Dr Paul Bain has replied to my second email to him which I do most appreciate. (For reference, see the letter he is replying to here: “My reply to Dr Paul Bain — on rational deniers and gullible believers” ). He deserves kudos for replying (it’s easier to ignore inconvenient emails), and also for taking some action to improve the article he published. I will reply properly as soon as I can. For the moment, and for fairness’s sake, it’s here for all to see.
Please be constructive and polite in comments. No, I don’t think there is any scientific reason (or definition in the English language) that validates the term “denier”, but Nature is going to publish an addendum this time, and that will be noticed by other researchers in the field. That is progress. Though there is a long way to go. — Jo
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Dear Jo (if I may)
I apologise for my long and delayed response – while I would like to be more succinct, I have to resort to Pascal’s excuse that I’m writing a long response because I didn’t have time to write a short one.
First, an update. As we all know, after publication it quickly became clear that the “denier” label was causing offence, and I contacted the journal’s editors to canvass options for addressing this. As the article was already published, it was agreed that the most practical option would be to include an addendum to the paper where we publicly expressed our regret about any offence we caused. This will be appended to both the online and printed versions of the paper. As you said, you yourself did not mention a link with Holocaust denial (and I myself did not hold such a link), but this was by far the most common association made by people who took the time to write to me personally to express their offence. By doing this, I don’t expect this to resolve (or even reduce) any issues (I fear that the damage is done), but I thought this was an appropriate thing to do nonetheless.
To your point about the issue being only about climate science (specifically that this is the “only real point”), I am definitely not saying that it is invalid to debate climate science and the reality of anthropogenic climate change (or its extent or causes). However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts. Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem. You and your fellow-travellers may not be fans of the IPCC, and all institutions have their faults, but that is their overall conclusion. Further, through the IPCC and other sources, scientists have provided evidence that may not convince you, but has been of a sufficient standard that governments over the world are prepared to act, often despite its political unpopularity.
Now perhaps you might claim (and some of your fellow-travellers do claim this) that the IPCC is a corrupt political institution, and that scientists are dramatizing the problem to gain funding, etc. However, this would be admitting that there is a social and political dimension to the issue, and such assertions directly contradict your claim that the issue is only about the science. So if you were to be consistent, you should be chastising not just me, but your supporters/commenters who make claims that go beyond the science, and even revisit some of your own blogs to see where you have strayed from just assessing the science and delving into social and political issues.
Returning to the science argument, I don’t begrudge your view that there is insufficient evidence – this befits the idea of skepticism. But if you and others truly believe the science is wrong, then in my view the most productive approach would be to produce an alternative expert report (say the ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors) – I expect you could find a source of funding for it. In this document (contributed to by experts on climate science, not the general public) you would need to come to a consensus on what the issue is (is climate change occurring, is it anthropogenic or not, if anthropogenic – is it harmful or not, if harmful – how harmful), and to a consensus on the scientific basis for that view (or for a plausible range of views). On each of these matters I was emailed with widely diverging views from climate skeptics, which will probably represent quite a challenge for such a document. But if you could produce a coherent scientific document that faithfully summarizes skeptics’ views on climate change, and provided a better explanation of the science than the IPCC, then I expect you would have a much better chance of stopping the policies you oppose. Some might argue that you shouldn’t have to –it is the responsibility of the proponents to prove their point. I would counter that while this view is defensible as a debating point, it is unproductive in advancing scientific understanding – and to change the field in the “right” direction requires replacing dominant theories with better ones.
Of course the scientific issue is necessary, but it is one with political and social implications, and it would be foolish to deny these. Indeed, in blogging about bias in the IPCC and among climate scientists, and commenting on politically-motivated actions, it seems you don’t really believe it’s only about the science either. So it’s a bit bold to claim it is invalid for us to do research on broader social and policy perspectives, when it’s ok for you to comment on the same. Some might even say it’s doctrinarian, though I won’t go as far as making the Soviet comparisons you incorrectly imputed to us. It is also sending a message that those in the climate skeptic community who think about the social and policy implications beyond climate change itself should be ignored.
And finally to our study and it’s supposedly manipulative deception. Our original submission to the journal only had the first study, where all we did was ask about what the effects of taking action on climate change would be. Our finding was that some people, though unconvinced that anthropogenic climate change was occurring, were willing to support action because they thought it would have some positive social benefits. This is just a description of the pattern of responses, and describing people’s reaction to a neutral question can hardly be called manipulative. The editors, as scientists, wanted more than correlational evidence, hence the second study. We were wary of not being too leading in this study, so all we did was tell participants that there were a range of views of the effects of taking action on climate change (a true statement), and that they were going to read one of these views. It is no more manipulative than if they heard the views of a real participant from Study 1 on the street. What is interesting is that I don’t see these views expressed publicly – possibly because they are seen as unacceptable in the skeptic community, or perhaps because the most prominent public skeptics such as yourself portray such views as illegitimate. But back to the study, being exposed to a broader perspective must have been valuable to some of them at least, as they were more supportive of action when they considered these broader consequences. Now this outcome was not inevitable – they could’ve thought such arguments were garbage and have been unaffected or less supportive. But some of them didn’t, and this was probably because they were able to reflect for themselves on a perspective that they may not have heard before. It is not manipulation to give someone a different perspective on an issue that reflects a real view, and let them draw their own conclusions from it.
Now you seem to find the views of these people as illegitimate because they do not address the only real point, and those who hold those views are probably not the people represented in your blog. But our research suggests that there are a substantial number of skeptics who have this view, and I would encourage them to speak up in these debates. That’s democratic.
Regards
Paul.
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Thought from Jo: What about NIPCC?
I will do a proper reply soon, but in my email reply to him I wrote: “I’ll mention only one point now, though I have many I could make, and that’s when you suggest “ ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors” – I agree, but it’s such a good idea, that it’s already been done. See NIPCC (Nongovernmental-International-Panel-on-Climate-Change): cumulatively more than a thousand dense pages of peer reviewed references, purely scientific, non-politicized discussion of all the evidence. Unlike the IPCC it doesn’t quote activists, magazines, or ignore important papers.
PS: I have asked mods to [snip] unhelpful comments. This is your chance to help Bain understand the group he studies.
PPS: Dr Bain sent this Friday, but I held his reply to post first thing in business hours his time. It seemed a fairer thing to do that having the conversation over the weekend.
Science isn’t about “consensus”.
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Yes it is. Unless you can get a consensus, its highly likely there is something wrong with your science. Although at least one famous scientist noted that you didn’t convert your opponents, they just grew old and died.
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No, science isn’t about consensus, and it isn’t about “likelihood,” either.
There was once a consensus in the U.S. supporting “scientific racism.” There was once a consensus that Alfred Wegener was nuts to propose continental drift. There was a consensus that asymmetric crystals could not exist. There was a consensus that ulcers could not be caused by bacteria. And in each case there was something very, very wrong with the consensus science; in each case, the dissenters were right.
The aim is not to be “highly likely” you are right, but to have the evidence to prove that you are right, regardless of the consensus.
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Karl Popper devoted a large part of his life trying to come up with a method of determining the likelyhood a scientific theory was correct and failed.
All we can really say about any scientific theory is that produces more accurate predictions than some other theory. A criteria by which GHG warming theory performs poorly.
The IPCC’s assigning of likelyhoods to predictions is scientific and epistemological nonsense. We can only assign likelyhoods (probabilities) after some number of predictions have eventuated or not.
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Hi Phillip
Last line is an excellent point.
It parallels my own view that something can only be called a model when it has predicted something and the outcome has been measured.
This has never happened with MMAGW.
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Popper’s problem was starting from the false premise that a proper theory is correct, complete, and totally inclusive of everything that was, is, or will be. He further presumed that you must know everything or you can’t really know anything.
This is never the case. All knowledge is contextual and never includes the unknown because it cannot. A theory can be correct only in the evidential context in which it is founded. However, in context, you can actually know something and be certain of that knowledge.
For example, Newton’s theory of gravitation was correct in the context of the human scale of things: mass, distance, velocity, and time. It worked even at scales beyond many orders of magnitude of human scale. Only when it was tested at the extreme edges and with the use of technologies not available to Newton did minute MEASURABLE differences appear. Even then, the measurements were taken using devices based upon many of Newton’s theories.
The fundamental issue is the intellectually dishonest error of presuming that your theory applies to all of the universe to an infinite precision for all times and all contexts. Then, when you find an error, you exclaim your theory was wrong in every respect.
This exclamation clearly indicates the presumption that you believe you must know everything or you can know nothing at all. The clearest proof of that this is a serious error is every device, every building, every means of transport and every material used to build these things to implement modern technological civilization exists and functions. THAT represents a vast store of applied knowledge that works without having to know everything that is possible to know.
Truth can only be determined from truth. There is no summation of false that can equal anything other than false. Your propositions must be the strongest true statement you can make based upon the evidence you have. Anything beyond that must be clearly labeled as speculation, conjecture, extrapolation, guess, or pure stab in the dark.
The bottom line is Popper’s ideas are poppycock from the get go!
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Sorry to be slightly O/T, but this is an important piece at The Australian:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/experimentation-on-the-science-syllabus-puts-feelings-before-facts/story-fn59nlz9-1226422078412
We are seeing our schoool syllabii warped by the post modernists such that the scientific process is now being decsribed as:
At least the nationa’s real scientists are firing back on this claptrap:
This is where the problem starts … I don’t expect students in schools to get The Standard Model on quantum mechanics from year 1, but I don’t want them getting a bunch of post modern pseudoscientific psychobabble either. Education needs to get some rigor again, with a bit more emphasis on facts, and less about “how we feel about the world we live in.” Science does not care how you feel, it is as economists would say, a positive field of study (i.e. the study of “what is”) not a normative (subjective) field of study. What’s next? Teaching kids astrology as if its a real scientific experience because it is part of a collective delusion that people believe in? So Johnny, how do you feel about Saturn rising in Pisces this morning?
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In response to Bulldust:
The syllabus that is the trigger for this article was designed by something called a Learning Area Reference Committee (LARC).
Details are here:
http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/approach/qsa_curric_larcs_writing_teams.pdf
I will make no comment on whether the above list might, or might not, be too shallow (in terms of science history), or too narrow (in terms of the sheer scope of activities covered by “science”).
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“Scientific racism” was never actually scientific.
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Adam,
Careful, you will be kicked off “Team Smith” with relevant and accurate comments like that.
It was actually biff33’s point that “scientific racism” was never scientific, or did you miss the point?
Consensus has no place in scientific endeavour. The universe does operate as a democracy.
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No it is not. To any objective scientist, the ‘CO2 science consensus’ from the IPCC is at best a joke, at worst a barely-concealed atempt to defraud the public. These are the facts:
Above ~200 pmV, CO2 ceases to trap more IR in a long optical path at ambient temperature. These 60-year old data are used to design furnaces using GHGs in air as the energy transport medium and they work. The IPCC has apparently ignored them: http://www.tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-1-details-c.pdf
The models are based on an elementary heat transfer mistake: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
Eq 17 shows the IPCC assumption, lower atmosphere DOWN emissivity = 1, generates imaginary energy. To assume reduced atmospheric emissivity is no solution because you must also reduce the earth’s emissivity AND the CAGW scare would end. The authors of this report maintained professional integrity by quietly pointing out this mistake.
To correct it you have to correct the IR physics. The excess energy [333.[1-0.76] = 80 W/m^2] is 50 times claimed AGW. The IPCC offsets it using other incorrect physics.
G L Stephens revealed [Page 5] one part: http://www.gewex.org/images/feb2010.pdf
It’s the use of double real low level cloud optical depth. The consequence is that no IPCC climate model can predict climate and it’s time this farrago was stopped.
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Response from JB……………………
Dont waste your time on him he just snipes from the fringes. He honestly beleives consensus is more important than the facts he has just said so himself.
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To lighten up a little? Jo please let this through! 🙂
I’ll entertain the avatar…
“If your dog has NoNose how does he smell”?
Back to normal programming 🙂
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He can’t, because he has no nose…..:o)
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Nick,
“If your dog has NoNose how does he smell”?
Probably like most other dogs when they don’t get washed often enough – bloody HORRIBLE!! 🙂
Although our long gone Newfoundland even had a peculiar smell AFTER he was washed.
Still nothing to do with his post which I find VERY interesting – why doesn’t stuff like this come to the forefront of the scientific debate??
Cheers,
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Hi Popeye; for various reasons I remain anonymous. I am very good at solving complex problems so, three years’ ago when I realised climate science was populated by bozos paid to do the bidding of the carbon traders and the fascists like Joolliaar, I set out to reverse engineer the subject.
To attempt this you have to be very well qualified and stupid to take on such a task: I am both Read below KK’s description of why we metallurgists are best fitted to do the job.
Basically, the IPCC assembled Victorian science, then modelled it to scare the politicians. For the past 16 or so years it has systematically set out to use fraud to keep the case alive.
We now have the political battle of fake science being kept alive by big money. As with Joolliaaar, we in the UK also face climate fascist laws, the aim being to protect the bankers by jailing the ‘deniers’.
This is a key moment in the politics when the warmist dopes are desperately claiming the shift of the jet streams due to the fall in the solar magnetic field is ‘climate disruption’. The politicians are wavering everywhere as they realise that unless they go for full-on Pol Pot eugenics with mass starvation and get rid of the opposition, they will be pilloried for failing to protect the interests of the voters.
This Bain guy is a hanger on, one of thousand who like the poor in Mumbai, attach themselves to the side of the gravy train but know that it will soon stop. Kill the deniers for they are affecting my career as a polemicist.
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Hi Mydogsgotnonose,
This is the killer paragraph:
“Basically, the IPCC assembled Victorian science, then modelled it to scare the politicians. For the past 16 or so years it has systematically set out to use fraud to keep the case alive”.
Yeah!
🙂
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I’m ever so glad that Copernicus, Galileo, and other great scientists of the past didn’t cave in to the “scientific consensus” that existed in their times John.
Perhaps you can tell me why their (Copernicus, Galileo, et al) refusal to go along with the consensus of the time differs to that of skeptics and AGW now?
00
Even more up to date: If consensus was the end all of science we wouldn’t keep getting upgrades in medical equipment( been in a hospital and had your temperature or blood pressure taken with the latest gadgets,easy as…?)and technology of numerous kinds(how’s that Ipod or Kindle treating you Grandpa?
00
Gee Brian, where to start. Firstly to note that Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler et al won the day, and the consensus is that they were right. So they are the establishment now. Its also worth noting that they overturned the teachings of the ancient greeks – stuff that had been around for 2000 years even then. The church just supported the greek position because it was convenient.
But for every Galileo, there are 100 nut jobs who have their own theory about something or other, and spend their lives unable to convince anyone that there is any merit in it – usually because there isn’t. Not that there aren’t sad cases where someone really is an unrecognised genius, and the value of their work is only discovered after their death.
“Skeptics” seem to be a mix of nut jobs (2nd law stuff) and grumpy old men.
00
Nut jobs don’t supply real data to back up their claims.
Polemicists call people with whom they don’t agree ‘nut jobs’ when they have no objective scientific answer.
Climate science and fellow travellers is full of rejects from other disciplines.
00
You’re such a knucklehead.
grumpy old men
nut jobs
00
And, such a BIGOT!
Ironic too because he ain’t young and acts like a nut………
00
The MODERN consensus is that they were right. It took years before Copernicus’ work was accepted (1835 hen it was removed from the Catholic Church’s list of ‘banned’ books, some 298 years after his death.
