There is a lot of talk around about why science isn’t being done on blogs. It can happen though, and sometimes blog posts can even end up as (part of) a real Science paper. However, the process is non-trivial and the relatively small number of examples of such a transition demonstrate clearly why blog science is not going to replace the peer-reviewed literature any time soon.
Way back in April 2005, I wrote a post on RC on the role of water vapour in the greenhouse effect and why it is considered a feedback and not a forcing in the IPCC sense. It was a basic enough exposition, and in lieu of finding a comprehensive paper on the components of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, I did a few very simple (even simplistic) GCM experiments to show what I was talking about. The bottom line was that CO2 was indeed an important contributor to the present day greenhouse effect, and depending on how you calculated the percentage, could account for between 9 and 26% of the effect.
This proved useful, and soon the page was being quoted quite widely. But the calculations were not very sophisticated and I started to be concerned that they were being given more credibility than they deserved – not that they were necessarily wrong (they weren’t), but because a blog post doesn’t give enough context. For instance, some people incorrectly thought that the range 9-26% was the uncertainty in the calculation, rather than two different conceptual estimates. So I started to look for ‘proper’ references for these kinds of calculations.
I had already seen a few papers that calculated the importance of water vapour, CO2 and clouds for a one-dimensional standard ‘profile’ (Ramanathan and Coakley, 1978 for instance), and I was pointed to a section in Kiehl and Trenberth (1997) that turns out to be the most useful reference. They too had used a single ‘typical’ profile. Both of these references (and a few others – like Ray Pierrehumbert’s 2007 paper which used the NCEP global distribution of water vapour and temperature) generally calculated the importance of CO2 in one of two ways – either by looking at what happened when you removed CO2, or by looking at what happened when only CO2 was operating (though rarely both) (because of the spectral overlaps between the different absorbers, the second number is always larger than the first). Invariably, the treatment of clouds was highly simplified or neglected.
What I didn’t find was any justification in the literature for the most widely quoted ‘contrarian’ view of the issue that CO2 was ‘only 2%’ of the effect. I traced this back to a book review that Lindzen wrote about the first IPCC report, but never found any actual reasoning in support of this.
So in putting together a real paper there were a number of necessary steps that went beyond what was appropriate for a blog post. First, the previous literature had to be collated and their results reported in a consistent way. Second, there were a number of differences between the more serious calculations done for the paper and the calculations done casually for the blog. We used a longer period of time (a full annual cycle rather than a single time step) to avoid a bias towards a particular part of the year. Then we rechecked that the radiation code was still giving good results at very low CO2 levels…. and it turned out that it wasn’t – and so we needed to update the code via comparisons with a more complete line-by-line model so that all the tests we were doing were within the validated range of the radiative-transfer code. Finally, we did many more tests – more combinations, different baselines – to try and ensure that the results were robust.
When it came time to submit the paper, we first tried pitching it to BAMS as a popular science piece that would try and explain the concept and clear the air (so to speak). However, for various reasons this didn’t work out (two rounds of unsatisfying reviews). I’d say it was mainly due to the draft not really being pitched at the right level for BAMS. One amusing aspect of the process was that one of the referees initially suggested that our paper wasn’t necessary because it was common knowledge that the attribution to CO2 was between 9 and 26% (sound familiar?). As it turns out, they were reading a page from UCAR which was quoting (without attribution!) from my original blog post.
There was one other interesting (and highly critical) review which objected to the criticism of Lindzen’s 1991 comment, though it is perhaps worth noting that they considered the 1991 comment to be ‘formally incorrect’.
After a period in which I was a little tired of the whole exercise (it happens), we then submitted the paper to JGR, where it had an easier passage. At the same time, the simulations we had done for the paper were also used as part of a broader paper that Andy Lacis wanted to put together for Science. Both these papers appeared in October 2010 – some five years after the initial post, 3 and a half years after the first journal submission, 5 rewrites and 11 reviews.
