I’d suggest you approach it with something like this:
What success in economics can you point to that supports using their methods for climatology?
What overlaps do you know of in the two disciplines?
Has any climatologist used these statistics or cited them in published work?
Has any other science journal mentioned them in published work?
http://pulse.tower.com/inference-in-cointegrated-var-models-alessandra-canepa-paperback/wapi/114202855
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=S.+Johansen+%281995%29%2C+%E2%80%9CLikelihood+Inference+in+Cointegrated+Vector+Autoregressive+Models%E2%80%9D
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=inference-in-cointegrated-var-models-alessandra-canepa
Perhaps publishing under your own name recommending these methods to the sciences would have some effect. Blogging under a pseudonym recommending sources that nobody has used (or Scholar doesn’t find, anyhow) seems weak.
950: I never claimed that “public domain” was involved and I don’t believe that it is. My point was simply that work performed by civil servants in their civil sevice capacity is public property, and subject to inspection and review. Exact procedures for such inspection and review will vary agency by agency (again, as I said) but the requirement in principle is uniform and comprehensive.
[Response: ‘Available for inspection and review’ by management is not ‘public’ in the sense that any member of the public is entitled to see it. – gavin]
ref 966 Ray
You say : Re: trillions of $$ of expenses. This is misleading for several reasons”.
Here in the UK, a couple of stories have been in the press recently.
1. Corus steelworks closes and Tata (its owners) receives £100s millions in carbon credits.
2. British government pays £60m to India and China to carry on being able to heat and light the Civil Service’s buildings.
The UK Government has bought into the AGW argument fully. Our Prime Minister has proudly announced on TV that Britain is going to meet its CO2 reduction targets and we are at the forefront of these initiatives and taking a lead on the world stage.
The result? We arrive at a grotesque parody of anything that is useful to anyone – other than carbon traders and opportunists in India and China. In the case of No. 2 above, the British taxpayer is paying £60m (about $80m) to another country to carry on heating our government offices just as we did before!
Where do the carbon credits come from? Is there a steelworks in India being shut down? Is there a project in China that has been shelved to generate the credits?
No! The credits are generated by India and China not increasing their CO2 emissions by quite as much as they said they wanted to! They are still going to increase though!
In summary, a few Asian business men make fortunes for doing nothing – literally. The carbon traders make an alleged £9m in commissions, the offices carry on being heated and lit, more CO2 is produced, and our Prime Minister thinks he is saving the planet – and the British taxpayer pays £60m, for nothing!
As an aside, who are the only two people that Joe Soap may have become aware of as being personally involved in companies and/or organisations that are involved in carbon trading? I would speculate that the 2 names people might be able to come up with are Al Gore and Dr Pachauri.
This is what happens when the loonies take over the asylum – and you wonder why I, or other sceptics, might be cynical or sceptical.
To restate, this is a grotesque parody that would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. I assume you agree?
“958
stevenc says:
25 February 2010 at 10:58 PM
“What? We agree you’re very unlikely to be right???”
No, I am absolutely right since I said it could be either or. ”
That’s not an argument that the IPCC is wrong.
[edit]
“[Response: Congress is not, funnily enough, covered by the FOIA. I wonder who decided that. – gavin]”
However, the emails are not congress.
Ergo, we can have them.
:-)
SM: “Your example shows that a period can be known, well-modelled, and reliable, without its mechanism being known”
But why go for that when we HAVE a model with its mechanism known?
Occam’s razor: do not multiply requirements needlessly. So why make up an option that requires at least two more ifs:
1) If it’s not CO2
2) If it hides the effect of CO2 whilst itself looking like CO2
RE David Benson (948)
That’s a pretty cool result. I would have thought that latency in the response and the scale of the internal variability would have made aggregating the data into ten-year buckets too short a period to be useful. Go figure.