The consensus at the time was that they were “nut jobs”, and several were actually hounded by the Roman Catholic Church for their views.(Again, refer to the link I already supplied, specifially the section near the end where it mentions how the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (INdex of Prohibited Books) took action against Galileo for daring to follow on from Copernicus’ previous works.
Which gets back to my original question (which you so adroitly skirted around without actually answering), namely:
Skeptical scientists are challenging the modern “consensus” that CO2 is the only driver of “man-made climate change”. They have provided multiple studies and evidences that point to other contributors that have a greater effect than that of CO2.
And yet you, and the other adherants of ‘The Church of AGW’, go out of your way trying to prevent those scientists from publishing their work for peer review, much like the Catholic Church placed ‘heretics’ like Copernicus and Galileo on the Index Librorum Prohibitum.
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The problem lies in the definition of the term “climate change”
The IPPCC defined it as the changes to climate caused by mankind.
Therefore it must be caused by humans. Case proven, consensus all round.
Everybody agrees, but nobody knows what they are talking about.
00
That’s right. People complain the the “church” was hard on Galileo, et al, because they went against the consensus which said the earth was at the centre of the universe.
However, that consensus view was begun by the Greeks, viz; Ptolemy. His view prevailed over Aristotle’s and others who knew the earth was round and spun every day. Thus, the earth-centric view prevailed through Roman times and up to the enlightenment.
It is true Galileo and others were brutally treated. You could liken the Green ‘church’ of today with its belief systems, levels of authority in academia and power from the political arena with the ‘church’ of yesteryear.
00
Sorry, Aristotle believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that the sun, moon, planets and stars revolved around it on crystal spheres.
Ptolemy merely up-dated the theory to allow correct calculations of celestial positions. By this stage the theory required 57 spheres, some at angles, epicycles etc. There is some thought that Ptolemy didn’t believe this was the case, but used it as a “politically acceptable” explanation.
You are correct in stating that some ancient Greek philosophisers believed that the Earth revolved around the sun. One was condemned to death (although reprieved and sent into exile) and another left Athens hastily, never to return. They had challenged “the consensus”.
There had been doubts about the “accepted consensus” long before Copernicus, the most prominent was Alphonso 10 (sometimes known as the Wise) who when introduced to ptolemaic theory said “had I been present at The Creation, I would have given The Almighty better advice”. It is very hard for “consensus believers” to suppress the views of the King.
00
There were some pretty good reasons to doubt the heliocentric theory. The best was the parallax problem. If the earth moved, and yet the stars appeared at the same distance from each other, space had to be big. Really big. (I mean, you may think it is a long way down the road to the agora, but …) And the stars had to be mind-bogglingly far away. But if they were so far away, then, to appear the apparent size they do, they would have to be inconceivably, unfeasibly,and decidedly improbably huge.
As it turns out, the stars are mind-bogglingly far away, but the apparent size is due to an optical illusion. Huge though they are, they are not as big as the the ancients thought would be required.
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No such thing as “your science” or “my science”.
There can be a multitude of theories and hypotheses to explain a specific natural phenomenon. The ones which are (most-)wrong are filtered out; not by consensus but by physical observations of the universe that can be reproduced by independent observers.
You really should try to understand Karl Popper’s philosophy of science which is based on all hypotheses and theories being potentially wrong (falsifiable). They hold until they are shown to be wrong.
It is therefore valid for science to support multiple, yet-to-be-falsified theories which explain the same phenomenon; without there being a consensus based on one of the theories.
The inherent value of all theories being valid until shown to be wrong is immense: A diverse ecology of theories allows science to continue in a field, whereas one based on consensus brings science to a screeching halt when the theory agreed to by consensus is shown to be wrong. (vis: climate “science”)
00
The scary part about this new Pol Pot ideology is the capture of key scientific journals and scientific organisations by extremists.
00
Which is why “those qualified to be climate scientists’ give no quarter to anybody who even mildly questions their particular brand of consensus, and may explain why Dr Bain chooses his words so carefully.
00
As usual you have it around the wrong way.
The consensus on many important topics exist because the evidence provides no other plausible explanation, the hypotheses are supported by the evidence.
In the case of ‘catastrophic human caused climate change’ the theory existed first (the consensus) which has then sent a bunch of people with government funding chasing the evidence for two decades. We know they don’t have it, because otherwise it would be plain for all to see, and there truly would be a consensus. Pointing to, and arguing over, short term climate records miss the point as none of them (or any of the other experiments) confirm the hypothesis that positive feedback from water vapour will cause runaway warming.
Given that there is not a consensus* on either the scope, possibility or sensitivity of co2 on the climate, we can look backwards and see that the evidence is missing.
In other words, the lack of consensus tells us that the evidence is insufficient and it’s likely that the hypothesis is incorrect.
It’s no good talking about Einstein or Copernicus and Galileo – the consensus on these took a long time to be accepted. Looking back into history it would appear to be instant, when in reality it can be measured in the lifetimes of men. The CAGW hypothesis is a relative baby in terms of lifetime, and it appears as though it will not make the long haul. Just remember most hyphotheses turn out to be wrong, even if they persist for what seems a long time. Everything from miasma to luminiferous ether lasted a while as theories.
*’the teams’ media profile notwithstanding
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John Brookes”,
If you seriously think that this is the way that real science is conducted then you are even more deluded than what I envisaged.
GOD help anyone who employs you !
Do you actually enjoy making a FOOL of yourself ???????????
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But certainly not John, you are badly wrong. As Einstein said in 100 scientists against Einstein – Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact was enough to prove it wrong.
“Consensus science” is not science John.
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No, politics is about consensus.
Nor is science about proof, but about disproof. Failed predictions are one of the disproofs sought by honest scientists.
Further, there was never, and nor is there today, any kind of science or scientist that was not subject to political pressures.
It is true that some people are honest and strong enough to resist those pressures openly and steadfastly, and we all owe such people a great debt of gratitude which we can never repay.
But just because science as an ideal is as unachievable as world peace, does not mean we should redefine it as something far less than ideal and pursue this less-than-ideal. Progress is not made by settling for what is, nor by those who settle for what is.
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But when Science translates to Policy its all about consensus, unless of course you live in a
dictatorship where those with the ear of the dictator can get whatever wacko ideas they like turned into policy.
In a democracy the scientific consensus as it develops and changes informs the policy, usually legislated and introduced by the generally non-scientist political representatives.
Overall, i think most of us prefer democracy over dictatorship so really, when people talk of the “scientific consensus” it is a valid concept in the real world that most of us inhabit.
00
I find it a very strange claim.
If science isn’t about consensus, what is it about? Some sort of privileged access to a truth only you have deduced? The state of science can only be described by referring to the prevailing beliefs of those in the field.
00
Science is about discovering things about the universe around us. The universe does not operate as a democracy and consensus means nothing to it. Therefore science is not about consensus.
QED
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Albert Einstein.
00
I think you are just getting worked up over different senses of the word consensus.
Consensus can mean a compromise, where people come to an agreement on a position that may feature elements of both parties’ initial positions.
OR consensus can just describe a body of general ideas that an overwhelming majority of people broadly agree on, while possibly disagreeing on specifics.
There is a consensus that the earth is an oblate spheroid, for example, even though there are still some people that believe the earth is flat.
That doesn’t mean that people compromised about the shape of the earth.
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Adam Smith, you have absolutely no clue about science and you represent evidence that the principles of science are invisible to political activists like yourself.
Science is not about agreement or compromise. It is about testable, verifiable and repeatable observations. General ideas, no matter how many people agree on them, are not science.
It does not matter to the Earth whether or not most people believe that it an “oblate spheroid” or not. The evidence shows that it is or shows that it is not. When the majority of people thought that the world was flat, that made no difference to the shape it actually was or is. The universe just is. Our observations can only hope to illuminate it a little better for us. Consensus is a political construct, not a scientific one.
00
For most practical purposes, involving design and construction for example, there is a general consensus that we live in a static three dimensional space.
But if we consider change within that space, then we have to consider time, and we arrive at another general consensus that we live in a dynamic four dimensional space.
But time implies another consensus: that “now”, as an instant, is universal, and within the human scale of things this is true. But in cosmology, the concept of “now” is limited to the small finite volume of space where we exist, and so there is another consensus within cosmology, that another dimension is (or more dimensions are) required to describe the true nature of the cosmos.
The common point about all of these “consensuses” is that they define the limits within which a set of conventions, or rules, exist, for all practical purposes.
So, a consensus can be considered as no more than a definition of the boundaries within which hypotheses are considered.
The narrow hypothesis proposed by James Hanson, and taken up moved into the mainstream of consciousness by Al Gore, and others, has become the consensus known as “climate science”. That consensus therefore defines boundaries for all further research in what is actually a very narrow field. By definition, any work that is done outside of the established wisdom of the consensus cannot be bona fide climate science, and is therefore unpublishable under that heading.
It is all a trick – it is word games – a consensus can be what ever a group of people want it to be. You give that consensus a name, “climate science” say, and all people who don’t share the “established” consensus are automatically apostate, and are to be derided.
Limiting the discussion to “climate scientists” is just reinforcing “a trick”. But of course, climate scientists know all about those.
00
Evidence.
00
But who decides what constitutes evidence?
You? Me?
For me, this constitutes fairly straightforward evidence that the surface temperature record isn’t wildly wrong.
For you, it doesn’t.
Yet you and I aren’t the specialists. Those who spend their time and effort acquiring the knowledge to make such judgments are.
Hence:
00
Dear dear, Tristan, you have been learning chartsmanship from the greats.
You didn’t normalise the two series and you threw away 2/3 of the data.
Try that again with these (accidental I’m sure) mistakes corrected and you’ll see the comparison is not quite as forgiving of GISTEMP. That’s a 30% trend drop to +0.106°C/decade versus the holy Hansen’s +0.151°C/decade.
Quick! Use a serviette! You have a UHI Moustache that everyone but you can see! 😀
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Are we understanding different things by ‘evidence’?
Forgive me for quoting from Wiki , which the distinction :-
.
In examining attitudes to climate science from a sociological perspective, inevitably there is going to be some disconnect in what constitutes evidence worthy of consideration.
While a consensus may be based on evidence, or at least on such evidence as is available, some might consider a consensus as evidence in itself.
While statistical methods may be used to give objectivity to the weighting of evidence their application, as the case of eg. the missing Hotspot, can be seen to stretch credibility to incredulity.
.
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OK, So for 30 years the temps of GISS and UAH are similar. How does that prove anything about all the adjustments of GISS temps for the 100 years before that? The 1940’s were cooled down, the 1970’s warmed up, the 1920’s cooled. We don’t have satellite data before 1979
So the world got warmer from 1980 – 2002. So?
We think that was a natural cycle that’s happened hundreds of times before, and you are convinced it’s unnatural, but you have no evidence that it 1/ unusual, or 2/ man-made.
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Even more specifically, counterevidence.
There can be an infinite amount of hypotheses which can explain a set of observations, but if an hypothesis fails in predicting a possible outcome, it can (and should) be removed from the set of candidate hypotheses. It is more complicated than this, as some theories are probablistic, and can only be removed from candidacy to some degree of probability. No amount of positive evidence can ever confirm a theory, only counterevidence can disprove one. This is why confirmation bias is to be gravely regarded in any scientific discipline as it reduces peoples acceptance of counterevidence. From the outside looking in, it appears to be rife in climate science.
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Joanne, Joanne.
Are you now acknowledging that for the past 30 years there has been little to no UHI?
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What is wrong with the statement:
“It is a consensus view amongst scientists that the earth is an oblate spheroid.”
Why is using the word “consensus” in the above statement in anyway inaccurate or controversial?
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@ Smith
The word consensus in the above statement is an unnecessary surplus.
There doesn’t need to be a consensus for us to accept that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. We have photographs from shuttles and images from satellites.
Now if only climate scientists would produce evidence as solid as that.
Just ponder for a moment Smith. If the evidence for an hypothesis was solid enough, why would the scientist promoting that hypothesis evoke consensus to convince others? All he’d need do is say “look, here is the irrefutable evidence”.
Got any?
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Now that is succinct!
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The core of science: Relating evidence and ideas………
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/coreofscience_01
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You miss the point. The consensus around other scientific paradigms such as Evolution, or General Relativity and in fact all scientific paradigms exists because the science is valid; the science ‘supporting’ AGW is riddled with contradictions, which even I, a humble blogger, can understand but which apparently a host of PhD’s, all of whom are on the government payroll cannot and in fact use the most insulting arguments such as consensus and authority to excuse.
The point is, the science comes first and is validated by independent and repeated replication of the results; then the consensus occurs. With climate science [sic] there has been no such initial, or indeed any ratification, quite the opposite. What we are left with is a political and ideological agglomeration which is largely sustained by billions in government subsidy and perfidious media propaganda.
AGW does not merit a consensus because it is a lie.
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🙂
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But to me, it isn’t riddled with contradictions. To me, climate science is indistinguishable from Evolution. I don’t think this difference between you and I exists because one of us is smarter than the other. I think it’s more likely to be a case of different biases, different axioms and different incentives to hold the beliefs we hold. You and I are not very different.
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The point he was making is that there is “nothing” supporting the non science of MMAGW.
The only contradictions are political, not scientific.
The science is very basic.
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Hmmmmm…. i wonder if [snip. not helpful] ED
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Thanks for the snip! It now could easily be about evolution in the context of climate skeptics. From what pond did they spring wot??
[Go back enough generations, and you and I are related. Isn’t that a horrible thought? Fly]
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“A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.” — Robert Bolton
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Tristan
July 9, 2012 at 9:13 pm
Assuming your major premise that consensus determines the science isn’t your personal opinion irrelevant and immaterial? You do not constitute a consensus on any subject, let alone science, because you are only one. Unfortunately, one must use logic and knowledge of reality to come to these conclusions. Apparently, you have neither. Either that or you are living in some alternate universe in which things can be what they aren’t based upon your whim.
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“Tristan”,
The issue is that political activists, such as yourself, cannot produce ANY SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, which PROVES, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that mankind and carbon dioxide (PLANT FOOD) is detrimental to the climate/weather of planet Earth.
ZILCH, ZIP, NOTHING.
It is all CONJECTURE, POSSIBLY, MAY, MIGHT, MAYBE, COULD…..blah blah blah.
That is NOT SCIENCE.
That is SUPERSTITION, GUESS WORK AND CONJECTURE !
If you have some definitive real EVIDENCE then quote it here for edification of everybody.
If not, then go away back to your COMMUNIST COLLECTIVE and stop making a FOOL of your yourself and wasting everybodys time !
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Cat, listen carefully; science never “translates” to policy! “Translate” works both ways like an equation. You must not allow policy to work backwards into science! Indeed many of us are skeptical because we recognize that problem is occurring with regard to AGW science.
Policy is in the realm of politics. Politicians may use the results of science to form policy but the reverse must never be permitted.
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Science is not about consensus Catamon.
As I replied to John above in “100 against Einstein” – google it and try to understand – science is about building theories that stand the test of real measurements. Falsifiable theories, this is about science. Consensus and democracy is a social area, NOT science, sorry.