So why bother to turn ideas from blog posts into real papers? Well, first off, you get to do a much more thorough job. You have the time and space to check multiple variations of the method, and you can take the time to do a proper literature review. And because you have put more effort into it, it is rightly seen as more credible. It’s worth noting that in our case the paper benefited from comments from all reviewers (even the very critical one) – language was tightened up, a broader literature search was done, concepts were clarified and many of the additional issues raised were dealt with.
In turn, the more credible work on the topic forms a stable point around which to craft a critique (if desired), and hopefully provides more of substance to critique (versus a series of blog posts that can be laced with distracting commentary, conceptual errors and moving targets).
To be clear, it is not only the reviews by peers that makes a peer-reviewed paper better than a blog post. Since it is known ahead of time that there is an effort required to get past the peer-review hurdle, the resulting work is usually more reflective, more interesting, more concise and more of a serious contribution – even before it gets to the editor.
Thus when scientists who find themselves criticised in the blogosphere quite often ask their critics to submit their points for peer-review, the point is not to dismiss a critique, but rather to encourage the critics to make the critique as well formulated and a propos as possible. This doesn’t always work of course, but is it nonetheless worthwhile. The alternative, especially for high profile issues, is to try and deal with a multi-headed hydra of critiques that range from the ill-informed to the excellent. Unfortunately, technical commentary does not work well at the ‘speed of blog’ and conversations often take a personal turn (which only rarely happens in the literature).
The many existing critiques of peer review as a system (for instance by Richard Smith, ex-editor of the BMJ, or here, or in the British Academy report), sometimes appear to assume that all papers arrive at the journals fully formed and appropriately written. They don’t. The mere existence of the peer review system elevates the quality of submissions, regardless of who the peer reviewers are or what their biases might be. The evidence for this is in precisely what happens in venues like E&E that have effectively dispensed with substantive peer review for any papers that follow the editor’s political line – you end up with a backwater of poorly presented and incoherent contributions that make no impact on the mainstream scientific literature or conversation. It simply isn’t worth wading through the dross in the hope of finding something interesting.
In the end of course, the science will win out. No single paper is ever the last word on an issue, and there are always new approaches to try and new data to assimilate. But the papers will endure long after the plug has been pulled on a blog. I certainly think that blogs can be of tremendous value in bringing up more context and dispelling the various mis-apprehensions that exist, but as a venue for actually doing science, they cannot replace the peer-reviewed paper – however painful that publishing process might be.
Edward Greisch says
TimTheToolMan: In science, there are right answers and wrong answers. There are no essay questions. There is no partial credit. So go to school.
SecularAnimist says
BPL, I noticed your absence. I posted a couple of links about the droughts in China and the Amazon that I thought might interest you in particular.
It’s looking like things might get worse even faster than you expect.
Septic Matthew says
147, Barton Paul Levenson: Thanks to Bob Sphaerica who was apparently the only one here who even noticed I had left.
I didn’t want to pry: I was afraid that you might be sick or demoralized. Too bad about the paper, but you know what they say: Revise and resubmit.
I for one am glad you are back.
Edward Greisch says
BPL: “My paper for J. Clim. was turned down.”
So what now? Your paper is important. It needs to be quoted to Congress. It is hard to not be able to give them a copy. We need you as a witness. Is there anything I/we can do?
dhogaza says
TTTM:
AGWers have parted ways? Ummm … you can forget about those who study the “A” in “AGW”. You can forget those who study the “GW” in “AGW’. You can forget about those who study any human impacts on the atmosphere whatsoever.
You can simply concentrate on those who study nothing but snowball earth and other aspects of paleoclimate before humans and find an entire field of scientists who have “parted ways with Lindzen”.
In other words, what Lindzen says makes no sense unless everything known about how atmospheric physics and climate *while imagining people have never existed or fossil fuels have been burned* is wrong.
AGW doesn’t come into play … except perhaps denying its reality being the *motivation* behind Lindzen’s unsupportable claims of extremely low sensitivity of climate to CO2 changes.
dhogaza says
BPL:
Not sure what you mean by that, BPL, but I’ve been rooting for you to get your paper published by the best journal you can find that will accept it.
Septic Matthew says
140, raypierre, in comment: And Tim, I smell some concern trollism coming in there at the end.