Is it reading too much into the analysis to remark on the positive residuals in the 30s and 40s following the earlier negatives and in turn followed by more negatives? It seems suggestive of other factors retarding warming and then the system “catching up” to the forcing. Obviously it’s too short a time series to make any claims along those lines, but optics are cool too!
–MartinJB (formerly Martin, but someone else has posted lately under that handle)
967, Hank Roberts: What success in economics can you point to that supports using their methods for climatology? What overlaps do you know of in the two disciplines?
If a system is sufficiently smooth (i.e., has a sufficient number of continuous derivatives), then it can be represented sufficiently accurately by a vector autoregressive process of sufficiently high order. That’s Takens’ theorem, from the study of dynamical systems in physics; that’s part of the overlap. Now you are probably asking yourself what “sufficiently accurately” means in my approximate statement of Takens’ theorem: it refers to the usual epsilon-delta type proof that’s used in proving continuity and differentiability.
There is a solid intellectual case that the best intellectual attitude toward AGW is skepticism rather than belief, or even confidence. The intellectual case resides in the data and their random errors, in the inexactitude of the models, in statistical analysis of the data time series by diverse methods, and in the uncertainty of some of the possible mechanisms. This does not rule out a “risk management” approach to the possible threat, or argue against a prudent investment in CC&S and other strategies, but it should rule out arguments by AGW proponents that skeptics are all stupid, ignorant, or corrupt.
Charlie Chutney @962:
“You [Ray] are interpreting what he [Phil Jones] said and adding meaning that I, and other layman, wouldn’t do.”
I think this statement of CC’s is correct. Ray (and I and others who are well versed in the way that scientists talk about data) *are* interpreting what Phil Jones said and we *are* adding a meaning that CC and other laymen wouldn’t add.
–BUT–
The interpretation Ray offers is the correct one for anyone who is familiar with the language of science; furthermore the form of words that Phil Jones used does not admit of any other interpretation for such a well versed reader.
“He knew that a BBC article of this nature would get massive coverage and he must have known that you guys would be reading his words. He had all of the time he needed to say exactly what he meant and avoid any confusion.”
The point at hand turns on whether Phil Jones was speaking ‘scientese’ in his answer or not. CC – your position seems to be that he was most deliberately *not* speaking ‘scientese’ and that the lay, common-sensical, interpretation is the meaning that Dr Jones was intending to communicate in that answer (and across the rest of the Q&A as well presumably) because he knew what needed to be done to write effectively for a lay audience. Is that a fair summary?
I’m sorry but I disagree on both points. IMO Phil Jones was indeed speaking scientese (it positively reeks of it in fact) and he had very little idea of what he was doing when he drafted that answer. It was a spectacularly poor piece of science communication in fact, because what he wrote was entirely and precisely correct about the underlying reality he was describing and yet would cause the lay majority of his readership to draw the incorrect meaning from his words.
Regards
Luke
Gavin, Ray Ladbury, Barton Paul Levenson, I want to thank you for your technical posts. You have clarified some of the big picture for me.
Matt
Further to my comment in response to Charlie Chutney @962
There’s also a key piece of evidence regarding Phil Jones’ intent in the update to the ‘Daily Mangle’ posting that precedes this.
Regards
Luke
968: I did not restrict “inspection and review” to management. Depending on circumstances, it can indeed mean management supervision, but it can also mean congressional oversight, legal discovery or public access. I know of no government agency where management supervision alone is deemed sufficient inspection and review. Some outside entity, either the public or a body representing the public, always has the right to look.
This exchange has reached the point of diminishing returns. My original point was only to affirm that he who accepts public money accepts public scrutiny.
MartinJB (973) — Thank you! I was pleasantly surprised myself.
Yes, it is reading too much into such a short time interval. Tamino has a thread on his Open Mind blog (linked on the sidebar) attempting to explain the 30s and 40s as the result of Lack of volcano eruptions. Others have attributed the following cooling to be due to industrial aerosols. For the simple decadal lag Arrhenius estimator all of the unexplained variance is simply left unexplained; pink noise in the actual climate system.