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Dr. Bain refers to the question “Is climate change occurring”? I have often wondered “in what way is it changing? How is it different that it was before? How long ago was it different?” Perhaps someone can point out any change in the last hundred years, without of course mentioning floods, hurricanes, and sea levels that have actually diminished. And if there is a change, how is it for the worse? The only parameter of which I am aware is that temperatures appear to be in decline, although imperceptibly small. Everyone seems to say that the climate has always been changing, and so it has for the last 4 billion years, but what changes are claimed since the mid nineteenth century? Even if temperatures were on the increase, (which they are most certainly not) what evidence is there that even a ten degree increase would cause any sort of catastrophe?
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In this response from Dr. Bain is the other meme that really bugs me. He (like Anna Rose) suggests that only “climate scientists” are worthy of discussion of this topic. What is a “climate scientist” anyhow? So far as I am aware, there is no such profession. While I admit that there are probably people with an undergraduate degree in science with a major in “climate science”, this option has been available for a very brief time in degree granting institutions. Does anyone possessing such a degree have any experience on which to rely? Since earth’s climate is so complex, it seems to me that the appropriate training for such a profession, encompassing the bodies of knowledge accumulated in the fields of atmospheric physics, geology, paleontology, chemistry, thermodynamics, etc. would be of such duration that only Methuselah could accomplish it! I submit that most of these souls that Dr. Bain refers to as “climate scientists” are likely to have no such knowledge.
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Correct Rod,
I was also going to post on this point but you’ve beaten me to it. Of the multi-discipline requirements to study climate science, my Chemical Engineering degree qualifies me in all but a few of those aspects. I’ve seen many regulars on this blog who are likewise qualified. Just because I or other bloggers on this forum don’t work directly in the field doesn’t mean we don’t understand the scientific principals or can’t make educated comments on the science being discussed.
One thing that I thoroughly believe in relation to education is that it’s not what’s been taught, but the process of teaching someone to figure it out for themselves. After all, I’m not trained in electronics, but out of the necessity of keeping my 1964 vintage Hammond A100 and 1975 Leslie 147 (valve amplifiers, classic Hammond organ sound) in service, I’m gaining a good understanding of valve circuitry. I’m not an expert, but I can now make accurate diagnosis and repairs on many issues that crop up. Why should climate science be any different?
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Rohan, off topic I know, but I just could not resist:
Oh you Lucky Man, and yes, I know this features the L-100 played through the Moog, but you get the effect of the rotating Leslies.
What a thing of beauty.
Tony.
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Robin
My undergraduate degree in in Mechanical Engineering. My masters is in business administration. My experience is with heat engines, compressors, pumps, electrical generators, transformers, etc. 43 years of experience. I am also a PMP. While I admit that the study of Earth’s multitude of natural systems is far too complex for me to understand, I do know a load of old bollocks when it presents itself, having developed pretty good BS detectors. And I have regarded this loopy climate phenomenon as such, alt least since 1977 when HH Lamb of the new CRU was warning of possible declining temperatures. From that point onward the entire topic has been hijacked by the hard left, driven by the UNEP. Another “qualification” I have is that I come from the same place as Maurice Strong, and remember only too well the Bolshevic leanings of the entire Strong family. The words twisted, corrupt, crooked, are not nearly descriptive enough.
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Sorry, Rohan I meant to say
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Climate science incorporates from meteorology the incorrect physics which imagines ‘back radiation’ exists when every other physics’-based science knows this is fundamentally wrong.
At the top of this thread I wrote that to fix the models you have to fix the incorrect IR physics. Do so and TOA DOWN emissivity is zero, The idea that this must be unity comes from the ‘back radiation’ myth, failing to understand Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation only applies at equilibrium and only net radiative flux is real.
Once you eliminate ‘back radiation’, an issue bitterly resisted by the modellers who have constructed a weird and wonderful set of reasons to justify what the WWF etc. on behalf of the carbon traders have bought, you lose the imaginary 40% increase in energy which creates equally imaginary positive feedback.
IPCC modelling is a fat cuckoo sitting in the nest of science. Either we kill it off or replace the Enlightenment with the politics the Wannsee Conference lawyers justified, allowing the Hitler regime to justify the extension of eugenics to an entire ‘race’.
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The problem in your essay Dr Bain is you continue to use inflammatory language you just can’t help yourself, fellow travellers implies a communist or some sort of conspiracy, nice one, change denier for fellow travellers or conspirators, aren’t you the clever boy, just can’t help yourself.
Your other inference is to ignore other papers that exist and groups that have formed by real scientists in the disciplines that apply but ignored. Our side if you can call it that are the ones that have done the fact checking, gone looking for reasons, real reasons and not hypothesis based on layman opinions. Looking at measurement issues, looking at the whole issue from every angle whether it was M&Ms taking your side’s stats apart as mathematicians believe it or not are allowed to do. To question moving goal posts, when you change man made global warming or anthropogenic global warming by it’s science name all of a sudden to climate change, in a climate that has always changed and will change in all likelihood due to myriad factors. No one on this side has disappeared whole datasets or corrupted existing datasets.
Sir the real deniers are easily demonstrated in the debate, your claim of our so called side forming panels when your side has ignored them for a decade, remark and demonstrate your denial of any other opinion.
Sir with all the respect that can be mustered, your recent contribution is just more invective and more ignoring the other arguments that don’t fit your theory and that is all man made global warming is, a theory lost in the noise of other effects far more grand in the universal scheme of things than a minor part of a greenhouse gas “grouping” which is a minor part of the atmosphere and a minor part of the real earth biosphere when oceans and the planet itself is brought into the analysis.
Dr Bain we are not fellow travellers we are not some stalinist style secret movement of anarchists. No one on this side of the debate has had to be dragged to delivering all relevant data set and methodologies with FOIs.
Show us a signal that cannot be part of the noise and not cherry picking isolated factors at isolated times and everyone on this side will listen but sir, you and the people at the corrupted science literature are the ones who decline debates.
Anyway, this is not a big oil or big mine site, this is not a prestigious journal but it’s not a peak oil or green energy site either.
We don’t have uber top secret emails plotting how to censor other sites, other professionals and therefore can’t be caught doing conspirational things. This aint a Rocky and Bullwinkle universe and we aint Boris and Natasha in dark over coats and spyhats.
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On ClimateEtc we have a thoughtful essay on the Government-climate science complex, which is paid to justify government collecting extra taxes. Here’s a broadside at the fake science they have come up with: http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/08/the-government-climate-complex/#comment-216790
‘Spartacusisfree | July 9, 2012 at 4:47 am | Reply
The problem is the assumptions made by climate science about the nature of thermalisation. 115 years’ ago, J Willard Gibbs introduced the Principle of Indistinguishability: molecules in an assembly have no memory. Those who teach that trapped photon energy decays over 1000 collisions, the average time an isolated molecule takes to re-emit the photon, teach false physics. This cannot happen because of quantum exclusion..
Because a random thermal emission of a photon occurs simultaneously with absorption, there is on average no local thermalisation so long as the energy can be transferred at near the speed of light to sinks; heterogeneous interfaces and space. So, atmospheric GHGs probably act as a pseudo-scattering energy transfer medium with warming mainly at clouds. The rider to this argument is that above the cloud level, thermalisation rapidly decreases so DOWN emissivity falls to zero at TOA.
That means you don;t need to claim imaginary ‘back radiation’ from the lower atmosphere bounces back to make the Earth’s surface emit at the S-B black body level in a vacuum, a concept disproved experimentally for over a Century. But by eliminating the imaginary ~40% energy increase 100[333 – 238.5]/238.5, it predicts very little if any CO2-AGW!
A rider is that the thermalisation in the ‘PET bottle’ experiment is from pseudo-scattered IR absorbed in the walls. Nahle’s recent Mylar balloon experiment, which shows no detectable warming when you reduce the PET thickness from ~40 mil to ~ 3 mil is attractive but I would like to see it done properly before accepting it as definitive proof of indirect thermalisation.
[The difference of the IR spectrum from clouds and clear sky is a very strong case for the above argument.]’
So, in one fell swoop, the whole of the IPCC case is apparently destroyed. Read this in context with my post at the top of this thread.
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Dr Bain,
In my humble opinion, your proposition below is deeply problematic.
‘However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts’
Your definition of expertise includes so many generalists and excludes so many with precisely the technical expertise to expose the flaws in the AGW narrative.
The fact remains that the so called ‘complex multi-disciplinary’ side of the debate relies entirely on unsupported projections from models which have yet to be confirmed empirically. Indeed some of the climate models have made projections which have been demonstrably false.
At this stage the ‘climate change scientists’ have not been able to produce any empirically observable outcomes that are capable of being ‘denied’ thus the coining of the label ‘Denier’ may be premature, and publications of quality might be wise to avoid the use of such loaded stereotypes.
Perhaps on the other hand I am ‘in denial’ and there is empirical evidence which supports the mathematically modelled projections of what was originally called Anthropogenic Global Warming.
The expert ‘climate scientists’ could easily put this misguided chemical-physicist on the right track by pointing to the empirical evidence. Otherwise I shall have to remain a ‘non-expert scientist’ is search of evidence, and a conscientious objector to unsupportable consensus.
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This weasly tendentious reply has only hardened my opinion of Bain as smug, smarmy and self-satisfied. Does he really expect us to believe he is unaware of the NIPCC report? Does he really believe that upgrading us from “deniers” to “fellow travellers” will mollify us?
He makes a very grave error in assuming we are stupid people.
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Let me explain my position by posing two simple questions.
1.If CAGW were real and the direct result of human emissions of GHGs, what would be done about it?
2. Who are the absolute last people one would deem capable of acting on the problem?
When I answer my own questions, I realise that, not only am I a skeptic, but everyone else is.
Pious adherence to a belief without actually holding the belief is possible, and possible on a mass scale. The Roman State Religion comes to mind, as do the empty Crusade initiatives of the Late Middle Ages.
So I believe the world is divided between declared and undeclared skeptics. Consider the empty ritualism and fetishism of “emissions reduction”, and the train-de-vie of declared believers, both high and low. Sorry, there are no believers.
Those who say I exaggerate, should look at what Australia actually does with its carbon. Look at the waste and inefficiency of generating (and depending upon) coal power from aging clunkers. Look at the scale of our coal exports, and our utter dependence on them. Look at the scale of regrowth in this moist climatic phase, and imagine the conflagrations which will follow in the next drought phase. (Consider especially the evasiveness or blatant indifference of our Green Betters on this last point.)
Then tell me I’m exaggerating when I say that all are skeptics, and that nobody believes!
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[snip – no thanks]
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[snip. Jo]
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When AlGore walks to the next Rio summit, I’ll take him seriously.. NOT !!!
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Walking from which of his two (known) mansions Andy?
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Maybe Bain could persuade the consensus to archive the full data sets and code so that their claims of CAGW can be fully discovered. He can start with Lonnie and Ellen Thompson … I think that Bain is treating us like lab rats.
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This is OT but i am sure i will be labelled a denier for saying it.
It has come down to this:
First link is a press release from Uni of Reading claiming the sun is going quite and will until 2100 approx but never fear the sun has buggar all to do with the climate
http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR428852.aspx
The second link is an abstract from a paper at JGR which says much the same thing
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD017013.shtml
The third link is form the Daily mail which discusses the latest from the MET O and our friends at East Anglea claiming that the planet has not warmed for 15 years but fear not the quieting sun has nothing to do with and no we will no go into another ice age as CO2 will continue to warm the planet…..huh?
So as i said it has come down to this………..what has more influence over our climate? A very small increase in a trace gas or that big ball of light floating in the sky (the significance & description of sun reduced to kindagarden level so as to be on par with state of the art climate science)
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“However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists”
Ah, the voice of the party leadership that will dictate the party line. This is totally nomenklatura thinking. Dare I mention Lysenkoism?
“Now perhaps you might claim (and some of your fellow-travellers do claim this) that the IPCC is a corrupt political institution, and that scientists are dramatizing the problem to gain funding, etc. However, this would be admitting that there is a social and political dimension to the issue, and such assertions directly contradict your claim that the issue is only about the science.”
Wow, what sophistry! I’m really impressed. Sounds good on the surface, but only is illogic at deeper look.
“your fellow-travelers”
What a projection. Modern AGW climate science shares a lot of traits with Marxism and the way it thinks of and itself as “science.” “Denialism” equals in Marxism “false consciousness.” It is how marxist “deny” outside criticism and information. “Political correctness” is how they handle their own team internally, like climate scientists stifle dissent within their own circles.
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Dang nabit forgot the third link (you can delete #9 if you like Jo)
This is OT but i am sure i will be labelled a denier for saying it.
It has come down to this:
First link is a press release from Uni of Reading claiming the sun is going quite and will until 2100 approx but never fear the sun has buggar all to do with the climate
http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR428852.aspx
The second link is an abstract from a paper at JGR which says much the same thing
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011JD017013.shtml
The third link is form the Daily mail which discusses the latest from the MET O and our friends at East Anglea claiming that the planet has not warmed for 15 years but fear not the quieting sun has nothing to do with and no we will no go into another ice age as CO2 will continue to warm the planet…..huh?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
So as i said it has come down to this………..what has more influence over our climate? A very small increase in a trace gas or that big ball of light floating in the sky (the significance & description of sun reduced to kindagarden level so as to be on par with state of the art climate science)
——————————————————————————–
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Yes Crackar
The Sun.
The ONLY source of energy out planet has.
At night time here in Newcastle it is bloody cold.
If the Sun wasn’t heating the other side of the planet at night we would probably be frozen by morning.
Haha
The people you quote obviously have no idea that the Earths distance from the sun varies quite considerably over time. This causes climate change, amongst other things like tilt of Earths axis wrt orbital plane around sun.
🙂
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Oh no, you’re not in Newcastle as well !!! 🙂
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NSW that is not like MyDogsGotNoNose whose in UK.
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Yep, Newcastle NSW. 🙂
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NSW means Newcastle, Sydney and Woolongong.
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Like Jo, I found it only slightly surprising that Dr Bain suggests the formation of an “ISPCCE”, with an obvious lack of any knowledge of the existence of the NIPCC. But then, DR Bain, being a social scientist, is not required to have any knowledge of the climate debate. Perhaps Bain would care to read through the NIPPC reports, all available, [condensed if he so wishes,] online, and then post his latest thoughts back here to us “fellow travellers”, ‘5th columnists’,’quislings’, or however else he wants to address us , next time. I look forward to hearing from you again in the near future, Paul.
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OK then, I’m going to be brave enough to visit snip territory, because it is in fact a valid point to make, directly concerning what Dr. Bain himself mentions.
Here, he says:
It’s all well and good for Dr. Bain to say that we, all of us, and those of us here at Joanne’s site are straying away from the Science and into the political area of this, saying that we should just stick to concentrating on the Science alone. However, the two are inextricably bound together.
Politicians have linked their own agendas to the Science, be it for social engineering points, wealth redistribution measures in the name of perceived fairness, or green leanings. Like leeches, those politicians (of every variety, but some more particularly so) have latched onto the Science, without even understanding it themselves, and used that to further their agendas.
Then, in a never ending tightly bound circle, they are feeding Science to give credence to their agendas.
For long periods now, Science has been poorly funded, and that funding, while some does come from the private sector, has been the province of the political arena. Now that the politicians have latched onto the Science to further their own agendas, it then becomes easier to direct funding to a place that will support their political agenda, so Science gets more and more funding.
However, it works both ways. The scientists, who now have funding, sometimes beyond their wildest dreams, will ensure that funding is to become a permanent thing, so they will only come up with findings that support what the source of that funding wants to hear, and please, don’t say that this has not happened, does not happen, is not already happening, or will happen in the future.
