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.
#213
[Response: Except that isn’t true. There are commercial vineyards in Yorkshire, while the most northerly known Roman vineyard is near Lincoln (Selley, 2nd edition). – gavin]
Hey Gavin don’t be so sceptical. It might have been possible to grow grapes as far as Hadrian’s wall you know. If currently wines can be produced in places like Ontario, Canada, then why is it inconceivable during the Roman WARM Period?
http://www.canadianvintners.com/
http://www.winesofcanada.com/her_wineries.html
Vineyards of Ontario!!!
http://www.ontariograpes.com/home.html
Vineyard in Canada, Nova Scotia!
http://www.canada-photos.com/grape-vineyard-nova-scotia-3169-pictures.htm
[Response: So let me get this straight. The Roman ‘Warm’ period is definitely warmer than today because it has ‘warm’ in its name and they grow wine in Ontario? Got it. – gavin]
Curmugeon: “To summarise –
No reduction in total steel production
No reduction in total CO2 production
100s of millions of pounds to Tata from carbon trading
1600 British workers thrown out of work in the middle of the worst economic environment experienced for generations.”
1: the idea isn’t to reduce steel production but CO2 production.
Fe != CO2
2: Can you tell?
3: 1000’s millions spent by Oil/coal on PR and lobbying still hasn’t proven the IPCC or AGW wrong
4: An economic recession started by the richest, paid for by the poorest. Rather like AGW problems. (NOTE: the poorest USian on less than 12k a year has an unemployment rate of 30%. The richest 10% have an unemployement of 3%, where you expect to have the floor since people move jobs, take leave, etc). It also doesn’t have anything to do with the science.
RS:
In December 2007, the General Assembly of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) issued a statement endorsing the IPCC conclusions, and states:
it is the duty of Polish science and the national government to, in a thoughtful, organized and active manner, become involved in realisation of these ideas.
Problems of global warming, climate change, and their various negative impacts on human life and on the functioning of entire societies are one of the most dramatic challenges of modern times.
PAS General Assembly calls on the national scientific communities and the national government to actively support Polish participation in this important endeavor
“medium greenhouse-gas emission scenario, the New York City coastal area would see an additional rise of about 8.3 inches above the mean sea level rise that is expected around the globe because of human-induced climate change.”
But what happens when the ice at the edge of the greenland glacier melts?
And when it gets warmer globally, the edge of the glacier on greenland will move north, making the glacier smaller.
What happens to the sea level rise then?
What happens when you hold your hand with ice cubes in it over a full-to-the-brim glass of water?
PS on Climatedepot’s coverage of the Polish academy, they state:
“Shock Call To Action: ‘At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers’ — ‘Shouldn’t we start punishing them now? …”
I don’t see much thrown Morano’s way for that sort of hate.
Do you?
PPS Ask Uncle Vinny. He’s talked to the President of the Committee of Geological Sciemces, PAS
http://unclevinny.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/global-warming-denialism/
I think we should distinguish between two kinds of Overton window.
The scientific one is defined by estimates of warming produced by doubling of CO2 (climate sensitivity). All such windows have to lie within the range zero at the super skeptical end to the “climate runaway” or similar at the other end.
Another kind of Overton window describes the way the discussion is conducted. These windows must lie in the ranges which stretch from the careful,thoughtful, rigorous , cautious, rational, honest , hard working,intelligent at one end to the misinforming, misunderstanding, lazy, censoring , manipulating,bullying, corrupting, in-your-face lying at the other end.
The effect of all this misinformation has been to shift this second type of window. If you are a journalist, your behaviour is now encouraged to be even more irresponsible and lazy than before. Work has become easier. All that you need to do is to help pump up the bubble and follow the pack.
Censorship is a most important factor. Although the media have, in the past, given publicity to many of the conclusions of the science , they have been systematically bad at providing any analysis*. The pseudo-experts, who step in to fill this void can then pretend that this analysis does not exist. Another problem is that so much of the information has to be filtered by editors and gate-keepers such as environmental correspondents like Roger Harrabin. Why not invite the experts to prepare some in depth programmes?
————————————————
*. BBC TV, Radio 4 and Channel 4 should be leading the way with education. I don’t mind if they include arguments against the consensus , provided they also include a proper analysis explaining why most climatologists disagree with such arguments.