“Maybe Realclimate needs to have a “wolf-watch” section.”
Yeah, and maybe Anthony Watts should have a policy that anytime one of his followers slings the word “fraud”, they need to provide specifics of the allegation as well as their own identifying information, so they can be pounded into a bankrupt stain on the floor if their allegation proves false.
Fair enough?
Alas, the so-called autocorrelations in my comment #948 are in error; the ol’ off-by-one bit. So are the corrected values.
autocorrelations
1 +0.40
2 -0.20
3 -0.82
4 -0.46
5 +0.07
6 +0.60
7 +0.38
8 -0.05
9 -0.53
10 -0.29
11 -0.15
12 +0.23
While these are moderately large, with only 12 lags to work with I, at least, will refrain from reading too much into these values. Let’s just call it pink noise and let it go at that.
BPL: Read my lips: Scientific truth is not determined by majority vote.
I think you confuse me with the IPCC ;-)
You have to read the context (see post 914) to see that the issue was not epistemology but how citizen belief systems are formed:
1: CC “do I choose to ignore the science produced by 1000s of learned and dedicated scientists – in favour of my own uneducated “feel” or personal opinion?”
2: CFU: “you shouldn’t have been in the position of asking it.”
CC talks in the capacity as a citizen, who to believe, what to think and why. This is a right in an open democratic society. The right to think independently is also important for science. CFU is actually trying to undermine democracy as well as science and seems to advocate for some form of technocracy where intellectual elite rules.
> S.M.
> rule out arguments by [X] that [Y] are all stupid, ignorant, or corrupt.
Would you accept that generalization of your idea? Can we be about finding the center and leaving the idiots and ranters outside?
See if there’s anything here you can agree with, for example–not someone I’d agree with on many things, but he’s talking sense from his point of view:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/distinguishing-climate-deniers-from.html
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/blog/david_brin/2010/02/09/the_real_struggle_behind_climate_change_-_a_war_on_expertise
An excerpt from Brin’s piece, for those who don’t follow links.
Mr. or Ms. Skeptic, can you see how wearing it has been, dealing with a storm of such BS? Can you admit that the professionals and experts may not, at first, be able to distinguish sincere skeptics, like you, from the maniacs who have been chivvying and screaming at them (on puppet-orders from Fox and Riyadh and Moscow) for years? HGCC "Skeptics" like you are saddened to see that many of the scientists are prickly, irritable and sullen about answering an endless stream of rehashed questions, only a few of which aren’t blatant nonsense. But you Skeptics – the smart and honest ones – understand what’s happened. And so, you’ll cooperate about helping the experts feel safe to come out and share what they know. And maybe then they will answer some of the Skeptics’ inconvenient questions. — SO WHAT’S A SINCERE AND ENLIGHTENED SKEPTIC TO DO? — This is when the honest Skeptic recites what I suggested earlier. "Okay, I’ll admit we need more efficiency and sustainability, desperately, in order to regain energy independence, improve productivity, erase the huge leverage of hostile foreign petro-powers, reduce pollution, secure our defense, prevent ocean acidification, and ease a vampiric drain on our economy. If I don’t like one proposed way to achieve this, then I will negotiate in good faith other methods that can help us to achieve all these things, decisively, without further delay and with urgent speed."Further, I accept that "waste-not" and "a-penny-saved" and "cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness" and genuine market competition used to be good conservative attitudes. But the "side" that has been pushing the Denial Movement – propelled by petro-princes, Russsian oligarchs and Exxon, hasn’t any credibility on the issue of weaning America off wasteful habits. In fact, it’s not conservatism at all. "And so, for those reasons alone, let’s join together to make a big and genuine push for efficiency."Oh, and by the way, I don’t believe in Human-caused Global Climate Change! But in case I am wrong, these measures would help deal with that too. "So there, are you happy, you blue-smartypants-eco-science types? Are you satisfied that I am a sincere citizen-skeptic, and not one of the drivel-parroting Deniers? "Good, then now, as fellow citizens, and more in a spirit of curiosity than polemics, can we please corner some atmospheric scientists and persuade them to enter into an extended teach-in, to answer some inconvenient questions?"