Once those people in the Science field produce their findings, it then confirms the political agenda of those who gave that funding in the first place. and what it then does is make any further application for funding a much easier process.
The politicians have their (ever increasing) confirmation BECAUSE of the funding they allocated in the first place.
Pity help the organisation that has some Government funding and then actually produces something in their findings that goes against what those politicians are seeking. There will be no further funding, and in fact, if it is a Government department, then there is a chance that their jobs could be on the line.
So, it now becomes almost a subliminal thing with the Science. Always seek to find something that confirms what will be best for us in the long run, and ANYTHING that does not support that is either ignored, or not investigated further.
On the other side of the coin, any organisation that does question the Science, that does argue against findings that support the Government agenda are a danger that needs to be minimised, marginalised, scoffed at, and sidelined, hence the language that side uses, ‘Deniers’, ‘Skeptics’, and funded by the all encompassing ‘Big Oil’
So, the Science and the Politics are now tightly bound together in a bond where each supports the other.
As I mentioned above, please do not even begin trying to say that this is not happening.
So, I find it particularly disingenuous that Dr. Bain says we should be concentrating on just the Science and not discussing the political, and other related matters, because, in actual fact every one of them are joined at the hip one with the other.
Why should we not point out those things? Why should we not point out that the end result of the Science has two results, one of them that the Science side of things concentrate on, and another that could well be the end result of what they actually are calling for.
No, I think that Blogs like Joanne’s serve a perfectly good forum for ALL these views to be aired.
Where Dr. Bain calls for just the Science to be concentrated upon is convenient for his side of the debate, because in doing just that, it immediately cancels out comment from people who want to ask questions about all those other related matters, and also cancels out people who question what might happen if the Science is followed implicitly.
This would also be very convenient for the political side, because now, all those people questioning that are effectively shut out of the debate.
Tony.
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I think Tony makes a very valid point, regarding science funding.
Governments, starting in the latter half of the twentieth century, now fund science on an “outcomes” basis, rather than just provide bulk funding for “science” through the universities and research institutes. Most research funding today has to be applied for, and part of the application has to detail the “expected outcomes of the research”.
As Brian Cox has pointed out, this approach, though satisfying for accountants, does not result in good science: “The electric light bulb wasn’t invented by incremental research and development on the candle”. He also points out that all modern electronics are dependent on the discovery of the transistor, which in turn came about through the study of Quantum Physics, a field of pure research.
Science funding is broken, and this state of affairs, by accident or design, actually suits the political establishment. I do not expect it to change any time soon, but if we were able to fix the politics of funding, we would also address the perception that science itself has become corrupted.
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Hear, hear, well said Tony.
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I’ll second that.
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And good on you Tony for voicing that, as I’m sure so many of us think exactly the same way!
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It is obvious the man is drowning, let’s save him.
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want a lend of a brick mate
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This is a variation of the argument used by Finkelstein to justify control of the MSM; see here. It is the argument of the elitist as censor justifying his self-declared superiority to the hoi poloi.
It is insufferable; it is particularly insufferable in the AGW debate where the smartest guys commenting are excluded from the criteria of ‘climate scientists’, such McIntyre, Eschenbach, Tisdale, Stockwell, Id, etc.
The emails have shown this exclusion is deliberate. It contradicts basic science as enunciated by Richard Feynman who says in his famous speech ‘Cargo Cult Science’:
AGW science has deliberately contradicted this principle by excluding contrary viewpoints. As a result the opposition to climate science has had to be presented through the blogs. To say there is no peer reviewed, anti-AGW science, apart from not being true, is at one level merely a confirmation of the censorious behaviour of the AGW scientists.
The other fundamental anti-science position taken by AGW science is the consensus concept. This too is fundamnetally un-scientific. Dr Bain should re-read Karl Popper. All great scientists understand they must argue both sides of the case, as they know it takes only one contradictory bit of observed evidence, a white swan, to disprove a hypothesis. The point is illustrated by the example used by Karl Popper. If your hypothesis is that all swans are black and you send out 100 assistants who return with 99 black and 1 white swan it does not mean your hypothesis has a 99% certainty of being proved. In fact it has been disproved to a certainty of 100%.
In the AGW debate there are many ‘white swans’. Many have been listed at this site. Jo recently looked at some prominent ‘white swans’ starting here.
Maybe Jo can amalgamate this series of ‘white swans’ and send it to Dr Bain for his response?
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But would Dr Bain, given his standard for others, be scientifically equipped (particularly in a “multi disciplinary” way) to properly evaluate that series of “white swans”? Evidently not for he is also equally likely, as a non climate scientist to “misconstrue”. Which raises the question how does he know that those Climate scientists, who believe in human induced climate change, have got it right? His training as I understand it is in psychology and he obviously is an activist in the Human Induced Climate Change movement. Incidentally so are most CAGW Climate scientist which should give Dr. Bain pause to reflect on the likelihood of bias in their climate change conclusions.
Here is a resume of some of his research interests which probably indicate that his denigrating use of “denier” and “fellow traveler” is a little inconsistent with his venture into “infrahumanisation”:
“My research interests include human values and virtues; lay theories and beliefs (e.g., about human nature and how societies develop); the cognitive structure of concepts (especially of social concepts like values and moral rules); psychological essentialism; infrahumanisation (treating people in other groups as less human); cross-cultural psychology; and conceptions of society in the future.”
http://www.psy.uq.edu.au/directory/index.html?id=1614l#show_Activities
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Hi Llew
With that resume and the comments he has made there is only one conclusion.
His work is pointed towards personal restructuring to do away with all of the Psychological failings he sees in himself?
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Bit deep for me KK. One of my two brothers was a psychiatrist (died of cancer some years ago). Now in Australia psychiatrists start out being physicians so they at least are on a nodding acquaintance with science. Not so with psychologists.
Those of us who did mathematics and engineering always regarded the arty farty disciplines such as social science, economics and psychology, etc as being for those whose lower marks at matriculation excluded them from the the wonders of natural science and greats like Fourier and of course the incomparable Newton and his mechanics.
I’m yet to be convinced, on the evidence, that that evaluation needs updating.
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Hi Llew
I didn’t think too hard when I wrote that so dont look too deep. there aint nothin there. 🙂
On the other hand about 12 years ago I did a BSc consisting of the first three years of the Psych Degree and it was very well presented.
Admittedly I did Neuropsychology and Psychobiology and lots of stats and avoided stuff like
“Organisational Psych’ and “Advertising Psych”. It was good stuff but can understand after reading Mr Bains essays that you might regard Psychology as a flakey area.
Point I made at Dr Bains first comment was that Psychology is NOT about what we think. It is about HOW we think.
Only politicians are concerned about “What” because they can adjust policies to maximise votes and therefore income and power.
Always will remember one lecturer who didn’t impress. He quoted some clap trap that he had written and had published in a journal. His topic was a bit flakey and to emphasise this he used 11 significant figures when quantifying some effects. Really dopey.
This was published so in that case I must agree with you about some areas of Psychology.
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Spot on, Llew.
Social “scientists” (e.g. psychologists, economists, etc.) rely most heavily on philosophy, sophistry and personal opinions (about how thinks ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ be, how people ‘should behave’, etc., rather than facts.
Hard sciences, by contrast, require INTELLIGENCE, and have the highest regard for facts and their underlying uncertainties. “Opinion” has no place in science.
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There is much talk about who is qualified to speak authoritatively on Climate Science.
The paradox is that it isn’t the poorly prepared Climate Scientists who are little more than Environmental Studies Students with little basic science.
Lets Put together the qualification for the ideal Climate Scientist.
First a degree from a good university. Not something you get off the back of a packet of Corn Flakes.
That degree should include several years study of thermodynamics in complex physical and chemical systems.
It should include at least 2nd year maths, physics and chemistry.
The physics should include orbital mechanics.
Geology 1 is essential.
Last but not least the degree should include modeling of complex systems.
Now we could look around and find that there is such a degree already and that many holders of such are calling loudest for blood.
BSc(Met)
If you tap any Graduate Metallurgist on the shoulder and ask their opinion of MMAGW they will probably explode
because they can see the scope of the problem and like Ivar Gioever very quickly see that many factors have not
been included in the Warmer “Proofs”.
Don’t be distracted by claims that only Climate Scientists can see the truth when they have only got eyes for the money.
🙂
00
I think something beyond first year statistics should also be included. This is where M&M effectively exposed the flaws in the temperature trends used by the IPCC and AGW team.
00
On second thoughts, I would amend/qualify that and suggest that “literacy” in a particular scientific field is more important than having a qualification in that field. I know a lot of professionals who hold a qualification in a particular field who are less literate than a layman/tradesman.
I tend to confine my grappling with AGW to the two fields in which I have greatest literacy – chemistry and statistics. But even then, both of these have multi-disciplinary dimensions to them which means that my comprehension is not confined to these two fields.
00
Yes Grant,
stats is also an important part of making sure our measurements are treated and processed correctly.
00
.
With all due respect KK;
This is playing exactly to Bain’s “appeal to authority” argument, which, when all is said and done, is about all his reply really amounts to.
Observed and recorded data from the late 1600’s to the present has shown that climate has varied in a 25 to 30 year cycle of warming and cooling. Proxy data from older records show this has generally been the case for much longer than the actual instrument record.
Recorded and proxy data show that these 25 to 30 year cycles in turn, generally fit into a longer 300 year cycle of warming and cooling, and that this has generally been the case since the last glacial.
Observations over the last fifty years have shown us that other systems superimpose over these cycles. For Eastern Australia the most important of these is the ENSO cycle of El Ninos and La Nina’s. For us, El Ninos create a warm, dry atmosphere and La Ninas give us cooler, wetter conditions.
Hence an El Nino superimposed on a 30 year warming cycle will make us hot and dry, but the same pattern during a cooling cycle will mean it will be less cool and wet as it would otherwise be. Conversely, a la Nina cycle during a 30 year warming period will mean it will not got as hot and dry as it otherwise would, and the same pattern during a cooling cycle means it will be even colder and wetter.
This is the pattern of climate in Eastern Australia, and similar patterns exist the world over. They are easily predictable, having held pretty much the same form since the last glacial. The simple truth is that NOTHING has happened in the last 40 years that falls outside of this well-worn pattern. Ergo, there is no need to go looking for some non-cause for the non-event of “global warming” aka “climate change”.
Now, all of the above can be checked and verified by anybody with reasonable reading and comprehension skills, and access to the internet or a good library. There is no need for a wall covered in degrees and PhD’s, which is why the cultists are losing the debate.
For the time being at least, most people have sufficient reading and comprehension skills to be able to verify these facts for themselves. And unlike climate scientists, and, it seems, sociologists, they have the good sense to be able to look out the window and realise that it’s getting colder, regardless of what the “experts”, with their computer models and black-body radiation calculations and “hot spots” say to the contrary.
00
memoryvault nails it right here where he says:
Therein lies the nub of the matter.
When a questioning mind finds this and then reports it, the answer from those Climate Scientists is this:
And that’s the response when anything counter to their argument is put up.
Tony.
00
In all fairness, some of the math could be quite daunting to anybody that is not familiar with the modeling techniques used is spatial and temporal simulations.
Of course that assumes that they are using spatial and temporal simulations. Without being allowed to see the models, how would we know? They might just be generating bounded random number sequences until they get the answer they want, with P<0.05%.
00
Yep
The good Dr should remember that the taxpayers out there are not ALL sheep, but many people with their own opinions about many things, especially those that hurt their hip pockets.
A lot of them know that media has presented mainly one side of the debate on man made CO2 craparoo, and a lot of the doomsaying has been totally counter productive,but these folk have access to the internet and find their own information
Just ask someone you are sitting beside on a bus what they think of “global warming” and you’d be surprised ,Dr, at the vehemence with which most will call it “CRAP”!
00
If the process is broken/corrupt – well that stands out like a sore thumb, and you don’t even have to be scientist to work that out.
For example.
[1] Starting with a predetermined conclusion (CAGW exists) skews the selection of methodologies towards those that will support the conclusion and directs inquiry away from questioning the conclusion. It’s a technique from the Humanities, and doesn’t belong in the sciences.
[2] No capacity to self correct – except towards a more alarmist position.
[3] Massive funding towards the predetermined conclusion, no funding for alternative explanations.
I could go on…
00
Well said MV.
And Tony too.
00
Hi MV,
I agree and you will notice that nowhere did I mention the need for a PhD.
The constant cry of PhD is sickening to those who know that PhDs are really good on the own turf but put them at another guys PhD and they are probably not much better off than the ordinary BA or BSc graduate at comprehension.
Particularly liked your 2nd last para which summed it all up:
” Now, all of the above can be checked and verified by anybody with reasonable reading and comprehension skills, and access to the internet or a good library. There is no need for a wall covered in degrees and PhD’s, which is why the cultists are losing the debate”.
My main bone of contention is that Climate Scientists are probably very good on their own little, and I mean very little, bit of turf but none of them is capable of putting it all together as a total package.
It is not much use knowing something about the IR properties of CO2 if you are not able, or perhaps even unwilling, to integrate that info correctly into the Global Warming analysis.
Climate Scientists or their propaganda machine has broadcast they they are the unassailable experts at modeling the effect of Human Origin CO2 on the Earths Atmosphere wrt Temperature.
All I was saying is: That’s Not True” and gave a very qualified alternative group.
In the end they are done and it will not be because of the science being uncovered but because our taxes are being wasted on it and people know it.
Taxpayers may be dumb for a while but not forever.
Vote No to Carbon Tax. 🙂
00
Here is a link to what a climate scientist studies
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/courses/bsc-climate-science#year_1
Firstly it is only a 3 year degree so it is not a real one for starters and second i dont see any physics in there.
Nothing about statistics, a little bit of math but mostly arty farty crap.
00
Hmm. Very much like so-called “environmental science” curricula. Do they include how to use Excel spreadsheets?
00
Apologies for reposting from previous thread but I do so for Dr Bain’s benefit, presuming he reads it, and in response to Crakar’s comment along the same lines. Given that Climate Scientists can have degrees with little or no Physics, low level undergrad Maths, and minimal or no Statistics, etc and qualify as experts, then to use Dr Bain’s own argument against him-
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Winston
you’ve got the bull by the b-lls.
The Climate Scientists run a closed shop and would not under any circumstances, ask for expert analysis of a point where their expertise is lacking.
They do it all, as shown by the approach to thermodynamic analysis where they look through a thermo text book and find an equation that is roughly appropriate before launching their calculations on an unsuspecting public – taxpayer.
A real Scientist would have no qualms about calling in help for a tricky spot but our Climate Heros have an agenda.
THEY DON’T WANT TO BE FOUND OUT!
🙂
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Crakar,
One of the course subject summaries from Year 3 below.
“The Carbon Cycle and Climate Change
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the greenhouse gas which has, by far, the greatest impact on climate change. CO2 is becoming even more important owing to continued, escalating use of fossil fuel energy and CO2’s very long lifetime in the atmosphere. Predicting future climate or defining `dangerous’ climate change is challenging, in large part because the Earth’s carbon cycle is very complex and not fully understood. You will learn about the atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial components of the carbon cycle, how they interact with each other, and how they interact with climate in so-called `feedbacks’. The understanding of the carbon cycle gained from this module is an important foundation for all climate change research. Emphasis is given to the most recent, cutting-edge research in the field. Co-taught with ENV-MA31.”
