Scientists discover that climate-change skeptics are bozos

[Peregrinator]

How so?

It goes to the nature of pop science and how quickly a politician will latch on to it in order to have a cause and an issue to champion.

Preponderance of evidence, multitude of different lines of evidence, sheer number of people working on the issue, intensity of scrutiny.

The salt thing is nowhere near as contentious, thus doesn't get the scrutiny that climate science does. It's like comparing evolutionary theory to a study on the coefficient of friction of a maple leaf at different times of the year.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Crichton (R.I.P.) knew exactly what was going on.

Michael Chricton was a doctor and an author. In the quote above, he was using his latter career to play a rhetorical game. He was also smart enough to know that that's what he was doing, the implications of which are another story entirely.

But...let's say that Michael Chricton the doctor tells you that you have a fatal disease which is going to kill you in anywhere from 1-4 months. Do you say, "gimme a break, that's a 400% variation. Clearly, therefore, I am not going to die."?

Or do you use your soon-to-be-dead brain to figure out that that's not really what the range means?

 

[mercury14]

What we like is science and the scientific method.


So what if temperatures have risen by 0.6° C. in a century ? The fact of the matter is that nobody knows why.

You always buzz around these threads exploiting the fact that science inherently has a less than 100% degree of certainty about well, everything. But the fact is we have a large and ever-growing body of evidence saying why.


We also aren't 100% sure how evolution works.

 

[Peregrinator]

The science is unchanged by Climategate
The argument that Climategate reveals an international climate science conspiracy is not really a very skeptical one. It is skeptical in the weak sense of questioning authority, but it stops there. Unlike true skepticism, it doesn’t go on to objectively examine all the evidence and draw a conclusion based on that evidence. Instead, it cherry-picks suggestive emails, seeing everything as incontrovertible evidence of a conspiracy, and concludes all of mainstream climate science is guilty by association. This is not skepticism; this is conspiracy theory.

In reality, Climategate has not thrown any legitimate doubt on CRU’s results, let alone the conclusions of the entire climate science community. The entire work of CRU comprises only a small part of the evidence for AGW. There are all sorts of lines of evidence for global warming, and for a human influence on climate, which in no way depend on the behaviour of the CRU scientists. Global warming has been observed not just on land but also over the oceans and in the troposphere, as well as being confirmed by many other indicators such as ocean heat content, humidity, sea level, glaciers, and Arctic sea ice. And while the hockey stick tells us that humans have caused a profound disturbance to our climate system, we don’t need it to know that humans are causing global warming. The pattern of warming we observe is the same as that long predicted for greenhouse warming: the stratosphere is cooling, nights have warmed faster than days, and winters faster than summers.

But this reality doesn’t fit into the narrative that the contrarians would like to tell: that AGW is a house of cards that is falling down. It is very difficult to attack all of these diverse lines of evidence for global warming. Instead they tend to focus on some of the better publicized ones and try to associate them with a few individuals, making a much easier target. Yet while contrarians have been nosing around in scientists’ emails, the actual science has, if anything, become more concerning. Many major studies during 2009 and 2010 found things may be worse than previously thought.

Far from exposing a global warming fraud, “Climategate” merely exposed the depths to which contrarians are willing to sink in their attempts to manufacture doubt about AGW. They cannot win the argument on scientific grounds, so now they are trying to discredit researchers themselves. Climategate was a fake scandal from beginning to end, and the media swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The real scandal is the attacks on climate science which have done untold damage to the reputation of the scientists involved, public trust in science, and the prospects of mitigating future warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked-advanced.htm

 

[Peregrinator]

You always buzz around these threads exploiting the fact that science inherently has a less than 100% degree of certainty about well, everything. But the fact is we have a large and ever-growing body of evidence saying why.


We also aren't 100% sure how evolution works.

Or gravity.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You always buzz around these threads exploiting the fact that science inherently has a less than 100% degree of certainty about well, everything. But the fact is we have a large and ever-growing body of evidence saying why.


We also aren't 100% sure how evolution works.

You sure about that claim there Sparky?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Preponderance of evidence, multitude of different lines of evidence, sheer number of people working on the issue, intensity of scrutiny.

The salt thing is nowhere near as contentious, thus doesn't get the scrutiny that climate science does. It's like comparing evolutionary theory to a study on the coefficient of friction of a maple leaf at different times of the year.

Who is paying the weight of the sheer number of people working ON the theory?

Is there an equal amount of funding available to anyone with a differing opinion?

Convince me that this is just not another Solyndra case where government picks winners and losers based upon the power that can be procured with the pick, in this case, the power to return us to a more primitive communal state of perceived idyllic existence and one with nature sacrificing the occasional baby to the wolf to keep life "in balance."