(Oh, and thanks for the vastly improved weather reports; they show you’re smart enough to be able to explain these things to a humble-but-curious fellow citizen, like me.)"As I said earlier, when I meet a conservative HGCC skeptic who says all that (and I have), I am all kisses and flowers. And so will be all the atmospheres guys I know. That kind of statement is logical, patriotic and worthy of respect. It deserves eye-to-eye answers.But alas, such genuine "skeptics" are rare. — WHY IT’S ALL FOR NOTHING — Alas, I really have wasted my time, here. Because, while the species of sincere, conservative-but-rational HGCC skeptics does exist – (I know several, and kind-of qualify as one, myself) – they turn out to be rare. For the most part, those calling themselves "skeptics" are nothing of the kind. More often than not, they are fully-imbibed, koolaid-drinking Deniers, who wallow in isolated anecdotes and faux-partyline talking points, egotistically assuming that their fact-poor, pre-spun, group-think opinion entitles them to howl ""corrupt fools!" at 100% of the brilliant men and women who have actually studied and are confronting an important topic… …the very same people who the "skeptics" now count on to help them plan activities as far as two whole weeks into a future that used to be murky beyond two hours’ time.There are words for such such people. But none of those words are "skeptic."
Off topic, but here is a part of paleoclimatology which I have never previously enocuntered. Note the 55 year oscillation in
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y2787E/y2787e1x.gif
“Temperature reconstruction based on a Greenland ice-core data from 553-1973.”
The shorter period oscillations I think I understand (well enough), but 55 years?
I was able to locate what appears to be the containing document
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/Y2787E06.HTM
which offers no hint as to a potential cause of such an oscillation. Well, maybe changes in length of day?
As I’m nowhere near as skilled as Hank Roberts in finding information on the web, and have found nothing explaining this, assistance will be greatly appreciated.
To Charlie Chutney, Andreas Bjurström and others,
the problem with CC’s dilemma is not that he is left wondering what to believe. It is how he got there. I disagree that it’s a function of the behavior of climate scientists. I would suggest that it’s a result of being fed a steady diet of lies and distortions. Admittedly, some of the distortions come from the MSM and the occasional politician overattributing events to global warming. But really now, that’s par for the course. The media and politicians always have the occasional problem with reporting technical and complex issues.
The real problem has been the outright lies coming from rejectionist opinion-setters (whatever their motivations and antecedents) and the misinformed and gullible media outlets that have followed along. The lies have been about the science and the scientists. The most recent meme is a good example: that climate scientists are arrogant and opaque. From what I’ve seen, the supposed examples of this attitude have largely been in response to the rejectionist lie machine.
It’s sad, really.
–MartinJB
983, Hank Roberts, I went to one of those and found this:
Well, in fact, after two decades of seeing “let’s not do anything rash” used as a talking point excuse for doing nothing at all? No, it doesn’t sound reasonable.
With that I agree. I have said that we should act prudently in case AGW turns out to be correct: develop and deploy CC&S technology, conserve, build alternative energy supplies.
From your quote in your subsequent text: But the “side” that has been pushing the Denial Movement – propelled by petro-princes, Russsian oligarchs and Exxon, hasn’t any credibility on the issue of weaning America off wasteful habits.
With Exxon-Mobil (and others) on one side, and ADM, Sharp, Siemens, GE, Gore, and Pachauri lobbying and receiving considerable sums of money on the other side (not to mention the millions of $$$ of which Michael Mann and Phil Jones are stewards [small in the big picture, but large amounts to them], I prefer to leave corporate interests out of the discussion of the science and public policy. Whatever is the right thing to do, corporations will benefit from carrying it out, and at least a few people will make out like bandits.