EASY to see how the propaganda is being “engineered” into ALL levels of education starting at primary through high school and onwards.
It used to be called “brainwashing”.
I feel SO sad for my children and future grandchildren being indoctrinated like this. It is BLOODY criminal.
Cheers,
00
BTW – ENV-MA31 is this course: The Carbon Cycle and Climate Change
This is taught by Dr Andrew Manning – resume below:
Summary of Dr Andrew Manning’s work:
Dr Andrew Manning, a Deaf scientist was one of the contributing authors to Chapter 3 of the Working Group 1 Third Assessment Report (2001) and Chapter 2 of the Working Group 1 Fourth Assessment Report 2007 Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing.
In his work, he makes measurements of both carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, produced from burning fossil fuels, is the most important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. These measurements help us to understand the global carbon cycle, and this information can then be used by climate scientists to help predict future climate change.
Then the results of his research can be used by the governments of the world to hopefully make the right decisions for maintaining a healthy planet that our children will inherit from us.
Andrew currently works at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom For more information about Dr Andrew Manning and his work, see the webpage:
http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/env/people/facstaff/Dr%2BAndrew%2BManning
Incidentally, his father, Dr Martin Manning is Head of Technical Support Unit, IPCC Working Group 1 and his Deaf sister, Victoria was the driving force behind the New Zealand Sign Language Bill to grant NZSL official language status in New Zealand in 2006, the first of its kind in the world.
Note his involvement (and that of his father) with the IPCC????
Who’d of thunked!!!!!
Cheers,
00
Hi Popeye
The course details and lecturer are disturbing but not unexpected given the complexion of the whole MMAGW thing we have all come to know and loathe.
ps. the icons are disturbing — are we related?
🙂
00
As I said somewhere else..
Its a propaganda course conducted by one climate priest to indoctrinate another batch of disciples.
Disgusting, really !!
00
It seems to be more akin to driving instructions for Matlab,
But I guess that is all you need for a career as an acolyte.*
[*An acolyte in its original religious definition is one who assists a higher ranking member of a church or cult.]
00
Yep – noticed that earlier KK
Don’t think so – unless you’re an old Adelaide boy??
Anyhow, who cares where you’re from – as long as logic still prevails you are on my “pal list”
Cheers,
00
I didnt notice biology in the list. It is perhaps the most important. Biological production of DMS influences clouds and could be the big stabiliser of climate. Freeman Dyson said that if CO2 really was a problem it could be fixed in a couple of generations by breeding carbon eating trees.
00
Definitely a useful one.
The Earth topsoil has millions of tonnes of micro – orgasms that must be accounted for.
🙂
00
Science in true form reveals all. Data is not just shared but eagerly shared. When data is hidden, warning bells should ring. When data is hidden, the question must focus on why it is hidden, not why others question that it is hidden.
Can you see the difference? What’s needed here to convince the world to one side or the other is complete disclosure. It’s time to drag that data out of hiding and show the world that “climate scientists” are either telling the truth or are not.
Such a simple solution. It doesn’t even cost anything, for the data is there, right? These people get paid a lot of money to handle this data, and sharing it is what real scientists do, this is their job.
We don’t need studies into why people question when the answer is so obvious. People question because what should be open is locked away and those who question are slammed and derided.
00
When data is hidden, no replication is possible. When no replication is possible, there is no science–not a shred, not an iota, not a jot or tittle of science. The resulting pseudopublications are useless drivel at best and Lysenkoist fabrications at worst.
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Dr Bain
You are clearly an establishment member and when I read your CV I can better understand your views. You really need to read a book on the IPCC, “The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world’s Top Climate Expert” authored by Donna Laframboise. If you are a bit nervous about being seen by your peer group to be buying this book I will gladly send you a copy ‘even send it in a brown paper bag’ if necessary. The information contained in this book would normally have been enough (certainly in any private enterprise) to sink that organisation without trace, but not the wonderful and trustworthy IPCC, of course. You seem stuck on the science as peddled by that institution as being above reproach, I challenge that assumption. The latest report from the IPCC (2007) was delivered in a normal fanfare from the IPCC ‘only top scientists whose papers were peer reviewed’ were used in the compilation of that report. Can you believe, mate, that of the 18,531 references in that report 5,587 were found to be non peer-reviewed, some 30%. What does that say for the integrity of a report being used to change the way we all behave?
I think many of us would go along with a ‘no regrets’ policy on addressing carbon dioxide emissions i.e., that we make continous improvements to our overall environment with changes that can stand on there own feet for efficiency, productivity and cost reduction impacts as well as to environmental improvement. The high risk strategy being applied by our present government does not fit this bill.
Regards
00
Dr. Bain please enumerate the qualifications that you have determined are required for a scientist to be qualified to be a ‘Climate Scientist’. After you have done that, please identify the common aspects that you have identified in your ‘Climate Scientists’ group.
00
I have selected this statement by Dr Bain as an example of how some people seem to live outside of reality
.
Unfortunately for Dr Bain his stance on this issue is being undermined by the lunatic fringe of the AGW movement for example the MET Office after many years of not being able to predict the weather 3 months in advance finally gave up all attempts but still claim they can predict the future accurately out to 2100. In the meantime they claim with all the casuality of someone with a split personality that the planet has not warmed for the last 15 years.
We have the CSIRO parading as the prophets of domm claiming all sorts of climatical catastrophes scaring the pants of our government all the while cowering behind a 100% iron clad arse covering disclaimer.
We have
Mr PanasonicTim Flannery AKA The king of geothermia getting paid lavish sums by our government to travel around the country spreading booga booga about sea level rise, never ending droughts etc only to buy a property on the banks of the Hawkesbury river. He championed the geothermal energy sector so much that he screwed K Rudd out of 90 million as a government investment and to date it has not produced a microwatt of electricity, coincedentally he is heavily invested in this renewable energy sector.We have Labor and Green politicians making one unsubstantiated claim after another on their way to producing carbon taxation legislation but not one of them can tell me how,when nor where this legislation is going to manifest itself in changing our climate.
So Dr Bain please do not insult me when you state the debate of the technical aspects of this issue should be left up to the experts, you had your chance and you blew it.
Do not insult me by calling me a denier.
Do not insult me by saying this is not political.
Do not insult me by thinking for one second that i should merely shut up and listen/beleive everything you and your “fellow travellers” have to say on this issue.
I heard a joke the other day which i think sums up the credentials of a climate scientist.
What can a climate scientist bring to a Astro Physicists meeting…………………………..THE COFFEE.
00
Spot on Crackar. This is the one line that makes a complete mockery of his arguments. A major problem with many “climate science” papers such as the infamous hockey sticks (in their various incarnations) is that the authors did not consult statisticians and incorrectly applied statistical techniques, some might assert, with malice aforethought. Climate science is multi-disciplinary in nature and therefore requires experts from many disciplines to be evaluated with any sort of rigor, not simply the chosen few “climate scientists.” No such degree even existed a couple decades ago…
00
“No such degree even existed a couple decades ago…”
And I bet that many of the current ones are more like propaganda tools than any real science.
00
“What can a climate scientist bring to a Astro Physicists meeting…………………………..THE COFFEE.”
HHHHHHAAAAAAAAAA haaaaaaaaa
🙂
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What though can an Astro Physicist bring to a Climate Science meeting ?
00
Incredulity.
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Yes Incredulity
How the hell did they get away with it?
00
I’ll pay that Joe.
He would need either a lot of tact or perhaps let nature take its course and be aggressive.
00
I’m clapping, mate!
00
“However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts”
Disgraceful!
That philosophy got hundreds of millions killed when everyone trusted the experts about the master race, the great leap forward and Lysenko. The proven reality is blind trust in the experts gets millions dead.
PS:
Can you show us any (and I mean any) actual evidence that man’s CO2 is causing dangerous global warming?
We all know:
1. Nature emits over 95% of the annual CO2 emissions.
2. CO2 FOLLOWS temperature in Al Gore’s ice cores.
3. Water vapor causes about twice as much greenhouse effect as CO2.
4. Unusual weather is NOT evidence of its cause.
5. Correlation is NOT evidence of causation.
6. Climate correlates better with solar cycles than with CO2 and over centuries.
7. Climate models are not evidence for a variety of reasons including the fact that they are considered poor by the top climate scientists in their emails.
Thanks
JK
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No argument from me.
Solar activity vs CO2 is not the issue. TSI and the log of ghg concentration (expressed in cO2 equiv ppm) are both variables that influence climate.
So why do the supposedly poor climate models seem to reconstruct the past century as well as they do?
00
“So why do the supposedly poor climate models seem to reconstruct the past century as well as they do?”
DOH ! because they have so many “fudge factors” in them that they can push things that they know the answers to, up or down at will.
I’m amazed that so many of their models do so badly on the past !!
If you can’t even match known past data with so many fudge factors, how the heck do you expect to match anything in the future.
00
By using a perfectly valid technique called backcasting. You start with a “prediction”, that is a value either now or in a hypothetical future, and then change or add or remove variables from the model to eventually reconstruct the empirical evidence observed today, or in the past. Having done this, you have identified a whole lot of variables that may represent influencing factors in the real world.
The next stage is to identify what those influencing factors might be. In well-understood controlled systems, such as electronic circuits, this is comparatively easy to do. For uncontrolled, and poorly understood systems, such as the climate, it would be extremely hard to do. But at least you have qualified how much you don’t know.
00
“you have identified a whole lot of variables that may represent influencing factors in the real world”
Or may actually have no bearing at all on anything and the combination just happens to partially match what you were trying to match.
Put enough fudge factors in…sorry, you called them variables, me bad 😉 you can match anything to anything, but as we are seeing, has near zero predictive power.
A chimp with a dart board could do better.
00
You’ve got it.
Absolutely none.
But backcasting (at least in real physics) does give you insights into areas for further investigation, so it is a legitimate research technique.
And when applied correctly, backcasting models can predict the past with incredible accuracy. 🙂
00
.
And therein lies the principal problem with the cultist believers.
Tristan, the models do not “reconstruct” the past century, well or otherwise. The data for the past century does not need “reconstructing”: we have it recorded, and it is what it is.
That data is fed into a computer, and algorithms are applied to it. The data and the algorithms ARE the computer model. A computer model that could not even regurgitate its own database would be even more useless than the climate models we have – if that is possible.
The algorithms can then be used to attempt to hindcast what happened in the century prior to the last one. Since we have a fair idea of what the results should be, this gives an indication of how well the algorithms perform.
ALL climate models have failed dismally at this test, and until one can be produced that can pass it, NO model should be used for anything – certainly not predicting the future.
The fact that NO climate model has managed to even successfully predict even five years into the future, relying on them to foretell how things will be in a hundred years is the height of both arrogance and ignorance.
00
I’m ignoring the posts which contain inflammatory language.
Hindcasting, backcasting is different.
Before I respond to that, I’ll just ask what you think of S&B2011 and L&S2011. 🙂
00
Sorry. Yes, you are quite correct, the proper term for the technique is hindcasting.
Backcasting is/was an in-joke. Because “backcast” is the term used for the backwards movement of a fishing lure, immediately before it is cast, and in the technique I describe, you are fishing for what you don’t know.
00
So why do the models work so well?
They don’t. Not on a regional, continental, local scale, not on short timeframes, and the only reason they get the long time frame in the past semi-right, is that they were fed with that data in the first place, and everywhere the data doesn’t match, they adjusted the data.
The models don’t predict the raw data at all.
00
The GCMs hindcast the global SST quite well.
What is a short timeframe? One that is dominated by ENSO?
I’m confused Jo, you’ve blogged references to Spencer & Braswell 2011 and Loehle & Scaffetta 2011 which do that precisely, using variables with no physical constraints whatsoever (unlike the GCMs used by the IPCC) but now you have a problem with it? Can you explain how that is not contradictory?
00
.
Tristan; you obviously have not read Koutsoyiannis; or if you have read him, have not understood.
Your last paragraph is gibberish; S&B “using variables with no physical constraints whatsoever (unlike the GCMs used by the IPCC)”. What does that mean?!
00
Tristan, SST have been adjusted too – remember they were measured by dropping canvas bag off boats, in non-random spots around the world.And do you have a ref for that marvellous study?
As for actual ocean temps? Argo is the only accurate method, and those results blow away the models. 7000 quadrillion joules of energy missing.
And yes, “what is a short timeframe” = 30 years. Short in the 4,500,000,000 years we have poor records for.
00
Now Tristan
Do you realise that the 1 and 2 do not line up with the columns below
that’s terrible.
00
Tristan,
#6 Solar activity vs CO2 is not the issue. TSI and the log of ghg concentration (expressed in cO2 equiv ppm) are both variables that influence climate.
If you care to re read point 6 (reproduced below for your convenience
#6 Climate correlates better with solar cycles than with CO2 and over centuries.
You will discover that Jim was not comparing solar cycles with CO2 as you have suggested, i know this was intentional on your part as you cannot dare face the cold hard facts. You poor sad individual.
#7 Climate models are not evidence for a variety of reasons including the fact that they are considered poor by the top climate scientists in their emails.
You: So why do the supposedly poor climate models seem to reconstruct the past century as well as they do?
Firstly i beleive youare (once again) trying to claim something that is not there. JIm is taling about projecting into the future whereas you are talking about hindcasting which of course anyone could do with a model you simply tweak the knobs until you get it the same. Unfortunately teh very same model then fails to predict anything of relevance into teh future.
Once again i beleive this was an intentional act by you to manipulate the debate. Shame on you Tristan.
00
In one way, Dr Bain is universally correct: reducing the issue to a debating technique, well used by the Fabians, for example. This can be applied to any societal issue: mandatory prison sentences, gender equity, vaccination, aging populations, ….. So why climate change mitigation? Because that’s where the research money is, I suspect.
Of course we all want a healthy environment, a decent society, technological advances that improve lifestyle and economic efficiency, but where we differ is we expect policy to be evidence based, rather than based on warm and fuzzy motherhood ideas.
It’s all about the science, Dr Bain.
Ken
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Mr. Bain, there is no middle ground here. The AGW “discussion” is about deceit, deviously manipulated data, corruption and misrepresentation.
One side or the other is wrong and possibly, consciously lying.
Would not a psychologist first ask; who is it that is lying and what motivates them to persist with the lie(s)?
00
Neither ‘side’ is lying en masse, although that doesn’t prevent individuals on either side from engaging in disingenuous behaviour. Accusations of dishonesty and inflammatory language from anyone are unhelpful. They degrade the discussion and should be left at the door. All they do is wedge people further in their own camp.
A psychologist would ask “For any given individual, what are the benefits for that individual in retaining that belief”. Seeing as so much of our identity is described by our set of beliefs, the value we attach to holding onto certain beliefs can be very high. It applies equally to everyone.
All we can do is present our beliefs while simultaneously recognising our own fallibility by listening the the beliefs of others.
00
Unfortunately I disagree; assume a a Diogenes position and name an honest broker from the pro-AGW camp, including Dr Bain. I would argue they ALL have a presumption of conflict of interest, either from an ideological predisposition or financial beneficiary position, or both.
00
Conflict of interest =/= liar
Ideological predisposition =/= liar
Financial beneficiary =/= liar
Each of them could result in clouded judgment and each of them could provide an incentive to lie and each of them surely exists on both sides of the fence 🙂
00
In Professor Bain’s case, I’d say upwards of about $120,000.00 a year, plus 12% super, plus ten weeks paid holidays a year, plus 12 weeks paid long service leave after seven years, plus paid sick leave, plus paid paternity leave, plus paid private hospital cover, plus whatever perks might be attached to any research funds he manages to acquire (Rio, perhaps).