What is meant by “concern troll” and related phrases? I seem to be the last to know.
CM says
BPL,
of course we noticed your absence, but after Bob mentioned it there was little left to say.
On a general note, after hanging out here for a few years and coming to appreciate many of the regulars (quirky, cranky lot that you are), I find it creepy when a familiar signature goes silent. One never knows: Walked away in a huff? Found true romance? In hospital? Or heaven forbid, pining for the fjords? Speculating about people’s absences in their absence is bad etiquette, aside from being off topic. So I shall not list the others I’m missing . I’m glad when you do show up again, though!
Should I go silent myself, you may take it as good news I’m getting on top of my internet addiction.
:)
paul haynes says
I agree with almost everything written in this article, BUT, this is not to say that the peer review process have OTHER limitations:
The control systems developed by journals and university departments alike exert a confining if well-meaning hold on the jugular of scholarship, which threatens to strangle the development of new possibilities. (Morgan 1990:29)
Morgan, G. (1990) Paradigm Diversity in Organizational Research, in Hassard, J. and Pym D. (eds) The Theory and Philosophy of Organizations, London: Routledge 13-29
and this great article by Daft and Lewin
Building theory on the basis of in-depth understanding of a few cases is different from the traditional theory-testing goal of statistical rigor, parsimony and generalizability. However, this type of research can provide the genesis for new theory that may spawn further research that uses traditional methods (Daft and Lewin 1990:6)
Daft, R.L. and Lewin, A. (1990) Can Organization Studies Begin to Break Out of the Normal Science Straitjacket? An Editorial Essay, Organization Science 1, 1-9
http://mitigatingapathy.blogspot.com/
Septic Matthew says
120, gavin in comment:The climate can be close enough to being in quasi-equilibrium for concepts like equilibrium sensitivity to hold. That means that for quite long time periods the planet can stay very close to radiative equilibrium – i.e. the Holocene (until recently), or the last glacial maximum.
How is it known that the climate is in fact close enough to being in quasi-equilibrium for concepts like equilibrium sensitivity [to be useful]? I hope you don’t mind my paraphrase there. The Greenland ice core data make it appear that the Holocene has not been close to radiative equilibrium — pending a specification of “close”. The equilibrium effect of doubling CO2 concentration is estimated to be “close” to 1% of the recent mean global temperature, though estimates as low as below 0% and above 2.5% can’t be ruled out (per a previous comment by raypierre). How is it known that the assumption of quasi-equilibrium (or quasi-stationary or quasi-steady state) is accurate enough to support the claim of a 1% change in equilibrium temperature?
This is a sceptical question, not a denialist question: I am not claiming that the assertion is false, I am questioning whether there is evidence to support it.
[Response: There is variability in the Holocene, but it is very small compared to glacial times (Stage 3). Greenland is not the world and most of the other proxies for this time period are pretty static and often out of phase with greenland (see Wanner et al (2008)). But imagine that for 10,000 years there was a radiative imbalance of 0.1 W/m2 – that would correspond to a warming of the whole ocean by ~0.1*10000*365*24*3600/(3700*1000*4200)= 2 deg C – I think we would have noticed. So that constrains the net global imbalance to be in the hundredths of W/m2 range – easily small enough to not matter for the present-day forcing. – gavin]
flxible says
Matthew – A Concern Troll is exactly as TTTm appears. Concerned that a contrarian isn’t getting a “fair hearing”.
BPL – as CM indicates, the sudden disappearance of a dedicated frequent contributor can be unsettling, especially for others “of a certain age”. ;)
One Anonymous Bloke says
Dr. Pierrehumbert #141, thank you for the link. Fascinating.
One Anonymous Bloke says
BPL. Your twitter feed was active – I figured you were busy.
Radge Havers says
BPL: FWIW I noticed. Don’t give up
SM @ 157
Like Hank says, Google is your friend.
Ray Ladbury says
Septic Matthew,
A concern troll is one who poses as a likeminded soul on a blog, expressing sympathy, but then saying, “I’m concerned…”
Tim the Tool Man is also tone trolling–criticizing the tone of a sentiment while ignoring the validity of the criticism.