All that they have provided over many years is “Global Dimming” (muddled and open to misunderstanding), The “Moral Maze” which is largely hostile to the scientific position and the Great Global Warming Swindle which provided a garbled version of the missing analysis, and the non analytical “Climate Wars” by the non climatologist Iain Stewart. In contrast, the BBC have proudly prepared numerous excellent programmes about Darwin and evolution. Why such a huge difference?
Response to #339 Jimbo
[Response: This would clearly be an unauthorised release of data and would breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws. – gavin]
Maybe, but not hacked as I questioned. You are correct on the “unauthorised release of data” (which I did not put into question) and as for “breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws” I’m not so sure what the implication would be if the “whistleblower” used the Public interest defence for Whistleblowers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Would this override the breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws? I don’t know as I’m not a lawyer.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980023_en_1
At the Freedom of Information section of the Information Commissioner’s Office there are excemptions and I can’t see emails being covered so are they “personal emails” / private?
http://www.ico.gov.uk/home/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information/guidance.aspx#exeguidance
jimbo : “Maybe, but not hacked as I questioned. ”
how do you know it’s not hacked?
If I break in to the mail system at work, I have no authorisation to access the mail server and definitely none to access emails I do not own.
To view them, I have to === Hack === the server.
Even though I work for my company.
To clarify my last post on “personal emails” my question is do emails stored on a server in a public organisation belong to those named on the emails or the organisation. From what I recall emails in companies are the property of the company and not employees. I might be wrong on this though.
[Response: So let me get this straight. The Roman ‘Warm’ period is definitely warmer than today because it has ‘warm’ in its name and they grow wine in Ontario? Got it. – gavin]
Additionally, these Romans would be Romans during the Catholic rather than Classical phase of roman beliefs.
Isn’t the communion rather important for Roman Catholics?
This requires wine, doesn’t it?
And, since there’s no handy offlicense to buy vino de plonk and they’re not really drinking it to DRINK it (what’s it have to compete with anyway? New Zealand don’t have their cheeky chardonay yet) and, given they were a lot further north than York, one wonders why they didn’t have vinyards as far north as they’re growing today?
Roman Catholicism today can choose imported wines from much more appropriate wine growing countries and water treatment makes water much more potable.
It’s also not the state religion, making it rather less important.
350
Richard Steckis
Actually that statement is from the Committee of Geological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. One of 95 scientific committees of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
It is not the official position of PAN – their last official statement can be found here:
http://www.aktualnosci.pan.pl/images/stories/pliki/stanowiska_opinie/2008/stanowisko_pan_131207.pdf
People who have not been trained as scientists do not know what the word “truth” means. They think that courts of law determine truth. They think that voting determines truth. Neither could be farther from the truth. Only experiments determine truth. Humans should never be trusted or believed because telling the truth is just impossible in ordinary language, and the human animal did not evolve to tell the truth. Most people can’t tell the truth even if they want to.
Journalists, in general, are NOT trained scientists. You can’t expect journalists to have any idea of what they are talking about if the subject is science. You can’t expect journalists to understand that the source of truth is experiments. Journalists, like most people, actually believe that human witnesses can be believed.
When journalists were reporting what scientists said, they were doing the same thing that they are doing now: reporting what some human said. IN NO CASE did the journalists actually understand what was going on. Understanding isn’t what journalism is all about. Telling stories is. Don’t expect miracles.
completely fed up :
1) It’s a computer simulation could be GIGO if initial hypothesis and theories are (even partially) false or incomplete.
2) 18 inches in a century, there’s plenty of time for “Netherlands” coastal construction and/or moving gradually elsewhere.
3)Global Ice coverage seems ok; Antarctica’s ice extent (more than 90% of world’s ice) is up decade after decade. Around A.D. 1000 there was much less ice on Greenland than today and look! Humans survived!
RO — You’ve got Inhofe and Crichton mixed in with the peer-reviewed articles in that last list.
#178: Winter Olympics 2014
The next meet in Sotchi, Russia. A nice little town on the Black Sea, palms and everything.
The main events will be located in a nearby mountain resort, current weather forecast to be seen at
http://www.foreca.com/Russia/Krasnaya_Polyana?tenday
jtom: It matters not one whit if “not a single error has been found in the ~1000 pages of the WG1 AR4 report,” to the public if global warming / climate change has no disasterous impact.
BPL: “Disastrous.” And what part of “complete collapse of global agriculture in no more than 40 years” do you not regard as disastrous?