Not to mention the rockstar-like adoration of a whole class of groupthink groupie undergraduates –
of both sexes.
00
.
Of course, I do appreciate that all that is a mere pittance to the gazillions Jo Nova collects every week from Big Oil and Big Tobacco, but since Professor Bain is not on their payroll, unfortunately he has to settle for whatever the taxpayers can afford.
00
MV
There is something disturbingly inferential ( have I invented a new adjective?) about that last phrase:
“groupie undergraduates – of both sexes.”
It just seems to imply something that is a little threatening.
00
Science does not deal in the subjective. Its provable or it’s not. Correctness should not be a function of political affiliations.
00
You’ve nailed it! Cheers
00
.
Jo Nova,
While I appreciate that this little tete a tete with Bain might be something of an ego-boost to you, don’t lose sight of the fact that, unlike you, he is being paid (courtesy of the taxpayer) to write his endless missives on why we should all have a full-frontal lobotomy and meekly accept the decrees of our betters, aka the “climate scientists” – and, of course, the sociologists.
Truth is, he is a man who, by his own admission is:
* – ignorant of the fact that there are many skeptical qualified scientists out there,
* – ignorant of the fact that there is a vast library of peer-reviewed, published articles rebutting CAGW,
* – ignorant of the fact that those “climate scientists” he holds in such esteem and insists we should listen to, have been caught out lying, cheating, fudging data, and committing fraud,
* – ignorant of the fact that the IPCC has been caught in so many “gates” now it has become a laughing stock,
* – ignorant of the fact that “denier” is an extremely offensive term, and why,
and perhaps most important of all,
* – ignorant of the fact that so-called “global warming” has stopped.
Jo, at some point you have to stop and ask yourself just how much of your valuable but unpaid time you are prepared to waste on such a petty, ill-informed, ignorant but taxpayer-funded little non-entity.
You are trying to defend scientific integrity and sound government policy-making.
He, on the other hand, is defending his place at the publicly funded slops trough.
00
@memoryvault,
While you are correct in that all things you bulleted are issues that have not been resolved, I support the “attempt” at discussing the issues in a calm and measured way. Many of these issues will take years to resolve.
I do believe a good will gesture of a reasonable “ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors” would be interesting. Unfortunately, Dr. Bain thinks that the onus of this should be on the skeptics to create an audit organization. Oddly enough, we have one… CLIMATE AUDIT.
Steve McIntyre has documented all “ERRORS” found up to date, and how many have been addressed? Does Steve qualify as a “Climate Scientist(tm)”. He is published in peer reviewed material…
Dr. Bain needs to clarify his banter and disingenuous (denier addendum…please) dialog with his “non-target audience”. So, are we to create our climate scientist “Dream Teams” and watch the scoring?
But, yes, we need to remain as polite as possible to carry dialog, not to shut it down in every slight… but one can tally the slights 😉
00
And those are pretty much the same catagories that Skeptics and Climate Scientists fall into. No wonder he supports the latter.
Strange, though, that he can’t understand that illogic — Appeal to Authority (“consensus” and limitation of discussion to “expert” “climate scientists”), ad hominem (“Fellow Travelers” and “deniers”) and smug, self-proclaimed ignorance (RE: the NIPCC) — aren’t really supporting arguments. Perhaps he doesn’t have an adequate background to engage in a logical discussion?
00
“Perhaps he doesn’t have an adequate background to engage in a logical discussion?”
He is a sociologist, of course he doesn’t !!! DOH !!!
00
“the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem”
That is already a climb down from the “science is settled” and the claim that it is definitely the greatest threat to life.
” I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists”
If you are PROPOSING a theory you need to be an expert in all fields. If you are picking a hole in a theory all you need is a single credible piece of evidence of a flaw in one part of the theory.
(See what a mere statistician did to the Holy Hockey Stick of St Michael.)
“You and your fellow-travellers…”
Starts up a new derogatory term now…
Pointing out the fact that the IPCC has become politicized is hardly inconsistent so I am amazed at that line of attack. The issue SHOULD only be about the science but it is hardly Jo’s fault that it is now a political football.
” then in my view the most productive approach would be to produce an alternative expert report (say the ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors) – I expect you could find a source of funding for it”
Sure. Governments would fall over themselves to fund that. Let us eat cake…
“…it is the responsibility of the proponents to prove their point. I would counter that while this view is defensible as a debating point, it is unproductive in advancing scientific understanding..”
So the onus of proof on the proponent to prove is unproductive? Interesting.
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.
Dilbert puts it best:
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2011-03-29/
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I just spurted coffe all over my laptop!
Bwhaahahahah
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He sure does!!!!!!
ROTFLMAO!
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memoryvault, is that typist-dog’s name Kenji*, by any chance?
—————————–
*Anthony Watts’ (WUWT) mutt, Kenji, was admitted to the “Union of Concerned Scientists” back in October 7th, 2011. See here.
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Kenji is no mutt.
And he’s got a nose for physical evidence. 😉
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“Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem. You and your fellow-travellers may not be fans of the IPCC, and all institutions have their faults, but that is their overall conclusion. Further, through the IPCC and other sources, scientists have provided evidence that may not convince you, but has been of a sufficient standard that governments over the world are prepared to act, often despite its political unpopularity. – Dr Paul Bain
Whether you like it or not, Dr. Bain, there is documented evidence of collusion to hide and misrepresent experimental observations on the nature of the fountain of energy that Copernicus discovered at the center of the Solar System in 1543. You and your fellow-travellers may not be fans of experimental data and measurements, but they demonstrate that Climategate emails and documents were only the visible tip of a cancerous growth that developed out-of-sight on government science after 1945.
1. “False information” was reported “in 1946 on the fountain of energy that created our elements, sustains life on Earth and still controls Earth’s climate”.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
2. Rud Istvan notes that his “previous Climate Etc post on crop yields and NRC’s 2011 booklet Warming World revealed a ‘deliberate’ misrepresentation”.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/08/the-government-climate-complex/
3. In the early 1970s when space age measurements revealed that our elements were made in the Sun [1-3], Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon negotiated away the Apollo space program and we were warned the world’s growing population might cause dangerous global cooling [4].
4. Subsequent measurements [5], including data from the 1995 Galileo probe of Jupiter [6], confirmed the validity of [1-3]. This CSPAN video shows the hidden data being belatedly released by NASA in 1998 [7].
5. President Eisenhower warned of the danger to our form of government from corruption of of government-funded science in his 1961 farewell address to the nation [8].
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
References:
1. “Xenon in carbonaceous chondrites”, Nature 240, 99-101 (1972): http://tinyurl.com/27lzpy6
2. “Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Transactions Missouri Academy Sciences 9, 104-122 (1975)
3. “Strange xenon, extinct super-heavy elements, and the solar neutrino puzzle”, Science 195, 208-2010 (1977): http://tinyurl.com/ypxbk3
4. “What’s Happening to Our Climate?” National Geographic Magazine (Nov 1976): http://tinyurl.com/7bd6y5m
5. “”Neutron Repulsion”, The APEIRON Journal 19, 123-150 (2012): http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf
6. “Isotopic ratios in Jupiter confirm intra-solar diffusion”, Meteoritics and Planetary Science 33, A97, 5011 (1998):
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc98/pdf/5011.pdf
7. “Scientific Genesis: Global Warming Scam” (2011): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3VIFmZpFco
8. Scientific Genesis: Science versus Propaganda (1961): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLld5PR4ts
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Misinformation about the Sun [1,2] was purposely promoted and adopted without discussion or debate [3] after “nuclear fires” destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945 and the United Nations was formed on 24 Oct 1945.
Sir Fred Hoyle himself tells the story:
[1] Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 255-59 (1946)
[2] Fred Hoyle, “The synthesis of the elements from hydrogen,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 343-83 (1946)
[3] Fred Hoyle, Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist’s Life (University Science Books, Mill Valley, CA, USA, Published 1 April 1994, 443 pages) pp. 153-154
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For Dr Bain and others like him, this discussion really is not even new, we had the same discussion over at Watts with a senior person who to be honest was polite whereas there is some slight sneering going on in Dr Bain’s reply.
But onto his central meme on “it should be a debate for climate scientists”, but he does not define climate scientist. For those of us in the debate a long time, we remember a time when the only professional people who could speak out were those who could not be punished or censored or people who feared being punished. It was Salem all over again, Dr Bain won’t talk about that, people with names and credentials that are 20th century science itself who came out of retirement, thousands of scientific signatures on documents confounding his consensus point of view.
Dr Bain is yet to castigate Al Gore, or the Nobel Laureate committee, the same Journals he writes for when as good science advocates they refuse to present all relevant data , whether it’s Yamal tree that grew into a giant hockey stick, or Mr Flanerry’s predictions of never ending drought causing several states in Australia to build energy intensity desalination plants and putting their treasuries into the red.
He is yet to say to every funder now be good chaps and award funding for both propositions.
My ex profession was banking and I hold a maths degree with a major that dealt with those pesky rejiggered multivariable math models that were originally designed for (surprise, surprise) economic modelling and forecasting with the same success as we see in climate science. Bankers require feasability proofs as second nature.
So Dr Bain are you basically saying, people funding your area of study are not allowed to question unless they are in your club, because the people who pay the piper generally decide the music.
While you are taking the taxpayers money you will deliver the taxpayer the right to check that you are not malfeasant you will allow unhindered checks and double checks at sceintific standard and you will prove your thesis to the non partisan highest possible scientific standard.
Sorry Doc you aint the first, seeing a possible derailment on your politically motivated tax payer funded global warming gravy train.
Mate I’m the bloke who said I see a flat curve and I am not seeing catastrophic global warming, hey everyone it’s stopped warming. A decade ago now and that set the hawk amongst the pigeons.
Maths gives you a lot of skills and one is knowing a rising or falling curve and some curves are just noise.
Now onto the much vaunted precautionary principle, what if we are heading into a Maunder or larger cold event how is this falsified global warming proposition and transition to renewable energy gonna help us.
So Dr Bain what if you are wrong and as history does tell us happens from time to time we enter a cool phase, what is your advice then.
I tell you all and sundry I ever like the sun for the crime of global warming it was my number 1 suspect all along.
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Is Dr Bain saying that the IPCC is not a political organization. If that is the case why are their reports called a Summary of Policy Makers and not just something simple like the Science Report.
Also if the IPCC is unbiased who are the climate scientists in WG1 who don’t agree with the science of AGW.Because if the science of WG1 is falsified then what ever evidence the scientists in WG2 and WG3 are seeing in is not down to AGW.
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Ahem,
I think you might find that the IPCC publication is the Summary For Policy Makers
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Yes you are right sorry.
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But the “I” of IPCC is still for Intergovernmental.
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I suppose fellow-travelers is slightly better than calling us useful-idiots.
But in any case there is an incredible lack of understanding both in the initial paper or the response above.
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I have a different view of science to Dr Bain. Without being a true Popperian, I agree with the late Karl Popper that scientific hypotheses should gain the greater credence when various sets of data, or tests, or replications, have failed to falsify them.
To use a legal analogy, a lay jury is more likely to be convinced of the prosecution’s case when a much stronger prosecution clearly fails in the cross-examination of the evidence. Conversely, if the prosecution relies on ruses to encourage the jury to be prejudiced against the defence’s case (or if the police investigation deliberately fails to pursue relevant lines of relevant inquiry that may damage the case) then the jury will be sceptical, if the judge does not first declare a mistrial.
As an example, take the Africagate scandal. There were a number of reasons to reject the forecast of a 50% reduction in crop yields in Morocco by 2020 , but instead the UNIPCC exaggerated the soundness of the evidence and made faulty generalizations. This is a direct consequence of shutting out critical analysis. The work of Dr Bain (and less sophisticated others – e.g. John Cook and Tamino) can only serve to ensure similar exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims are made in the next report.
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I think its fairly clear that scientists are pushing their own agenda, and we are quite within our rights to call them out on this. We don’t need to understand the science to know when someone is lying, and a good many leading climate scientists have been caught out fabricating data to promote AGW.
It is unfortunate that so many on our side come up with ludicrous arguments designed to undermine AGW. There is no need to list them all, but Salby on where CO2 is coming from, Plimer on where CO2 is coming from, Watts on urban heat island, and every man and his dog on the 2nd law of thermodynamics are typical. We only succeed in making ourselves look like idiots when we spruik such obvious nonsense.
Clearly the only effective strategy we should follow is to challenge the competence and honesty of AGW science, and scientists in general. And if anyone ever calls us “deniers”, we should get uppity about it.
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Have you been hacked JB?
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It’s Brookesgate!
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I’m trying my hand at parody, Gee Aye.
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And may I applaud this parody. Only when the increasingly desperate hangers-on to climate science see just how degenerate this new Lysenkoism has become will they quietly disperse and do real jobs for a living, like writing parody.
You know it makes sense……
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PS I doubt if you would know the true meaning of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics even if it bit you on the bum.
Now, that’s parody….;o)
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Thumbs up
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“on urban heat island”
nah doesn’t exist.. and doesn’t effect weather station in the vicinity of urban areas.. Just ask BEST (or worst). urban areas are exactly the same size as they were 30 years ago !!
gees John.. don’t you even go anywhere.. never visited a city on a hot day ?????
ever heard of urban sprawl?
You only succeed in making yourselve look like an idiot and a fool when you ignore such obvious influences on the temperature record.
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Andy
UHI is a real thing. That’s why it’s corrected for in the temperature record. Of course, climate scientists knew that, but separately Anthony Watts and the Koch brothers were convinced otherwise, and helped put the claim to rest thanks to their invaluable crowdsourcing and funding.
Thanks guys!
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So why do the corrections, taking in the UHI elevate modern temperatures even further while reducing past temperatue??
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/1998changesannotated.gif?w=640%20alt=
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“it’s corrected for in the temperature record.”
Show me where they have gone out and look at the history of every temperature site, to determine the real effect of UHI on the temperature readings
quote from Hansen et al “but the effect is modest in magnitude” yeah like 2-3 degrees at least at many sites.. way more than the supposed global rise.
And all those conveniently “lost” cold area sites.
And satellite night lights data.. come off it. They need to be looking at the CHANGE in urbanisation, which can only be done by historic field work.
Until they have done that for every site that is near or in an urban area, the “global land temperature” is a joke.
And as Bob points out, why do ALL the adjustments increase the trend. Amazing coincidence..NOT !!!
Hansen, Giss, CRU et al have a lot of questions to answer, and I hope one day they are forced to answer them…. in court..
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Let’s skip the middle and go straight to the end
UHI eh? 😉
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The End???
Not even the beginning..
Where in that mess of choices is recorded temperatures minus UHI??
Hint: NOT in the adjusted series…
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My darling boy, you’ll have trouble convincing anyone of UHI in the UAH temperature series 😉
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Yes John i could agree more
Other examples are Al Gore with his fraudulent use of ice core data which was as clear a case of fraud by deception than anyone has ever seen.
We all know about Flannery’s chicanery to swindle 90 mil out of KRudds hands.
Many examples of the IPCC’s fraudulent work regarding peer review and the list goes on.
What is the alternative John? Kiss the feet of Gillard and asked to be taxed ever more so we can save the planet ever quicker?