Given that Lindzen has made deliberately misleading arguments to lay audiences, I think we can simply say to Tim: Your concern is noted…
Ray Ladbury says
Septic Matthew,
Gavin’s empirical answer is pretty convincing. However, in thermo, the argument for assuming near equilibrium behavior is based on the law of large numbers–most of the phase space is near equilibrium. LTE is a very reasonable assumption.
Septic Matthew says
160, gavin
Thank you.
Matt
Septic Matthew says
165, Ray Ladbury: A concern troll is one who poses as a likeminded soul on a blog, expressing sympathy, but then saying, “I’m concerned…”
This makes me about half of a concern troll. I am likeminded with a majority of posters about the potential seriousness of AGW, and the desirability of promoting alternative energies and reducing coal, but not all ideas; at the same time I am “concerned” (almost persuaded, actually) that your tone makes you your own worst enemies; that and the fact that your political allies seem to be mostly anti-development in general (John Holdren in his earlier writings?)
I appreciate your impatience with some repeat posters (maybe including me), whom I mostly skip unless there is an illuminating comment in green. But I do think you’d help your case if you would skip comments about other people’s motives, honesty, and true natures. Even if someone becomes a pest (even if you think someone has become a serial liar), it’s best to simply address the technical points in dull language. At least, that’s what I think. You don’t have the luxury of skipping them, perhaps, but a simple “We addressed this already in #nnn above” is better than a speculation.
Salamano says
@168 Septic Matthew…
“Even if someone becomes a pest (even if you think someone has become a serial liar), it’s best to simply address the technical points in dull language.”
I think one of the problems that all these scientists run into regarding that above suggestion (and the net that I’m going to cast must suredly catches me and a lot of other folks)…Is that they doubtless want to say “We’ve been over this” or “We just talked about this last week”, etc. etc.
Given they all have ‘day jobs’ that involve a whole ton of other things than herding cats by way of blog posts and responses, they (and feel free to completely refute this if I’m not characterizing it properly) get tired of have having to repeat themselves, and combatting the same lines of arguments.
But there’s always going to be more people that haven’t heard, more who are interested, and even more who haven’t been following along as closely (just like there will be folks who sieze a point made on one blog and rush to this one to get the retort–and back for the next volley).
To create an analogy out of your words…Maintaining RC is going to end up being a lot like a trip through the coal mines…Obviously they do get to post new and interesting story topics at their discretion, but most of the time it’s the ‘manual labor’ of continuing to respond and educate and correct. In that confounding environment, it is probably tough to stay sane (and polite) all the time. But as for me, whenever I happen to come around to the site to see what’s going on, I’m glad that they’re often tackling some hot-button topic that has popped up in the blogosphere/media– even if it, to them, is for the thousandth time.
Hank Roberts says
Like Salamano says.
Folks like me who try to respond to some of the boring stuff often will sound tedious or supercilious. At best we end up repeating pointers, reviewing how to use Google, suggesting searches, pointing to the FAQs, trying to get a clearer question or pull up an unvoiced assumption.
If we guess someone’s level or background wrong they can feel insulted or belittled or talked down to. Or they can say aha-I’m-a-PhD/engineer-and-you’re-oversimplifying.
There’s no way to know who’s asking– a gradeschooler who’s never thought about this stuff, or a practiced rebunker knowing the question’s been answered over and over, can read the same in ASCII.
(Sometimes, we look and see the same userid did the same long chain of questions or assertions at other climate blogs and point that out)
For nonscientists like me, who want this stuff understood, we have to rein in our impatience. Answering briefly from memory without cites is always a mistake. People can then go on “why” or “but what if” digressions. That kills discussion of the real science.
The real scientists — names/links in the right sidebar — can give short answers because they know the material, and you know that their work is available to read, click the links.
I do jump on some of the vehement ‘defenders’ here and in email. When the real climate scientists get irritated, it’s appropriate for them to draw lines. Notice how rarely they do. The rest of us should be so patient.