Several people including Steve Fish (#259) and Completely Fed Up (#189) have attacked my remark (# 52 and #171) about Phil Jones breaching the British law on Freedom of Information. They suggested that there has been no verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
You may not believe me, or The Times (London), or the BBC – which as most of you will know is not really biased towards the climate sceptics – After all this could be one big conspiracy isn’t it ??
But I suppose that an official reaction to the ICO’s decision from the University of East Anglia where Phil Jones and his CRU unit are employed is above suspicion:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/vcstatement
“1) It’s a computer simulation could be GIGO if initial hypothesis and theories are (even partially) false or incomplete.”
Nope, it’s incomplete but not garbage.
Pi is NOT 3.142 (and is unrepresentable as a number) so ANY use of pi is incomplete.
Yet it is used an awful lot in modelling engines, gadgets and so forth.
They appear to be working still.
“2) 18 inches in a century, there’s plenty of time for “Netherlands” coastal construction and/or moving gradually elsewhere.”
Unless Greenland melts.
Solids have this funny thing called “phase change”. As they warm up, they remain steadfastly solid and do not deform readily. Then, all of a sudden, they change state and melt. At this point they are a liquid and move like crazy.
“3)Global Ice coverage seems ok; Antarctica’s ice extent (more than 90% of world’s ice) is up decade after decade.”
And a spot of butter covering 1cm of the knife can be spread on a slice of bread 100x bigger.
This doesn’t mean you’ve created more butter.
“359
Jimbo says:
18 February 2010 at 8:16 AM
To clarify my last post on “personal emails” my question is do emails stored on a server in a public organisation belong to those named on the emails or the organisation.”
Does the recording of “Hit me baby, one more time” belong to the label, the singer, the songwriter or the public to whom all public works and culture belongs?
O.K., JonP, I will take you at your word if that is what you really meant. So I assume you realize that RC weighs in against misleading information on either side, that it takes the science quite seriously, that it does not confuse weather with climate and frequently corrects this error, etc.
Can communication be better? Of course, but first people have to be willing to listen. In the U.S., at least, people tend to glaze over when the subject of science comes up.
# 358 Completely Fed Up to jimbo :
“Maybe, but not hacked as I questioned.”
how do you know it’s not hacked?
——
Sorry if those words mislead you I should have phrased it better.
If you look back at my comments and Gavin’s responses I’m proposing alternative possibilities. The “not hacked” was in response to Gavin – but was not meant as a fact. I have said a couple of times that I don’t know whether they were leaked, hacked or stolen.
Sepilok, do you have an english translation? I ran it through a polish to english translator, but it’s a bit rough.
I did minimal clean-up, only stripping out character codes that didn’t translate for fear of being accused of distortion. Even so, it is clear they consider climate change to be a significant threat:
“Problem of global warming, changes of climates and negative influence (income) & person ycie and there is one of most dramatic challenge of contemporaneousness on whole functioning society.
Current research indicate most, it has grown in atmosphere in last two hundred about near 25% lats (summers; years) contents oxide carbon (charcoal; coal) e. If add for this similar incrementation of (growth of) presence in atmosphere other, by activity of person harmful gasses generated, it holistic, effective incrementation of (growth of) amount of this gas totals (take away; amount to) in treated period 40% near, but it has swindled particular acceleration in last decades. These facts cause situation become extremely worrying e.
Everything emission of harmful gas starts up whole range of natural process in atmosphere ( ) nade CO2, biosphere, hydrosphere, leading global warming. Then it evokes negative results in agriculture, hydrologii, demography is valued (, for examplecan strip access to water in undistant future change climatic near population of world ).
At the end of november declared in questions of development (evolution) against (versus) climatic changes year report special program UNO ( ) entitled „ ącego UNDP; it calls for solidarity in divided world cooperation international onej. Similar head count leads (drive) international panel for community of world in questions of climatic changes ( ) – this year’s laureate nobel prize IPCC. There is duty of polish science and state authorities, in order to to manner thought over, organized and active include (switch on) to realization this idea. It requires it enforcement of priority extensive (wide) and area investigative norodnym, in this over physical research and biochemical mechanisms of climatic changes and mathematical modeling . So elaborate proper (suitable) center (means) technical and principles of their and regulations economically in all areas of economic activities of states -legal limiting emission so called gas greenhouse.