I look forward to your thoughts on this.
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Bain is like most warmists, he want the political and sociology parts, but WITHOUT the science.
Understandable, because as soon as proper science is used (not the grey mush and corruption of data and computer models based on political ideal that are prevalent in the IPCC), the whole thing collapses in a slimy, oozing heap.
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Dr Bain seems unaware that Climate change is the substitute for Global warming,introduced five years ago,when it became apparant that warming had stoped.This was despite the fact that the Mauna Loa Observatory Hawaii has shown a 1.25PPM average increase in CO2 since 1960 when measurements started.If rising CO2 levels were not causing Global warming,then its causing Climate change.NASA state on there website that mankind have not yet developed the technology to accurately measure CO2 quantites in the atmosphere.The UN IPCC realized that as climates are always changing,there could be no arguement,and the world would be in awe and fear that CO2 was causing carbon to pollute the atmosphere.Our dear leader keeps telling us that carbon pollutes the atmosphere,and the ACCC takes no action on this political indoctrination.Could Dr Bain give examples of climate change in the last twenty years,that have not occured before.
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I doubt Dr Bain will respond so i will try and help you out here.
#1 We will get less snow………whats that the last decade has been the snowiest on record in the NTH Hemisphere? Well yes thats what the models tell us and it is exactly what we expected. You see in a warmer world we will get more water vapour which will fall as rain and in the colder parts it will fall as snow…..in a warmer world.
#2 Less rain more (intense) droughts………whats that places like Australia and others have had higher than average rainfall in the past decade or so? Well yes thats what the models tell us and it is exactly what we expected. You see in a warmer world we will get more water vapour which will fall as rain and in the colder parts it will fall as snow places like Australia are not cold enough so it does snow it just rains…..in a warmer world.
#3 More cyclones and hurricanes……………Whats that they are at there lowest ever recoded? Well yes thats what the models tell us and it is exactly what we expected. You see in a warmer world we will get more water vapour which will……….oh i give up.
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I first saw the term ”denier” in the American press, disbelievers were ”likened to Holocaust deniers” and then it was shortened to just deniers probably to save printing cost.
This term was purposefully used to stir a feeling of revulsion towards those who didn’t accept the warming mantra.
Denier, just by itself is accepted as meaning Holocaust denier.
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Dear Dr Paul,
HEARTLAND INSTITUTE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sincerely, Jazza(not a climate scientist in fact not any kind of scientist but an avid reader and a lucid thinker)
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“the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem”
No, Mr Bain. This is actually a definition in reverse.
A scientist is generally only classed as a climate scientist (by the self-called climate scientists) IF he/she agrees with the hypotheisis of anthropogenic climate change.
There are some others that have to be recognised because they ARE actually REAL climate scientists
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The rider is the next step in the development of Hansenkoism is they will insist the only people who can comment and teach this science will be those who have a PhD in climate science.
One of the most disturbing CRU e-mails was their quiet smirking that they were teaching undergraduates fake physics. The people in charge like Environmental Scientist Phil Jones are of such poor quality [can’t operate a spreadsheet] they could not survive without cheating.
However, science is now full of also rans who swamp quality, by definition rationed at birth.
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I’ll just applaud Dr. Bain’s willingness to engage and let the rest go, for now. Thank you for participating, Dr. Bain.
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Yes, thank you Paul.
Gives us an insight into the scientific ignorance of the true believer.
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The IPCC (International Panel on Chocolate Cats) has reached the irrefutable conclusion that all cats are made of chocolate. Anthroprogenic breeding of domestic cats has resulted in their entire physiology being comprised of some type of chocolate.
A Summary for Policymakers was published in 2010 and has been followed up with supporting reports from experts in the field of chocolate cats, documenting decades of ground-breaking research using computer models. The 2011 Conference held in Davos, Switzerland reached several consensus positions on the measures necessary to avert an irreversible chocolatification of all mammals by the end of the century. Conference sponsors included all major makers of anthroprogenic chocolate are understood to have urged a global ban on the anthroprogenic breeding of cats, but could not be reached for further comment.
The electrified perimeter fence surrounding the conference venue was breached several times by zoologist and veterinarian deniers of the science. Some of the deniers, describing themselves as “sceptics” have described the IPCC as being irrational and dangerous, citing examples of children, believing the chocolate cat hypothesis having been taught about it in pre-school, have tried to peel several live kittens.
The IPCC stated that such reports don’t invalidate the science as they have not been made by experts in chocolate cat science.
PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) responded that the deniers were evidently too stupid to understand chocolate cat science.
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.
Great analogy.
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Ta.
Now expanded, illustrated and blogged at IPCC Update
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🙂
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Dr Bain writes, among other disputable material, ‘However, I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts.’
Sir Winston Churchill did not attentd University. He was a poor scool student and was punished for it. Yet, at times of extreme dificulrt in World War 11, he took command of a high-ranking, highly-educated military machine and made the important final decisions. Does this not show that a lowly person is capable of advievement surpassing the advice of an elite?
OTOH, a similar situation existed in Germany, where a peasant declared himself supreme military officer, but failed. He had the gumption to suicide when he realsed the error of his ways.
My problem is that Germany seems to be shaping up for a third round in 100 years. Try a read of – http://www.european-climate-forum.net/fileadmin/ecf-documents/Press/A_New_Growth_Path_for_Europe__Synthesis_Report.pdf Please feel free to misconstrue this report, Dr Bain.
It is not the University skills of the main players that matters, so much as their intent and application thereof. Churchill did not have a genocide policy. The other guy did. We are still working out what the latest mob have in mind for morals.
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Jo, Dr Bain is doing it again in his letter to you. He uses the term “fellow-travellers” to describe persons who agree with you who may not be what he considers to be climate scientists. Fellow-traveller is a collective term that was used most famously at the Nuremburg Trials to refer to those who while not being Nazis had engaged in activities that mutually benefited them both. The film maker Leni Reifenstahl was (and is still) termed a fellow-traveller as she had made documentaries for the Nazis that promoted their public image and agenda and gained her fame and fortune.
I actually don’t care what he calls us because the name calling is symptomatic of the warmist agenda epic-fail. Every time they name-call, they are signalling their own desperate position.
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Well spotted and thanks for the explanation.
This appears to be of the same technique as the ‘accusation’ that skeptics/sceptics are all heavily oil/fossil fuel industry funded – when all the evidence shows it is those promoting AGW who are so funded..
Most no doubt merely bring this retort out in lieu of having anything to offer in the arguments about the science, but I think the orginal meme was created by those who know how to manipulate with propaganda techniques and must be amused by the distractions from whatever point was being discussed.
The use of “denier” is of the same type. Accusing those opposing them and their ideology with the deliberate original meme association with the Holocaust denial is to distract from its applicability to themselves, the regulators. Those heavily promoting the AGW fiction and using the term are most likely unaware of the manipulation and unaware – even if they share the ideology of the regulators – just how clever the manipulation.
Not just such as the now becoming better known origins of ‘useful idiot’ http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=useful%20idiots
Doris Lessing was gullible because she didn’t know enough not to be, just like the bulk of the rest of us.
Most teaching of history is cursory, its a huge subject, and doesn’t go much beyond who did what to whom and what happened next. How many of us understand the sequence of thinking in the political and philosophical movements of the last centuries to have a good enough grasp of the different ideologies in the conflicts in our history to actually fathom what was taking place? Here’s some connecting the dots:
http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/nazi-greens-inconvenient-history
And then bring in the bankers..
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Oh no its worse than we thought
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/weak-solar-convection-approximately-100-times-slower-than-scientists-had-previously-projected/
Seriously if this study holds true then we know very little about the sun, luckily for DR Bain and his fellow travellers changes in the sun have very little effect on the climate.
Just show how important climate scientists really are hey.
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Condescending twat…
It was the much hailed Prof Garnaut who said in reply to a criticism he wasn’t a ‘climate scientist’ that: “all you need to read climate science papers is an ability to read and comprehend English…”
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““I do believe that the technical aspects of this debate should be between climate scientists, as with complex multi-disciplinary issues it is very easy for findings to be misconstrued by non-experts.”
”
And yet he accepts the IPCC.. go figure !!!
Ignorance truly is bliss, in his case.
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No doubt all of you are equally incensed by the Petition Project that Jo regularly wheels out. I wonder why the cat catches all your tongues, simultaneously at those moments.
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Hi tyristan
I’ll bite.
What is a Pet project when it’s at home?
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Sorry too much to drink
That should have been Tristan.
Of course.
Our very own parser.
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This
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Thank you Tristan,
KK
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Thanks for that Tristan, A hypothesis only has to be invalidated once for it to fail. That happened when CO2 kept rising and the temperature didn’t.
That is 37 k of witnesses to the models failing to predict, of course being scientists from all the disciplines (not religions or political affiliations) and not claiming a climate science degree whatever that is may not impress, but then again getting a consensus of the hypothesis being a true physics application may have been more relevant for your argument.
All they are saying is the hypothesis has not been validated, there is no convincing evidence. They are not offering a hypothesis they are judging a hypothesis failed by scientific principle, not a hard concept a lot of lay people learn it is as child, another name is trial and error.
So as in all expert opinion, come up with 37 k saying it has been proved to be true, of course you can’t. No one has ever stopped a petition of such importance that we are all going to die because a life gas CO2 is too much. So raise a petition of scientists who say the AGW hypothesis is proved with their science credentials.
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Just as well the hypothesis is not “CO2 and temperature match each other step for step”.
When people, like yourself, think that’s the hypothesis, is doesn’t really matter how many of them there are. It’s not an informed opinion. If you’re going to challenge the veracity of AGWs claim, at least understand what the claim actually is.
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The Claim: Human origin CO2 is responsible for heating our atmosphere.
The Scientific Truth: ALL solid and gaseous and liquid material impinged on or passed through by incoming solar energy
absorbs some of that energy.
This absorption process delays the ultimate return of this “held’ energy to it’s ultimate home: Deep Space.
If we cannot delay this heat loss sufficiently we will all freeze. Unfortunately Human origin CO2 contributes almost
nothing to the temporary retention of this valuable energy and MMAGW is therefore a scam.
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Well Tristan dazzle us with your knowledge what does the hypothesis claim.
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Beyond the obfuscation and sophistry, not much of substance except for the new term for us – fellow travellers. It, of course, has its very own dark connotations.
Pointman
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Not much obfuscation there Pointman!
….dark connotations indeed!
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G’Day M’Lud Edmund.
Probabalistic science at its best …
“Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem”
Fellow Traveler, a defensible term (like denier) except for – “The English-language phrase came into vogue in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s as a pejorative term for a sympathizer of Communism or particular Communist states, who was nonetheless not a “card-carrying member” of a Communist party.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow_traveler
My take on the usage & publication of so-called science papers using the term “denier.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/the-nigger-word/
Pointman
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When it is put like that I find “fellow traveller” more offensive then denier.
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Dr Bain,
I’m not a scientist, in fact it will signal the end of western civilisation if I was, there would no hope. 🙂
The largets gripe I have is being treated as a child, with simplistic arguments, as if i can’t “get” complicated proposals.
I’ll give ya the heads up. Of those of us that have made money, been broke, made some more money, raised kids, guided them thorugh the minefield of adulecences, bought and sold houses, started and crashed businesses, most of us are telented enough to grasp complicated hypothesis.
When a Physicist, who’s calculations must be backed by some fair dinkum methods, formula and accuracy tells me that “the IPCC has got the whole idea of back radiation wrong”, “and here is the formula to prove it”, “see what you can do with that”? And he is correct, or he’ll end up having “a new one ripped”?…. Don’t “p%^s on me and tell me it’s raining!
Either put up your models for scrutiny, stop mentioning some sort mythical collective, stop the personality attacks, adhominims etc and deal with the numbers. This is science for gawds sake, not some sort beleif based inquisistion, which last time I read didn’t end well for all concerned. Just an asside, as most of us have demonstrated we are individuals, I’d refrain from bringing any inferance to collectives. Not a good way to get your point accross when dealing with free thinking people. You may end up with a flaming bag of dogeedodo on your front doorstep. 🙂
Treat adults as adults. Educate, Assist, argue, demonstrate, prove! Don’t dare, don’t even think about talking about frigging consensus! No one give a rats clacker if all the scientiss on the planet were telling us there is going to be an asteroid land in my backyard. Probably help the backyard incidently. 🙂 Show me why, or bugger off!
Feel free to tidy this up if you have to Jo. I’ve had just about as much as I can handle from these tossers tellin’ me what to think, how to think it, and when to think it.
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Hi Nick
i guess we all have days like this.
Sometimes late at night after a few drinks, I forgetbto proof rtead my comments, and it shows. Your comments were interesting.
ps. I hope Tristan or gee Aye don’t find this vbecause they like to correct incorrect or dui grammaer.
regards
KK for MFJ
🙂
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KK,
Thats the funniesrt replie IVe seen all day!!
:9
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Thaaanksssssss TBA
🙂
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Drinking now… how does this parse?
Hmm it is OK… will drink more. If I don’t get back to you I’ve parsed out.
Someone laugh!
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ha ha
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.
🙂
Yup – good one!
I got put on a lexical analyser driving home!
Came up negative – I was happy!
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All that matters is the point, Keith 🙂
You should hear the rant my kids and friends have to deal with? sometimes they’re even intelligable. 😉
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The IPCC atmospheric physics is broken as shown in the APS document I referenced in my top post. [The authors pointed out the basic error in Eq 17 to maintain their professional reputation. The IPCC models hide the mistake in the code and dare you to try to discover it.]
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Dr Bain thinks that raising issues regarding potential sources of bias or corruption in science is not part of science itself. He thinks that bias or corruption in science is rather a social or political matter and hence Jo is debarred from discussing it under her self-created rule of ‘sticking to the science’.
I think you are wrong, Dr Bain. Looking for and attempting to eliminate or control for sources of human fallability is inherent to the scientific process and very much part of Jo’s brief in this discussion.
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An astute observation, Meg.
You must be one of the many people who read Jo’s blog often but never leave comments… until now.
I do wonder if the carbon tax is bringing more people to Jo’s door, and possibly over to the skeptic camp.
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Anyway we thank the guest speaker, not often one has a guest who calls the audience names to get their attention. They don’t get it, we are climate skeptics some warmers, some coolers and mostly people who can think and reason critically, we don’t do post normal science or it’s more familiar name junk science.
Anyway, I have had my crack and await our bloghost’s response.
Paul I fear greatly for your ego,
Jack Walker.
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When I read posts like this one, I immediately hit the keyboard only to change my mind because what I type is often crude and rude and full of emotion. Jo has often snipped my posts or chastised me.
I can’t help myself. I get angry when I read such STUPIDITY and NAIVETTE from an obviously highly educated and intelligent man.
Let me demonstrate with the following quote from Bain.
Mr Bain, either you are very very gullible, or you are a very lazy man who can’t be bothered enough to spend a few minutes to research a subject of such import.
You take the IPCC as an “expert” panel of scientists at face value. You just accept this as fact, ergo you accept their findings as legitimate.
But a few minutes of research would have revealed the following…
Wow Mr Bain, who would have thought some of the best Climate science minds of the world were from Mali, Tuvalu, Swaziland, Chad, Libya Fiji or (gulp) Sudan?
Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. The fact remains that the IPCC is A UNITED NATIONS POILITICAL ORGANIZATION. Let me quote the IPCC secretariat again for your edification…
Too bad if, say, 3 of the most qualified atmospheric scientists were all from…ooohh I don’t know…Boulder Colorado. At least 2 of them would have to make way for a UN approved lady from Mongolia hey Mr Bain.