David B. Benson says
JBL @146 & @149 — Its good to have the matters explicitly stated.
According to the book review, the name of the organization is Clay Mathematical Institute.
chris says
paul Haynes: re peer review
I don’t really believe that, at least in relation to evidence-based science. It’s an empty assertion without some evidence (what “control systems”?..the “development” of which “new possibilities” are being “strangled”?…etc.).
And the article by Daft and Lewin (1990) is about Organization Science, and its focus isn’t that relevant to the physical sciences for which evidence is the bottom line.
I’d like to see a clearer exposition with some evidence for the assertion that publishing practices are limiting the scope of developments in science. At least in the evidence-based physical science, any decently-written study whose interpretations are supported by methodologically-sound evidence will find a home in the scientific literature, and thus get its chance to make a mark. The bar is actually quite low, although most good scientists have standards of what they consider worth publishing, and tend to send goodish papers to goodish journals. I simply don’t believe that good ideas and analyses are not given an airing because of “control systems developed by journals…”. (I’m not discussing the “university departments” part of the assertion you pasted, since we’re talking about peer-review here).
Are there any factors in contemporary science that actually or potentially limit the development and propagation of novel ideas and analyses? I think the following is more relevant:
1. The growth of “big science”. There are lots of positives in “big science” (“the grand-scale application of technologies”). There’s no question that the human genome project is already having a huge influence on molecular medicine, evolutionary science, protein science, genomics, bioinformatics etc., and many advances in particle physics, and the testing of relevant theories depend on big science efforts like the large Hadron collider.
But this does have the effect of assigning large proportions of research budgets down proscribed paths. Even outside of conventional big science, science in general has become much more collaborative (compare author and institute lists on papers published in the 1960-1970’s with papers published nowadays). Is there evidence that this has an adverse effect on the development of new ideas…I’m not sure, it might be argued that cross-fertilization of ideas through collaboration fosters novel approaches. There are ceertainly fewer examples of breakthroughs by lone scientists beavering away relatively unnoticed nowadays.
2. The expansion of the scientific enterprise. In the situation where grant funding levels hover in the 10-20% (UK research councils at present) lots and lots of ideas don’t find their consummation in the lab! One would like to think it’s the truly novel and potentially ground-breaking work that reaches the top, but one feels that “safe science” is disproportionaly funded, and outside the schemes to promote the efforts of young scientists, the “Peter principle” is prevelant.
Actually, one might argue that in climate science the field is sufficiently mature that truly novel ideas are of lesser importance for greater and more useful understanding than solid “grunt” expansion of the sets of empirical data. Some of this might arise from novel methodological insights, but I would suggest (from an outsider’s point of view) that what paleoclimatology needs, for example, is more highish resolution temperature proxy time series, extending further back in time and better representing the S hemisphere. We’d like satellites to accurately measure incoming and outgoing radiation to better determine TOA radiative imbalance, better sampling of ocean heat and so on. It’s great to develop novel approaches to measure very sparse Antarctic time-series temperature data, but what we’d really like is much more empirical data!
JBL says
@David B. Benson, well, isn’t it a well-known law of physics that anyone correcting someone else’s spelling on the internet will always make worse errors of their own? :)
E.L. says
Perhaps something like: http://arxiv.org/ ???
After all, whats good enough for the Poincaré conjecture is good enough for climate science. =P
http://arxiv.org/abs/math.DG/0211159
Snapple says
ANYONE correcting someone else’s spelling on the internet will always make worse errors of HIS own.
David B. Benson says
JBL @173 & Snapple @175 —
:-)
Barton Paul Levenson says
Tin Man,
here are 61 estimates of climate sensitivity with full citations:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/ClimateSensitivity.html
Septic Matthew says
169, Salamano: I think one of the problems that all these scientists run into regarding that above suggestion (and the net that I’m going to cast must suredly catches me and a lot of other folks)…Is that they doubtless want to say “We’ve been over this” or “We just talked about this last week”, etc. etc
I am very sympathetic to our moderators. That is why from time to time I try to remember to thank them for the time and energy that they invest here.