It is essential plane have to inform society taking of information operation scale and meaning of taken (undertaken) remedial center (means).
You are returned general assembly for national (local) scientific environments and for state authorities about active support of polish participation (quota) in venture nym. We judge, creation would be in direction of counteraction under auspices of polish academies of special sciences of programs of counteractions results of global warming proper (suitable) step climatic eniom and results . There would be task sponsored and coordinating of research and any (every) other forms of legal operations and economic concerning aspect change climatic norodnych.”
Interesting: when you google PAS and climate statement all you get is the denialist sites quoting the CGS. And only one of them actually gets the fact that it came from the CGS right. Wonder why that is!
To #313, and #280
I looked through refs [1,2] and stopped there. The experimental data for model verification are plotted without error bars. This is disgrace and it is shame that these works were published in such form. However, it seems to be a modern trend… Second, the referenced works depicting triumph of the transistor modeling are just what electrical engineers do – chewed up and modified Ohm’s law with a little sprinkle of empirical correlations between the current and drain-to source voltage and similar stuff. These models might work very accurately and, thus, be of very high value to the application engineers. But, this is not what the physicists would call a physical model. Ray Ladbury, saying that all physicists like talking about their work is unsubstantiated generalization. And proposing criterion of true “physicistness” as those who like to talk about their work is strange (saying that politely). Not all physicists like to talk about their work to the general public. Actually my experience is opposite – few physicists like that. Majority of those who do, as I noticed, have ulterior motives that are typically money or fame. There is also a cohort of physicists who do entertainment science – like modeling of meteor impact. They like talking about that too. There is one such a model shown on History TV channel – a fella from Sandia modeled meteor impact with Earth to raise awareness of the danger from the sky. If you noticed, the material ejected separates into multiple pieces with random-like distributed shapes. I reproduced this model (on my free time, i.e. not charging public for my entertainment) and got similar beautiful pictures. What I failed to see that, every time you run the code the ejection dynamics repeats exactly the same. I though may be some instability in the rounding or some fluctuation in the electron current through transistor (just kidding!) would result in some variations of the chaotic melt ejection… No! Then, conclusion is that the model does not accurately predict the ejecta distributions of size and velocity. However, the SNL fella was talking about the effect of the ejecta on surrounding population centers. I call this nature’s trick, if youk now what I’m talking about. It seems to me that the GW modelers make similar attempt to propose that they predict accurately “noisy” part of the solution, i.e. variations within couple degrees range. Perhaps majority of them make honest mistake. What do you think about that?
Ref 352 Completely Fed Up
Of all of the responses that I anticipated, yours was certainly way beyond anything that I imagined.
In answer to my comments – you choose to argue the case – and promote the very outcome that is happening!
1. The point I was making is that the same amount of steel will be produced (by the same company) – leading to ……….
2. The same amount of CO2 being produced! (by the same company – although you seem to be suggesting that the Indian plant might be more efficient!)
3. In response to my point 3 about Tata making 100s of millions from the carbon credits, you say “1000’s millions spent by Oil/coal on PR and lobbying still hasn’t proven the IPCC or AGW wrong”.
What on earth has that got to do with anything?
Tata will claim the carbon credits and make millions out of them without any possible benefit to the planet – and who pays and who receives the millions? The western tax payer will pay and Tata will take the profit (i.e. the very same company making the steel in India instead of England) as well as the carbon traders!
Your point about big oil is lost on me – and the 1600 workers at the Corus plant in England.
4. In response to my point that “1600 British workers thrown out of work in the middle of the worst economic environment experienced for generations”, you say:
“An economic recession started by the richest, paid for by the poorest. Rather like AGW problems. (NOTE: the poorest USian on less than 12k a year has an unemployment rate of 30%. The richest 10% have an unemployement of 3%, where you expect to have the floor since people move jobs, take leave, etc). It also doesn’t have anything to do with the science”.
… which I read as you saying: tough s***, serves ‘em right.
You demonstrate not one jot of sympathy or empathy for the plight of the 1600 workers and their families (notwithstanding the effects on all of the other businesses in the town that served the plant and its workforce (ex-workforce).
You don’t criticise or condemn a market that encourages these outcomes and which offer absolutely no contribution to reducing AGW.
You appear to be suggesting that it is “just” that the Corus workers suffer because of the antics of Bankers and Hedge Fund managers around the globe.