Since this subject has been so thoroughly researched perhaps you can give us the desired temperature and the exact amounts of CO2 required to achieve it...

The amount of scrutiny in salt does not affect how we react to the alarmist pronouncements of "EXPERTISE."

You don't question the expert, you don't have the tools, yada, yada, yada...

 

[trysail]

You always buzz around these threads exploiting the fact that science inherently has a less than 100% degree of certainty about well, everything. But the fact is we have a large and ever-growing body of evidence saying why...

Where’s the actual physical (and chemical) science?

-Judith Curry, Ph.D.
Professor & Chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Ph.D., Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 1982
NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee
Fellow, American Meteorologic Society
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow, American Geophysical Union.​

Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

The next time somebody invokes tobacco when the topic is climate, you're going to be sent to sit alone in a corner until you repent of your flagrant abuse of rhetoric.

 

[mercury14]

You sure about that claim there Sparky?

Yes, positive. That's why we keep making discoveries in genetics.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yes, positive. That's why we keep making discoveries in genetics.

I ask because that's exactly what the "Intelligent Design" crew says...

 

[mark_j]

Sooo... did all those scientists, whilst they were buzzing around trying to debunk the skeptics, bother to determine if Bozo was indeed a clown?

 

[trysail]

You're trying to tell me there's an association between these two lines?
Really? Are you serious?

Never mind association— you're trying to tell me that one is an independent variable and the other is a dependent variable?
You have got to be kidding!

http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah/from:1979/normalise/detrend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/normalise/detrend​

Atmospheric CO2 by volume (as of 1800) 280 ppm
Atmospheric CO2 by volume (as of 2011) 390 ppm
% change~ 40%

Temperature (1800) -0.5°C. from average
Temperature (2011) 0.5°C. from average
(as the earth emerged from the Little Ice Age)

1800 average temperature 9.23 °C.
2010 average temperature 8.83 °C


MONTHLY MEAN CENTRAL ENGLAND TEMPERATURE (°C)
( the world's oldest continuous instrumental temperature record, 1659-2010)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat ​

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CETDECEMBER.jpg


​

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.

Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that "the evidence is inconvertible."

"In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.

"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said.

A spokesman for the APS confirmed to FoxNews.com that the Nobel Laureate had declined to pay his annual dues in the society and had resigned. He also noted that the society had no plans to revise its statement.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/global-wa...ist-resigns-over-global-warming#ixzz1bS87IDCr

 

[Sonny Limatina]

"I resign from APS," Giaever wrote.

Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that "the evidence is inconvertible."

"In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?" he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.

"The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period," his email message said.

A spokesman for the APS confirmed to FoxNews.com that the Nobel Laureate had declined to pay his annual dues in the society and had resigned. He also noted that the society had no plans to revise its statement.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/global-wa...ist-resigns-over-global-warming#ixzz1bS87IDCr

Instead of clicking over to FOX, I went and found the APS website.

They have 46,000 members.

That's 45,999 who didn't resign, and 1 who did.

Every single one of those 45,999 is better educated than you.

But you're focused on the 1.

http://www.aps.org/about/history/index.cfm

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Instead of clicking over to FOX, I went and found the APS website.

They have 46,000 members.

That's 45,999 who didn't resign, and 1 who did.

Every single one of those 45,999 is better educated than you.

But you're focused on the 1.

http://www.aps.org/about/history/index.cfm

How many of them won the Nobel Prize?

It's not the NUMBER or the organization, it's the logic he employs.

Now riddle me this:

Optimal earth temperature and optimal amount of CO2 to maintain it...

 

[trysail]

It's hard to see from this article exactly what the A[merican]P[hysical]S[ociety] is trying to say, even assuming that the fragmentary statements in the Telegraph are accurately reported. But they do seem to be pulling back to a more defensible position, which is a good thing.

The two statements they seem to be making strongly are (1) that global average temperatures have increased over the last thirty years (the period for which we have satellite data), and (2) that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have some effect on the climate. While I wouldn't use a word like "incontrovertible" for anything in science, these two statements seem almost certainly correct and utterly uncontroversial. The interesting questions then remain: (1) what (if anything) is causing the warming we have observed?, and (2) how strong is the effect (i.e., what is the climate sensitivity)? (There is also an interesting side question of what (if anything) we know about global temperatures before the satellite era, which I do not consider here.)

The idea that we have answers to those two questions with anything resembling physics-level certainty is what leaves many scientists feeling queasy about foolish statements by our supposed representatives. Climate science is still a very young discipline, and a little less certainty and a little more humility is needed at this stage.