Barton Paul Levenson says
Iso: Give him some credit, .5 deg C is in the ball park
BPL: No, it is not. There’s no way it can be that low. With no feedbacks whatsoever, doubling CO2 gives you +1.2K. There’s no way on God’s green Earth it could be less than that. Literally.
Barton Paul Levenson says
Salamano 133,
Google “Clausius-Clapeyron relation” and play with the output at different levels of temperature. The majority of Earth’s greenhouse effect comes from water vapor and carbon dioxide. Nitrogen, oxygen and argon are irrelevant because they don’t react much with infrared light.
When the temperature drops because you remove CO2, there’s less water vapor in the air as well. Remove the CO2 altogether, and you also lose the water vapor. And the glaciers advance to the equator.
[Response: Bart, great to see you back! Illegitmum non carborundum. –raypierre]
Barton Paul Levenson says
Tin 140: Also CO2 levels (according to the Wiki FWIW) have our current levels as low as they’ve ever been
BPL:
Our current levels: 390 ppmv
Preindustrial: 280 ppmv
Depth of an ice age: 180 ppmv
Your statement is wrong, and if you got it from Wiki, Wiki is wrong.
Barton Paul Levenson says
dhogaza 156,
I’m sorry, I may have had you confused with Didactylos. It’s been a while.
Thanks for the support, guys, I appreciate it. For the record, I am both sick AND demoralized at the moment. We have the science right, but the bad guys are going to win. Actually, they pretty much won in 2010.
[Response: Making the most noise and spewing the most nonsense and stupidity does not constitute winning anything. Never has and never will. Demoralization is sometimes the painful price of caring–Jim]
Ray Ladbury says
Septic Matthew says, “…at the same time I am “concerned” (almost persuaded, actually) that your tone makes you your own worst enemies; that and the fact that your political allies seem to be mostly anti-development in general (John Holdren in his earlier writings?)”
Well, technically, that makes you a tone troll–one who pays more attention to the “tone” of the message than to its content. And I am sorry, but anyone who thinks that they can, with 30 minutes study, understand the planet’s climate better than professionals who have been studying climate for 30 years is an fool. If your reason for disregarding the truth is ideological, then you are an ideologically blinkered fool. And if you reject the truth because the person who spoke it to you is a big meanie, then you are a pathetic fool.
And if the majority of humans are pathetic fools, then our species doesn’t have or deserve much of a future.
RandomM says
I’ve searched high and low on the internet for background information and CV’s on the major players in the O’Donnell/Steig debate and can’t find any information on Ryan O’Donnell other than he lives in Mattawan! I find plenty on other Ryan O’Donnells including a computer scientist who I thought initially was the man.
Does anyone have his CV or can point to a site? I’m just always curious about people’s backgrounds, educational experience, other publications, etc. and I’m completely flummoxed at the lack of data I’m experiencing!
Much obliged.
Ray Ladbury says
Demoralization is sometimes the painful price of caring–Jim]
Oh, great, so the choices are immorality and demoralization?
Hank Roberts says
> I’ve searched high and low on the internet …
> he lives in Mattawan!
Picking up the telephone and asking him, or asking him in one of the blogs where he often posts, would be straightforward. First hand is often best.
Brian Dodge says
“Even if someone becomes a pest (even if you think someone has become a serial liar), it’s best to simply address the technical points in dull language.” And bludgeon them to death with links to some reasonably authoritative source other than blogs – which is where I come in. (My wife and I were once publicly accused of “lobbying the Town Board with facts” in a letter to the local paper. Facts!? Can you believe it? Actual FACTS!?)