Just so I know, do I read you correctly in that you are saying that Cap and Trade has got nothing to do with reducing CO2 – and has everything to do with wealth redistribution and punishment of workers for the banking crisis?
Re #357
[Response: This would clearly be an unauthorised release of data and would breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws. – gavin]
Maybe, but not hacked as I questioned. You are correct on the “unauthorised release of data” (which I did not put into question) and as for “breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws” I’m not so sure what the implication would be if the “whistleblower” used the Public interest defence for Whistleblowers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. Would this override the breach all of the relevant Data Protection Laws? I don’t know as I’m not a lawyer.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980023_en_1
Firstly, to be a ‘Whistleblower’ as covered by the act one has to disclose information to an “employer or other responsible person”, “legal advisor”, “Minister of the Crown” etc., it doesn’t cover distributing information all over the blogosphere.
Secondly, note the following:
“(3)A disclosure of information is not a qualifying disclosure if the person making the disclosure commits an offence by making it.”
So a ‘whistleblower’ is protected against employer retaliation etc. if they make a disclosure within the terms of the act, but are not protected from the law.
Did you actually read this Act before linking it?
Completely Fed Up
A computer simulation is NOT an observation.
Greenland had had less ice than today in the past and life went on. Phase change in such a large quantity of ice takes centuries.
Antarctica is cooling (except for the peninsula which is 15% of the total) can’t see it melting in even such a long time (for human beings that is) as a decade.
I move from my home in less than a month in full otder; in few days/hours if needed more hastily.
I didn’t say it was garbage I said they could be wrong-they can be right too, and if sea rise occurs , humans will have time to adapt. Humans adapted to 4 Ice Ages in 400 000 years (they adapted to the melt of the interglacial periods too)
Simulation is not a fact.
You can test the validity of PI via experiment. You can’t test the validity of the climate paradigms and theories otherwise than to predict , wait and observe.
“367
wilt says:
18 February 2010 at 8:54 AM
Several people including Steve Fish (#259) and Completely Fed Up (#189) have attacked my remark (# 52 and #171) about Phil Jones breaching the British law on Freedom of Information. ”
A strange complaint from someone who attacked Phil Jones.
“You may not believe me, or The Times (London), or the BBC ”
No, it’s not that we don’t believe you, the times or the BBC but that the Times and the BBC aren’t saying that Phil Jones broke the law.
They’re reporting that the ICO have stated that it’s against the law to break the FOIA (law). Tautology city.
Wilt, it’s illegal to speed in a residential area. We do not have any speed camera footage left that shows you speeding, so it’s too late to prosecute you.
This does mean you’ve broken the law by speeding in a residential area, however.
It is, however, true.
It IS illegal to speed.
And they don’t have any footage.
And they cannot prosecute you without proof.
To #343 Barton Paul Levenson BPL: You might want to take an introductory course in statistics. What happens to the accuracy of a mean as the number of observations increases? Are the error bars on a mean the same as the error bars on a single observation? Which is greater?
The measurement error includes random and systematic errors. The random error can be decreased by increasing number of observations; however, systematic error does not depend on number of observations. For s mercury thermometer or any such type devise used in 1800s the systematic error, I suppose, is large. Now, you have to assume random distribution of systematic errors of the multiple stations providing temperature readings in the same vicinity in order to decrease effect of systematic error. Is this the case? Are there more than one station readings for a single local area? How you define “local area”? Those are the simple questions. More difficult is related to the measurement of fluctuating process, such as air temperature. Then, one must figure if the timing between the measurements varied in such a way that the Gaussian distribution can be implied. And another one difficult: are there sufficient data from the ocean surface to imply 0.1 degree accuracy of average global temperature? I would assume answer to the last question – no, and thus, clamed accuracy derived as 0.2C /SQRT(N) is overestimation. Do you think this is well beyond the introductory course in statistics? Accuracy of measurement of physical parameters is even more complex science than they teach in advanced statistics courses.
[Response: Instead of arguing about issues you are not very familiar with, why not read the references I gave you and answer the questions yourself? – gavin]
You know, I can’t help thinking that even when the temperature rises another one or two degrees and there is more widespread drought in some parts and more flooding in others, there will still be people who say that it’s not happening, or that we have to wait a bit longer, or that it’s all natural and we cannot do anything about it.