David Benson,
I hate to belabor this, but I’d guess that now that you’ve gotten the analysis setup, it’s easy to try variations. Basically, I find it curious that the average CO2 in one period should predict so well the average temperature anomaly in the next period of the same duration. I don’t think that’s an obvious result. Or am I missing something?
So, I’d be curious to know if you did the analysis for, say, 5-yr and 20-yr periods if you got similarly predictive results (obviously, with more noise in the former and fewer periods in the latter).
Likewise, what if we mismatched the periods? In the current relationship, the ratio of the two period lengths is 1. What if we vary that from say 0.25 to 4? Does that illuminate anything about how long it takes for the system to reach equilibrium?
Of course, the results you showed us could be an artifact of those scurrilous climate scientists fixing the temperature record…. [insert favorite ironic emoticon here]
Cheers,
MartinJB
David Benson #985: One possible explanation could be the AMO. From the Physical Oceanography Division of the NOAA web page:What is the AMO?
The AMO is an ongoing series of long-duration changes in the sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean, with cool and warm phases that may last for 20-40 years at a time and a difference of about 1°F between extremes. These changes are natural and have been occurring for at least the last 1,000 years.
How much of the Atlantic are we talking about?
Most of the Atlantic between the equator and Greenland changes in unison. Some area of the North Pacific also seem to be affected.
BPL: I’m suspicious of simply Fourier-analyzing a noisy data set. That was essentially how Aristotle and then Ptolemy developed their epicycle schemes.
SM (953): Your example shows that a period can be known, well-modelled, and reliable, without its mechanism being known.
BPL: You just don’t get it, do you? Those cycles DIDN’T EXIST. There were no epicycles and no deferents. They were misinterpreting elliptical orbits on the ASSUMPTION that everything had to move in circles. And that’s what you’re doing Fourier-analyzing the climate. And, BTW, observations of planetary positions are a hell of a lot less noisy than the temperature time series, thus less prone to indicating nonexistent physical phenomena. In 2000 years I can only think of a handful of examples–epicycles, Vulcan, Planet IX, Barnard’s planet. That’s about it.
AB (982): CC talks in the capacity as a citizen, who to believe, what to think and why. This is a right in an open democratic society. The right to think independently is also important for science. CFU is actually trying to undermine democracy as well as science and seems to advocate for some form of technocracy where intellectual elite rules.
BPL: He’s not doing anything of the sort, and neither is anyone else here. He’s saying that just because CC has a right to believe anything he wants, it doesn’t make those beliefs ACCURATE. You can have good reasons for believing something and bad reasons. CCs reasons are bad ones. Deal with it.
stevenc (989),
Why don’t you get a time series for the AMO and do the research yourself?
@991,
So let us assume that democracy is needed, and move on to the topic:
Climate science -> citizen belief systems
How do we handle that linkage? (open question)
More specifically, is it possible to have a democratic society where citizens can not be in the position to think “wrong” (CFU utopia). (what is right and wrong is here determined by scientists).
Guess many here tend to answer: Adopt the scientific method, be like us, or put your trust in us.
I argue that adopting the method of the climate scientists is neither realistic nor desirable. Not realistic due to lack of competence. Not desirable since we want citizens to invest their time in other things and also because we want them to make value laden decisions in ways that differ from the scientific methods. Do you agree?
Citizen climate believers do not have more advanced ways to form their belief systems. Believe me, I teach undergraduate social science students in environmental issues at the university. They think like CC, their scientific methods are not much better, the difference is that they value different and have different authorities that they put their trust in (not necessarily more trustworthy authorities, e.g. Greenpeace, gaia theory, the green party).
I think climate scientists focus to much on saying (their) truth.
For the dilemma above one must also think: how do scientists build citizen trust in ways that are honest to science and truth?