“My question is does not sedimentation put an end to ocean weathering? ” Chris Dudley — 16 Feb 2011 @ 11:41 AM
Not as long as we have ocean ridge spreading centers erupting fresh hot metal silicates (in Mid Ocean Ridge basalt)
“It is estimated that a volume of sea water equivalent to that contained within the entire global ocean is circulated through the upper oceanic crust on a timescale of ∼10^5 years [1]. This seawater slowly percolates through the crust (average residence time is 2700 years), reacts with the basaltic rock, transports nutrients and heat, and eventually discharges back into the deep ocean—primarily at low-temperature (less than 20 ◦C) vents and hydrothermal seeps…”
http://www.nwra.com/resumes/pruis/pruis_dissertation_2004.pdf
“Pervasive hydrothermal alteration, mainly in an open circulation regime (D’Antonio and Kristensen, 2004), has affected both the pillow and sheet lavas and the hyaloclastite breccia cored at Site 1201, although with decreasing intensity downhole”
“The phenocrysts and microphenocrysts mainly consist of altered plagioclase,” [~ 40-80% anorthite, the calcium endmember of plagioclase feldspar.]
http://www.earth-prints.org/bitstream/2122/615/1/DAntonio%20Ma.pdf “DATA REPORT: ELECTRON MICROPROBE INVESTIGATION OF PRIMARY MINERALS IN BASALTS FROM THE WEST PHILIPPINE SEA BASIN (OCEAN DRILLING PROGRAM LEG 195, SITE 1201)”
One Anonymous Bloke says
Ray Ladbury #185 Despair’s only reward: http://ken_ashford.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834515b2069e201053605c23c970c-800wi
After denial comes anger, the world is going to be sorely tested. If we give in to fatalism we will only fuel the anger. Pull yourself together man!
Septic Matthew says
183, Ray Ladbury: And I am sorry, but anyone who thinks that they can, with 30 minutes study, understand the planet’s climate better than professionals who have been studying climate for 30 years is an fool.
Luckily, someone who thinks he can, with 30 minutes study, understand the planet’s climate better than professionals who have been studying climate for 30 years (paraphrase) does not refer to anyone we know.
But I came across another statistical reference you might like (to go with the others I provided on stationary time series [for the equivalence of autoregressive representations and Fourier representations] and non-stationary, non-linear vector autoregressive processes): S. G. Coles, (author) An Introduction to the Statistical Modeling of Extreme Values , 2001, Springer. Paraphrasing the quote above, if you are going to make computations based on extreme values, you might want to study the subject for a while. Bayesian inference is all well and good, but nothing is more important than providing and assessing accurate likelihood functions, and showing that they are accurate.
P. Lewis says
Ryan O’Donnell’s potted CV is at dotearth, just above the comments.
Magnus says
dhogaza 156,
I’m sorry, I may have had you confused with Didactylos. It’s been a while.
Thanks for the support, guys, I appreciate it. For the record, I am both sick AND demoralized at the moment. We have the science right, but the bad guys are going to win. Actually, they pretty much won in 2010.
[Response: Making the most noise and spewing the most nonsense and stupidity does not constitute winning anything. Never has and never will. Demoralization is sometimes the painful price of caring–Jim]
______________________________________________
Good vs. bad? Caring vs. not? Evil vs. good science? Are people supposed to feel bad for you?
I think a first step towards winning would be to face actual criticisms of uncertainties and modelling methods. Not by ad hominems or ridicule, but in a respectful manner. If people, the public, are skeptical of your work, calling them idiots who are anti-science just alienates the public further. By doing this you are not being “good” or “caring”, but arrogant, rude and stupid.
Other branches of science does not have an IPCC who divides science into good and bad. Max Weber is turning over in his grave over this. The public does not care if “you care” or are such “good people”. People want the facts and the truth and that always takes grappeling with uncertainties and criticisms.
[Response: Sure, but it’s still not easy to have something you put a lot of work into, like BPL has, get rejected. We’re not robots you know.–Jim]
To prove my point further, I’ll probably be boreholed for this even if I’m not a “denier”.
Donald Oats says
The moronic is upon us in Australia, too; Cory Benardi, a senator from South Australia, has placed a “request” for audit of the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) and CSIRO (Commonwealth Science, Industry, and Research Organisation). What about? Well, something to do with adjustments and exaggerations (Benardi et al) of Australia’s land temperature data, etc. Naturally they are just concerned citizens. The term “witchhunt” comes readily to mind.
More to the point, this is part of a well coordinated campaign to keep the lid on the climate science conclusions, and where that isn’t possible, to whiteant the science by placing question marks upon the the input data from which the conclusions are derived.