My view is to work to make sure the opinion leaders have the story right. The Australian Government Minister for Climate Change and Water made a speech yesterday which seemed reasonably up to date. Wong speech at climate change forum
The SMH couldn’t resist a catchy headline.
Some have pointed out the inconsistency between the Australian government’s words and the Queensland government’s actions of endorsing the digging up of a heap more coal and shipping it off to China. So the next step at least here in Australia, is to convince policy makers that digging up and burning lots more coal is not a good idea.
We know about all the horrible journalism these days, but the blog comments and letters to the editor from what Gavin calls the peanut gallery (I like that description) are worth noting. People like Monckton and Milloy are pretty obvious to any news consumer outside of Fox and WSJ. Blog commenters, on the other hand, loudly insist that they are brave private citizens who have uncovered the climate conspiracy. They have taken over Dot Earth, and are increasingly peppering even this blog and ClimateProgress.
Some of them have been hopelessly manipulated, but the pattern is strong enough that it looks orchestrated to me. This is also evidenced by the commenters’ ability to push emotional buttons, and the fact that they never, ever, concede even a single point in an argument.
This faux people’s uprising, which also includes letters to the editor and other forms of media pressure, comes from the fossil fuel industry, in my opinion. As deranged as they often sound, the outrage and bad grammar communicate authenticity to a bewildered public. When they talk about arrogant scientists, a notion reinforced by scientists’ often impenetrable language, this resonates with a big chunk of the public. And a loud and substantial minority is all that they need to stall change.
Walt, the only technical subjects to which you have referred so far are those you watch on the History Channel. This makes your rants indistinguishable from those of an ignorant troll.
Oh, and if you don’t like Phil’s modeling examples, try
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4662200
http://www.ecs.umass.edu/~sjin/TED5572R.pdf
Also, perhaps you should contact the folks at Synopsis
http://www.synopsys.com/home.aspx
I’m sure they would be very interested to know that what they are doing is impossible.
[edit – calm down]
Rich Lowry (King Features), a goon in my book, wrote in today’s paper that “Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming.”
But, I think he really stuck his foot in it when he wrote the following: “The other main organ of climate “consensus” is the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report, which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.”
The American media just seems to be taking longer to get going. Lowry only named one error ,the Himalayan glaciers, without pointing out the report had it correct elsewhere. Lowry needs to be challenged on ‘riddled with errors’ “.
CC: Gavin, do you condemn this Cap and Trade market?
BPL: Cap and Trade HASN’T PASSED YET. If your plant closed, cap and trade was not the reason. Causes can’t reach back in time.
arthur wrote: “Humans adapted to 4 Ice Ages in 400 000 years (they adapted to the melt of the interglacial periods too)”
Please tell us all about how humans of those times evacuated hundreds of millions of people from flooded coastal cities while at the same time they dealt with the complete collapse of agriculture that feeds billions of people.
Oh, right — during the ice ages there were no cities and there was no agriculture.
Arthur,
You say that you “can’t see it [Antarctic] melting in even such a long time (for human beings that is) as a decade.”
Perhaps because you haven’tbeen looking?
Others have, even in such a short time (for these kind of processes that is) as 7 years:
http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/increasing-rates-of-ice-mass-loss-from-the-greenland-and-antarctic-ice-sheets-revealed-by-grace.pdf
Jimbo —
Do you work, or have you ever worked, in a job where e-mail is a primary form of communication? If so, how would you feel about having every single word you’ve ever typed into an e-mail, in any context or mood or frame of mind, shown to other people, or better yet, everyone on the planet… especially when it is only a piece of the communication which really needs to be taken in context, and combined with hallway conversations, phone conversations, meetings, reports, and publications?
This sort of thing never existed before 1995. e-mail has created a whole social conundrum for everyone. Everyone has accidentally sent an e-mail to someone they didn’t intend, and then been embarrassed. Everyone has misinterpreted e-mails because there can be an assumed emotion behind them that really was never there, with the end result that it creates bad feelings which would never have happened face to face. And a lot of people put a lot of emotion and venom into e-mails (and posts) that they would never, ever hit someone with in a face to face conversation.
Worse than that, e-mails are like a permanent record of part but not all of everything ever said. Can you imagine working in a company where they have microphones most everywhere, and most but not all conversations are recorded and stored for later recall… so you can be damned by pieces of what was said, outside of the context, without having access to the other parts of the conversation that exonerate you?