Jonathan Jones, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics
Brasenose College
Oxford University
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/process*********N?url=http://nmr.physics.ox.ac.uk

Sep 26, 2011 at 10:01 AM
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/9/25/aps-agw-is-controvertible.html

 

[Sonny Limatina]

How many of them won the Nobel Prize?

It's not the NUMBER or the organization, it's the logic he employs.

Now riddle me this:

Optimal earth temperature and optimal amount of CO2 to maintain it...

Winning the Nobel Prize didn't seem to be as impressive to you when the recipient was our president. (Also better educated than you.)

What's the difference here?

ETA: By the way, it appears that at least 39 Nobel Laureates were among those who did not resign. http://www.aps.org/about/support/past/physics/press-launch.cfm

 

[trysail]

Subject: I resign from APS [ American Physical Society ]

Dear Ms. Kirby

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.


In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

Best regards,

Ivar Giaever

Nobel Laureate 1973

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Winning the Nobel Prize didn't seem to be as impressive to you when the recipient was our president. (Also better educated than you.)

What's the difference here?

ETA: By the way, it appears that at least 39 Nobel Laureates were among those who did not resign. http://www.aps.org/about/support/past/physics/press-launch.cfm

And...

How does that change the logic?

That is not an alarming rate of change.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Our President is a lawyer, not a holder of degrees in Science and Math as I am.

His Nobel is in Peace, awarded on his potential before he create even one ounce or iota of Peace or Peace plan.

Since then, he's killed everyone in his path and incited people to riot and kill each other...

but,

I am not a smart man...

 

[Sonny Limatina]

And...

How does that change the logic?

That is not an alarming rate of change.

I am not qualified to answer that question, nor foolish enough to think I might be.

That's the difference between us.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Our President is a lawyer, not a holder of degrees in Science and Math as I am.

His Nobel is in Peace, awarded on his potential before he create even one ounce or iota of Peace or Peace plan.

Since then, he's killed everyone in his path and incited people to riot and kill each other...

but,

I am not a smart man...

I was hoping you would say that.

Your Nobel laureate was awarded the prize for a field unrelated to climate science and analysis.

He asked a question based on logic, not on data analytics.

What makes his Nobel any more relevant than Obama's?

Agreed on the part about you not being smart. At least we've found some common ground there.

 

[trysail]

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=195

Do not smooth times series, you hockey puck!

The advice which forms the title of this post would be how Don Rickles, if he were a statistician, would explain how not to conduct times series analysis. Judging by the methods I regularly see applied to data of this sort, Don’s rebuke is sorely needed.

The advice is particularly relevant now because there is a new hockey stick controversy brewing. Mann and others have published a new study melding together lots of data and they claim to have again shown that the here and now is hotter than the then and there. Go to climateaudit.org and read all about it. I can’t do a better job than Steve, so I won’t try. What I can do is to show you what not to do. I’m going to shout it, too, because I want to be sure you hear.

Mann includes at this site a large number of temperature proxy data series. Here is one of them called wy026.ppd (I just grabbed one out of the bunch). Here is the picture of this data:

http://wmbriggs.com/pics/mann_wy026.jpg​

The various black lines are the actual data! The red-line is a 10-year running mean smoother! I will call the black data the real data, and I will call the smoothed data the fictional data. Mann used a “low pass filter” different than the running mean to produce his fictional data, but a smoother is a smoother and what I’m about to say changes not one whit depending on what smoother you use.

Now I’m going to tell you the great truth of time series analysis. Ready? Unless the data is measured with error, you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses! If the data is measured with error, you might attempt to model it (which means smooth it) in an attempt to estimate the measurement error, but even in these rare cases you have to have an outside (the learned word is “exogenous”) estimate of that error, that is, one not based on your current data.

If, in a moment of insanity, you do smooth time series data and you do use it as input to other analyses, you dramatically increase the probability of fooling yourself! This is because smoothing induces spurious signals—signals that look real to other analytical methods. No matter what you will be too certain of your final results! Mann et al. first dramatically smoothed their series, then analyzed them separately. Regardless of whether their thesis is true—whether there really is a dramatic increase in temperature lately—it is guaranteed that they are now too certain of their conclusion.

There. Sorry for shouting, but I just had to get this off my chest.

more...
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=195

 

[mercury14]

Subject: I resign from APS [ American Physical Society ]

Dear Ms. Kirby

This is a good example of the irrational crap you pull. You single out individual scientists as if they cancel out the overwhelming scientific consensus.

 

[trysail]

"You're Not Allowed To Do That In Science"

Richard A. Muller, Ph.D.
Professor, UC ( Berkeley )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk&feature=player_embedded