The saddest part is that a few of the cosignatories/authors of the petition to the ANAO (Australian National Audit Office) are directly using the various fictiods that they have popularised, indeed created, in the past. If they don’t get BOM, they hope to get CSIRO. If they get BOM, they can then use that as a plank for attacking CSIRO work by claiming that the BOM data is essential input data to the CSIRO conclusions.
The situation is dire when science can be assailed by senators with an ideological axe to grind. This makes me very cross.
Bob (Sphaerica) says
175, Snapple,
Ummm…
Anyone correcting someone else’s grammar on the Internet will aways make worse errors of his (or just as properly “their“, or if you want to be very formal “his or her“) own.
Wikipedia on Their versus His
WSU on Their/His
And another reference
And yet another reference
Do I win the prize for most OT comment of the month? Please don’t Bore Hole me!!!! No, wait, stop… aaaaaargh!!!
Bob (Sphaerica) says
177, BPL,
Could you add a column to that page you supplied on climate sensitivity studies and estimates, identifying the general type of study (“Historical Proxy”, “Current Physical Observation”, “Modeled Result”, etc.) and maybe another for another column for the next level of basic detail (“Ice Cores”, “Lake Sediments”, “GCM”, “CGCM”, “Current Cloud Observations”, etc.).
This is coming up more and more, and a page like that would be great one-stop-shopping as a reference answer. The denial argument is “the models are wrong and untrustworthy and rigged” and the response (as you’ve pointed out) is “yeah, but there are a lot of them, and lots of other arguments, and they almost all point to 3C or higher… are they all coincidentally wrong in the same direction by the same degree?”
chris says
What nonsense.. The IPCC presents a summary of the scientific information during the period of perusal and puts this in the context of theoretical and empirical knowledge. It doesn’t “divide science into good and bad”.
That’s not to say that there isn’t a small amount of “bad science” in the climate science literature. We (scientists and competent “laypersons”) would be derelict in our duty to scientific standards and honest dissemination of information if we didn’t robustly highlight scientifically-deficient analyses.
We could make a (short) list of the rubbish papers since these can be rather objectively identified as “bad science”. I’m sure you could come up with one or two of these..
Didactylos says
BPL: I’m 100% sure you took some of my earlier criticisms the wrong way. It is perhaps my fear that you may be close to right that makes me want to examine your claims in depth, and push hard against the weak spots.
The recent discussion of peer review should give you hope. Science isn’t easy. Keep at it; start right from the beginning again if you have to. Starting with a preconceived answer is fatal.
AMac says
Some insightful “blog science” by Nick Stokes is up at his website. He ran an emulation of the Steig’09 algorithm, and presents an image of Antarctica’s warming with 3 principal components retained. This largely matches Steig’09’s finding. He then repeats the analysis with 4 through 7 PCs retained.
This is a nice “bridge” between Steig’09 and O’Donnell’10.
Chris Dudley says
Brian (#197),
Thanks for those links. I suppose that would correspond to the 0.2 teramole per year of silicon from hydrothermal vent activity in the figure I linked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oceanic_Silicon_Cycle_Budget.svg Presumably that vent activity contributes little to the limestone thermostat presently.
One would not expect that to change or be terribly sensitive to the ocean temperature which I think is what raypierre was getting at.
SecularAnimist says
[edit – too far]
SecularAnimist says
May I try again?
BPL wrote: \… the bad guys are going to win. Actually, they pretty much won in 2010.\
Jim replied: \Making the most noise and spewing the most nonsense and stupidity does not constitute winning anything.\
Electing numerous members of Congress who will seek to oppose and obstruct any legislative or regulatory action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will seek to undermine climate research with budget cuts, and will seek to harass climate scientists with unwarranted investigations, is certainly viewed as \winning\ by some.
[Response: Yeah no kidding Animist. Do you think I’m not aware of that reality? I was just trying to encourage Barton a bit when he’s down. IS THAT OK WITH YOU? SHOULD I ASK YOUR PERMISSION NEXT TIME?–Jim]