Imagine that… imagine having most of your communications recorded. Does this sound democratic and American to you? Sounds Orwellian to me.
You clearly want the e-mails to be public domain, so you can make use of them now. But is it really what you want? Is it really right to do so? Can you imagine any scenario where these e-mails would have been accessed and released without an illegal and immoral effort to do so?
What do you think the Founding Fathers might have said about this, if it were the British trying to seize e-mails implicating the patriots in acts of subversion?
The right to privacy was created for a reason, and the wants, needs and rights of the individual cannot be considered completely subordinate to the needs of the state, or the people.
[As an aside, sorry to all you Brits for bringing up the whole colonies/revolution thing. We didn’t really mean anything by it. It just sort of happened. Bad day and all. You know how it goes. Hey, maybe we can get together and agree to tax stamps to pay for CO2 mitigation…]
Re: Wilt #367
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/vcstatement
You’re interpretation of this news release is mistaken. What it means is that someone quoted the ICO as having made a decision re Dr. Jones’ actions. The ICO has so far (almost one month has passed) hidden under their desk. What that likely means is that someone at ICO really screwed up to put it mildly and the UEA is severly pissed. It may come to pass that the ICO is simply taking their time to carefully craft a ruling. But after a month, I doubt it since Dr. Jones and his employer have stated that emails were not deleted. I think the only one likely to lose their head over this is either someone at ICO or whomever first misquoted or completely made up statements regarding the ICO’s findings.
My prediction:
The press will soon realize that they made up a bunch of stuff. This will then become the story meme. In a couple months or less we will see stories written about how the media basically made up this “gate” stuff though they will blame skeptics. We will then see lots of piling on where the media will blame each other and will do exposes on various skeptics. Monckton with those crazy googly goldfish eyes will be a favorite target.
arthur: “PEER REVIEWED ALARMISM”
Only alarmism if you happen to be an American living on the northeast coast, in which case you might take it into your considerations about purchasing property. If the populated area is low, what’s the altitude of all the infrastructure, like sewers and subways? Where does your government live? To those of us living elsewhere it’s rather comforting news, can’t think of a better area to be on the leading edge of reality.
Also, “around AD 1000” the seat of the most powerful (supposedly) nation on earth wasn’t concentrated on the US northeast coast.
Question: Is anyone aware of a site or database which cross references various scientific papers, in particular citations and more importantly refutations (or supporting follow ups) of those original papers?
I’ve been trying to sort through some pro/con arguments, and various papers are referenced, but obviously just because it was published doesn’t mean that it’s correct and valid. I’ve already found obvious flaws in many of the papers, or places in arguments where parts of the paper were pulled and presented out of context, but in cases where I don’t have access to the original paper, or where I’m in over my head on the details of the topic… I’m stuck.
Richard Steckis – I can see where your source might love to jump on it as meaning the entire Polish Society is “retracting”, even though it’s but one of many subcommitees, and even they didn’t actually dispute climate change. So score 0.001 for the denialists. Now quit hanging around those anti-science watering holes and get out there and do some science.
Jimbo – There have been grapes in various areas of Canada for decades, and have even gotten to the point now that the climate has warmed up where they can make wine without importing concentrates from California to bump up the sugar levels – but if you like wine don’t waste your money on a taste test.
Delicious: Piers Akerman is Being Victimized
RE: Phil Jones breaking the law (Freedom of Information Act)
A final word on this to Completely Fed Up (#377):
Apparently it was to much trouble for you to read the response of University of East Anglia (relevant link is in my previous post #367). So now I quote from that response:
“The ICO’s opinion that we had breached the terms of Section 77 is a source of grave concern to the University as we would always seek to comply with the terms of the Act.”
I hope this clarifies things sufficiently.
And for the record: I have never attacked Phil Jones. I have only observed that others have done so, and judging from the ICO decision they had good grounds for it.
RE- Comment by wilt — 18 February 2010 @ 8:54 AM:
Neither of your quoted sources reveal that the UK Freedom of Information Act has been violated. Concern has been expressed and investigations are being made. In my first response to you I explained why it is very unlikely that any wrongdoing will be found. If you think that there has been some kind of official finding, provide the evidence of the decision, not just a highly edited interview with a Deputy Information officer that doesn’t really say anything except that the agency was looking into it.
You are just contributing to all the illogical misinformation regarding this situation.
Steve
“376
arthur says:
18 February 2010 at 10:06 AM
Completely Fed Up
A computer simulation is NOT an observation.”