Just a few thought with the aim to advance discussion and also strategy for us all …
Charlie Chutney,
OK, again, you are going to have to help me with the logic here. What does a poorly done carbon trading scheme implemented for political reasons have to do with the science? The science says that measures need to be effective at reducing CO2–that’s all. If the measure is not effective, it is not possible to support it on a scientific basis. That is why corn-based ethanol is also a stupid idea.
Moreover, the whole point of trying to implement a mitigation scheme NOW is so that we (hopefully) have a wee bit of time to make corrections and avoid the most onerous and draconian measures. Do you think that maybe they could have avoided the Steel Plant closure if they had started taking climate change seriously 20 years ago?
So, I’m having a really hard time understanding why you are attacking the science–which you admit you don’t understand–rather than the policies, which you as a voter should by all means have a voice in. Indeed, would it not be more effective to attack ineffective policies if you had a sound grasp of the science?
Again, Charlie, I understand that you are upset. I’m just having a really hard time understanding how attacking the science–science that is supported by mountains of evidence and 97% of the experts–is effective. Did it occur to you that maybe the reason you are now seeing policies you don’t like is that your rejection of the science has kept you from having an effective voice?
Andreas #954, re: taking responses in this comment section as empirical material for your work — methodological question: So your object of study also includes the blog interactions of partly anonymous amateur climate-science aficionados? I thought you were more interested in working climate scientists and IPCC contributors, which leaves you with Gavin’s inlines and … hm … who else in that category has reacted?
Andreas (#993) asks: “…how do scientists build citizen trust in ways that are honest to science and truth?”
Maybe the same way shamans, elders and warlords do? By making predictions that come true, giving good advice, and winning battles? Time to engage the last of these, perhaps.
Andreas – In your pursuit of the social policy angle, I think you need to differentiate your “democracies” – discursive democracy, direct democracy, representative democracy, and republic for starters – and notice the US, being the current influential group, is a republic that was specifically founded as a representative democracy [in opposition to a direct democracy], and that has developed into a representation primarily of the power of money. Also note that each individual state in the US is a seperate and sometimes superior “republic”. Particularly California. How does democracy build citizen trust in ways that are honest?
990, BPL: You just don’t get it, do you? Those cycles DIDN’T EXIST.
The cycles + epicycles were excellent (i.e. very accurate) theoretical/mathematical approximations to actual periodicities. Copernicus’, Kepler’s and Newton’s work was supported by the fact that their models were nearly (at first) as accurate. Don’t be stupid on purpose. My “claim” (as mathematicians say) is that the evidence for periodicity in warming is too strong to ignore, whether autocorrelations (a component of autoregressive processes) or harmonic regression ultimately proves to be the best mathematical representation of it.
994, Ray Ladbury: What does a poorly done carbon trading scheme implemented for political reasons have to do with the science? The science says that measures need to be effective at reducing CO2–that’s all. If the measure is not effective, it is not possible to support it on a scientific basis. That is why corn-based ethanol is also a stupid idea.
Corn-based ethanol is at best a third-rate idea, IMO, but it is a net reduction in CO2 compared to petroleum-based fuel (according to most recent studies, but there are exceptions.) For that, it might be justifiable as a “step in the right direction”, or the “first step” that begins “a journey of a thousand miles.” Whether to support corn-based ethanol is a policy decision, a decision that scientists can inform but not make. I agree with your statement that scientists should focus on the science. That is why I have recommended against calumniating sceptics and denialists with references to monetary interests and psychoanalysis. It’s not that such calumniation is necessarily off-target in every case, but that it’s not something where scientists are regarded as especially well-informed.
BPL, I guess I’m not clear on what exactly I copied that you don’t agree with. Is it the time period or the idea of an oscillation? As far as me doing the research myself, I read what scientists say. I don’t pretend to be one.
Here is another:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE61N0TR.htm
The quote from Trenberth acknowledges the same phenomenon as his comment in the CRU emails.