Why do you tell me this as if I don’t know?
Are you reading words that don’t exist? ‘cos I never said they were.
“Antarctica is cooling (except for the peninsula which is 15% of the total)”
Is it? How strange. Measurements from GISS station records say otherwise:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
These are observations.
Do you work at McMurdo, arthur?
“I move from my home in less than a month in full otder; in few days/hours if needed more hastily.”
And I can walk 30-40 miles in a day. Yet the Roman Legion couldn’t manage more than about 15 miles a day when marching as an army. They were a lot fitter than I was.
And why was NO not a mere day holiday if it’s so easy to move?
“Humans adapted to 4 Ice Ages in 400 000 years (they adapted to the melt of the interglacial periods too)”
They did this by abandoning their cities and cars and stock exchanges and wealth.
You want us back in the ***ICE AGES*** ???
“You can test the validity of PI via experiment”
No you can’t. Well not in any sense that you can’t also check the validity of computer climate models.
There’s a thread on this site about it.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Turns out it’s not only possible to verify climate models, they’ve also passed the validation.
Re: 97
I’m projecting any wishes on to the public. The public already knows.
This damage control is a waste of time. Game’s over.
Nothing of any substance will be done about climate change by the US Governement any time soon.
It would be nice if everybody researching this subject followed a simple rule :
” Believe what you see, don’t see what you believe”
Curmugeon:
“1. The point I was making is that the same amount of steel will be produced (by the same company) – leading to ”
But that’s nothing to do with climate change or the changes. Neither was the closure due to AGW or mitigation of it.
As a point, it’s nonexistent.
And you know that the same amount will be produced through WHAT means?
Hope?
Computer model?
We’re in a recession if you didn’t notice. Companies close during recessions because demand isn’t there. When demand picks up, supply will too, but that isn’t proof of anything other than closing steelworks means they’re closed and unlikely to open again.
“2. The same amount of CO2 being produced!”
So you know the same amount of CO2 is being produced because you say the same amount is being produced.
This is not normally considered “evidence”.
“3. In response to my point 3 about Tata making 100s of millions from the carbon credits, you say “1000’s millions spent by Oil/coal on PR and lobbying still hasn’t proven the IPCC or AGW wrong”.
What on earth has that got to do with anything? ”
Rather what I’d like you to answer about all six points you posted and your return fire.
What does it have to do with anything?
It’s a recession.
AGW didn’t do it. Bankers and rich people who risked other people’s money (skimming off a little slice on the up and the down).
“You demonstrate not one jot of sympathy or empathy for the plight of the 1600 workers”
Neither do you show one jot of sympathy. In fact you rub their noses in it because the only value you see in their plight is one to make up a stick to beat AGW science with.
CFU #323
Another label, another box, another Tarzan shout.. Boring
Ray 325
Agreed (you may want to have a chat with CFU) however please read my #300 I addressed the context of my posts, they are not specific to RC.
In media relations Al Gore has done more damage in shaping public opinion then all the skeptical blogs combined. He says the dumbest things and “Joe Sixpack” still believes he is the spokesperson for AGW, whether that is true or not is irrelevant.
The public’s perception; two crazy groups shouting at each other and I would wager that less than 1% understand what “doubling of CO2” and “feedbacks” mean. I’d start there and leave all the apocalyptic predictions out of it, teach the science first and build it from there.
“390
Bob says:
18 February 2010 at 11:25 AM
Question: Is anyone aware of a site or database which cross references various scientific papers, in particular citations and more importantly refutations (or supporting follow ups) of those original papers?”
Bob, science hasn’t worked like that.
It has been coopted by RWNJs and their money. The paper produced by G&T for example DO NOT have to be rebutted under the science process. That they are a waste of ink means they won’t lead anywhere and there’s no point wasting more ink and limited publishing in rebutting a science paper that is so errant.
MM’s paper had some points to make and in so far as those points had some validity in contention with MBH98 were appropriate. Later papers took those concerns raised on and checked to see what the effect of those weaknesses in the 98 paper was.
These papers showed the effect of these problems were minimal if existent at all.
That is the way science works.
What it didn’t expect to happen next was M&M and their fanbase to continue to use that paper to “prove” that MBH98 is wrong.
What it didn’t expect to have to counter were journals so venal that they would print a paper of so little worth a schoolkid could counter it.