The bureau isn’t the only problem. LEAD AUTHORS of chapters are just as big a problem.
When a committee of the InterAcademy Council investigated the IPCC, 232 people filled out a questionnaire. The quotes below are drawn from the IPCC insiders who answered the questionnaire.
and
and
etc etc. Click the link above and weep Mr Bain.
So you see Mr Bain, the IPCC CANNOT be a gold standard as we have been led to believe. And because of this fact, I expect, nay I demand people such as yourself QUESTION and BE SCEPTICAL of the findings of the IPCC on behalf of the voiceless, uneducated lesser mortals like myself.
Now do some research, get the facts and DO SOMETHING Mr Bain. But most of all, now that you have been “educated”, DO NOT cite the IPCC as an authority on this subject in future discussions here or elsewhere.
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Hear Hear..!!
Well said BH!
As I have found out often, being guilty of being snipped myself, I find it hard to control my feelings sometimes about this emotive (not religous!) of all subjects!
You said it succintly for many of us…
`do not cite the IPCC as an authority on this subject`
The IPCC Chairman is too busy playing with trains in the boardroom.
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Baa,
As usual, your thoughts are spot on, factual and pertinent!
To expand even further:
Of the 18,531 references cited in the 2007 IPCC report 5,587 are not peer-reviewed! That is over 30%!
http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.php
Using DR. Paul Bain’s reasoning, we must reject the IPCC and it’s ridiculous claims! While we are at it, let’s dismiss James Hansen’s doom and gloom predictions out of hand as he is an astronomer!
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I read all of this in awe of the many considered, properly scientific minded folk who read and contribute to this blog but I can’t help wondering where all of this is getting us. We can angrily bang away at our keyboards knowing full well that in a rational world we are striking mortal blows but we are not living in that world. I am not a scientist but if I were I would be well angry at the demeaning of my profession. Isn’t it high time we fought them on their own turf and formed some sort of association (very publicly) and used the tactics they use. I don’t mean putting on boiler suits and chaining ourselves to public amenities like the terminally stupid activists do. I mean an association of like minded people, across the political spectrum (yes, there are left wing skeptics) and throughout the world, demanding the right to be heard. I am convinced there are millions of us out there. After all, ultimately isn’t this about restoring the science first and the politics second?
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It’s what is happening via the internet.
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Good point ceetee
Having been out of the game for too long it took me a while to bang through the wall of misinformation and misdirection that existed around the MMAGW Construct.
Many now are sure within themselves that the science is not only faulty but more likely deliberately fraudulent but are probably like me, still stunned at knowing that they actually got away with this con for so long.
We watch the attempts to get the Liberal Part to “come out’ and tell it like it is but see instead the reaction designed to sort of tell the truth but mainly to preserve votes.
IF there was an easy way to change mass delusion then the German people , who are pretty smart, would have been able to resist being drawn into WW11; the USA voters , many years ago, would have rid themselves of politicians who were associated with Banksters who ruined their economy are stole form them and Tom Cruise would have joined the Church of England instead of Scientology.
There is already a climate change party in Australia but it seems that most Australians dont care if they are lied to.
Yep Heuston, we got a problem to turn all this around.
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.
Can we for a moment invoke the KISS principle**?
CAGW hypothesis predicts atmospheric CO2 UP = temperature UP.
Observation shows atmospheric CO2 UP = temperature UP, and DOWN, and UP, and DOWN and . . .
Therefore, observation demonstrates CAGW hypothesis falsified.
End of story.
QED.
Would, could, Professor Bain or any of our sycophant trolls please explain why this very simple, straightforward, elementary, basic test of the scientific method, is somehow not applicable in this case?
.
** – KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
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KISS is always the best MV.
KISS the band, was the worst glam rockers I ever saw, Go THE SWEET 🙂
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Black Adder,
Perhaps maybe this glam rock band is better than both you mentioned.
Sunday Music – Anthem
Tony.
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Dear Memoryvault, this is my cup of tea but the end of story is far away. CAGW predicts hot spot. Hot spot not there. CAGW false again. Did you know that a false theory implies everything, true or false? (See the truth table of the implication). If we ignore the false consequences the true ones remain (the white swans whereas black swans are no real swans). These are needed for the consensus among the experts. Don’t think that outsiders, deniers, or fellow-travelers are allowed to question it. If the consensus breaks down a lot of careers may do the same.
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The notion that citizens of a republic should base public policy on the unquestioned word of “experts” — namely, “climate scientists” — is abhorrent. If you as a scientist want to influence public policy, to the potential benefit or detriment of all of us, then you must convince us that you are right. That is your job — especially since in this era, you are being paid very largely by taxes extracted from us.
One does not have to be a professional scientist to understand the scientific method, and to recognize when it is or isn’t being employed. For instance, how many expert peer-reviewed climate-related papers have been replicated? I haven’t seen a figure, but a recent book claimed that across all sciences, 80% could not be repeated! Is the figure higher for climatology — or lower?
The main purpose of a liberal education is precisely to prepare ordinary citizens to use their own judgement in matters affecting them and their society. We are not ignorant; we are capable of critical thinking; and for just that reason, many of us are not willing to take your word for it!
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Dr Paul Bain: “Whether you like it or not, the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change exists and is likely to be a problem. You and your fellow-travellers may not be fans of the IPCC, and all institutions have their faults, but that is their overall conclusion. Further, through the IPCC and other sources, scientists have provided evidence that may not convince you, but has been of a sufficient standard that governments over the world are prepared to act, often despite its political unpopularity.”
A lie doesn’t become true by continual repetition..
..it remains a lie by those continuing to repeat it, and is a con by those who repeat it knowing it is a lie.
The 1995 IPCC report was with malice aforethought deliberately altered from the consensus scientists’ conclusion, which remains the IPCC consensus science conclusion regardless of Santer’s deletion of it:
Here are some more of the details from: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Social/IPCC-Santer.htm
This isn’t about science, it never was, it is politics so let’s stop pretending.
Nature knew full well the deceitful change from the consensus of real scientists to the still wet behind the ears ‘useful idiot’ Santer’s rewrite to give the story you’re still promoting as science truth.
Santer admitted his fraud: http://larouchepac.com/node/12823
If you didn’t know it was a lie, you do now.
The “science” is fiction, created to support the agenda of those who got Santer to re-write the IPCC report.
Please see the several posts pointing out the fantasy fisics on:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/my-reply-to-dr-paul-bain-deniers-believers-nature/
And there is much more on this site detailing the fictional fisics and ongoing manipulations of data should you be interested in exploring further.
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I would like to meet Santer down a dark alley, [snip, not at all helpful] ED.
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Santer has cost us Billions….
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They would have found someone else, he wasn’t yet established then, there still are plenty knowingly subverting the science to the agenda – The Cause, as the climate gate emails show they think of it.
Real scientists are put into difficult situations, here’s Chris Landsea’s response when it happened to him:
http://sppiblog.org/news/dr-chris-landsea-leaves-the-ipcc
He was also involved in the 1995 report, but few understood then where the fraud changes were designed to take us and, I think, we humans have on balance a glass half full approach to what life throws at us, unless someone knew that agenda at the time he’d most likely think it just opportunistic hacking and think it would be put right, somehow..
These, the Santers and the Trenberths and the Hansens and the Manns, are just puppets, there’s no point in getting angry with them. That’s just a distraction, those pulling their strings don’t give a damn about them anymore than they give a damn about us. The real manipulators don’t see that as a drawback, on the contrary, they think sociopathic behaviour is the ideal, that love and compassion is a failing.
And that’s the bottom line, these people are actually not very well.. Unfortunately for us, this doesn’t mean they’re stupid. As our many histories show, it only takes a few of them to get support from the like minded to take control, because, for most people violence is the last resort and it isn’t for these. Violence always plays into their game, in the confusion they can create what appears to be ‘a good’ alternative to that which people rebel against, but it more often than not turns out to be the same few in a new disguise.
Education is what we all need to counter this, such as we get on these blogs in the exchange of information, the more we wake up to how we’re being manipulated the greater our chance of making a real difference. If we don’t know the history, our story now, there’s nothing to pass on for future generations to remember, just another story of a conflict about which no one remembers the detail.
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GO Baa!!
Luv your work – these fools think they own this space (the WWW) – they don’t know that it is their DOWNFALL”
Cheers,
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It’s a long time between replies in this Nova/Bain dialogue.
The only conversation I know about proceeding slower than this one is SETI!
Maybe we should have sent Voyager’s gold disc to the Forgan Smith building?
Nah, that’s a long shot. No sign of you-know-what. 😀
Doctor Bain says:
Two hundred and two comments thus far and NOBODY thought to mention to Dr Bain the title of Bob Carter’s last book? Climate: The Counter-Consensus. Earth to Dr Bain, the secret is in the title!
He’s right about one thing. The CAGW skeptic crowd suffers from being a cacophany instead of a chorus.
And you know that is probably how we like it.
If we tried to get a single unified “consensus” on this issue we’d have to resort to all the IPCC shenanigans like rigging the committees and ignoring reviewer’s comments. Are the Slayers in or out? Can we pick some Slayers and leave out the idiots? Is the pressure thing legit or is it just noise mining on Venus? Manufacturing a squeaky clean consensus isn’t easy you know! And why would we bother, it’s a mug’s game.
Evidence trumps consensus.
We have measurements, you have Marx.
Game over!
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I once had a very nice telesales person call me and ask a series of questions about buying games by post for a Nintendo or some such device. The questions were to determine how likely I would be to subscribe to each combination of price, availability, and games type. The only problem was, I did not have, nor have I ever bought such a device but the ‘more likely to buy or less likely to buy’ questions couldn’t cope with no one in my household having an interest in the basic product.
Dr Bain’s attitude to CAGW and the public response is much the same. He, and many like him, hope that if they change the way it is presented or offer just the right inducement we’ll fall into line. ‘Sorry, don’t want to buy. I’m hanging the phone up now’.
You first have to convince people that they want what you’re selling and much like any survey, people lie about what they’ll really do. ‘Yeah it sounds really interesting. I’ll sign on the dotted line tomorrow. Bye.’ Even getting people to start acting on CO2 is no guarantee it will last beyond the first carbon tax bill. CAGW is for life, not just for the latest weather headline.
You can’t use pressure sales techniques to push a bigger readjustment of society than the Industrial Revolution but that’s exactly what has been done. Can you recognise these from the last time you had a salesman at the door or the last interview with a climate scientist?
Sign immediately for a better deal.
Time is running out.
Your children are at risk if you don’t buy now.
Think how impressed your neighbours will be when you sign up.
All your neighbours have signed, do you want to be the odd one out?
By signing up you’ll be helping the deserving poor.
By signing up you’ll be helping the fluffy animals.
Signing proves that you’re not racist.
It won’t cost much.
The cost will be worth it.
It’s cheaper if you sign now.
Don’t quote idiots from the internet/down the pub, they don’t know what they’re talking about.
We’ve had teething problems but our product is perfect now.
Trust me I’m an expert.
I can’t answer those questions but I’ll get back to you.
Don’t worry about the small print.
The data is available if you send money.
The data is only available to industry professionals but it has been scrupulously examined.
Look at the glossy brochure.
We put in a lot of pictures because we find customers don’t want to be bothered with details.
These celebrities have signed up.
Look at the industry prepared statistics and graphs.
The graph isn’t up to date because I haven’t got the latest brochure.
You may think you’ve seen a graph that disproves my point but it was wrong/out of date/referring to something else.
No, we aren’t members of a regulatory body but we maintain impeccable standards.
The industry regulates itself and we’ve never been in trouble.
We regularly feature in these trade magazines.
I don’t know what more I can show you to convince you.
Look, you’re wasting my time, if you don’t sign now we’re all in trouble.
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That’s the best analogy I’ve seen. Exactly!
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That is indeed a good analogy, TinyCO2; and it highlights the stunt or “gaming” aspect of CAGW promotion. As I’ve said before, I believe everyone is a skeptic, including people like Dr. Bain and Anna Rose. I think this is easily demonstrated by looking at the stupendous waste, damage and inefficacy of all measures to reduce CO2 emissions, and the indifference to emissions which occur in real time in the real atmosphere.
I have never encountered anyone who actually believes in reducing “carbon emissions” (a senseless term in any case), but I have encountered many who are adherents to a faction calling for “carbon emissions” (senseless term) to be reduced.
Declared skeptics are the only ones with belief. Undeclared skeptics are mere adherents to a belief; they are a faction. Many will say my claim – namely, that all are skeptics – amounts to exaggeration-for-effect. Imagine, however, that human generated GHGs really were a pressing threat to human survival, then ask yourself what your attitude would be in those circumstances. My point becomes clear, doesn’t it?
The problem is not that I’m a skeptic. The problem is that Dr. Bain is a skeptic.
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I agree it’s an excellent point by TinyCO2.
mosomoso said:
The alarmists, Greens etc wouldn’t bother spending any time worrying about what skeptics are saying.
Also there wouldn’t be any more Olympic Games. I shudder to think what the Poms have got in store for us with the opening ceremony. I’m half expecting a strong environmental flavour.
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Ian, TinyCO2 reminds me that I’m the one trying to evaluate, while the other guys are peddling merchandise by method and formula. Consider the exploitation of the current (but well precedented) heatwave in the US: what cools is weather, what warms is climate, according to the rules of selling. The large areas of anomalous cooling are simply kept from the customer’s gaze, as is the Big heat of 1936, and history in general.
TinyCO2’s list of stunts and mind games used to close the sale of CAGW are an example of satire not too far removed from the reality. For the short term, it’s easier if you don’t really believe in your product. Since real emissions of GHGs in real time are a matter of complete indifference to climate alarmists, they can devote themselves unhesitatingly to the task of selling. If they believed, they would have to puzzle over what to do about coal exports, aging energy infrastructure, bushfire policy, nukes, hydro etc. They never bother with any of this because they don’t actually believe. They adhere to a belief-set and a faction, but they don’t actually believe. Silly, but there you have it.
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Paul says that the average skeptic is “probably not the people represented in your blog.” That is true. The most common reason for skepticism is the strange behavior of those promoting the idea.
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Just a heads up (via NoTricksZone) on who still believes:
British EU Parliamentarian: “The Truth Is Nobody Believes In ‘Climate Change’ Anymore; There’s Been No GW For 15 Years!”
and an increasing undercurrent of Germans getting uppity about all the money being spent on worship of “renewable energy” which is beginning to manifest itself as energy poverty:
EU Parliamentarian Calls Germany’s Energy Policy “Senseless…Will Cost €2.3 Trillion To Reduce Temperature 0.003°C”
EU Parliamentarians actually serve no real purpose in government other than as an illusion of the EU being democratic.
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While that’s quite true, there are a few who actually make it their mission to highlight that very problem you speak of.
Who Are You ?
Sadly that is the extent of their influence.
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I agree Joe that it’s good that those brave few take on the challenge to occupy the seats which would otherwise be occupied by feckless rent-seekers; who would merely rubber-stamp the EU executive’s gospel.
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Sceptics are Concerned about the Environment
Dr Bain, if your prejudices had not clouded your judgement, you would not have been surprised at all that sceptics are happy to take actions which will benefit the environment. Sceptics do not need to be cajoled into doing what is good for the environment. In fact all the sceptics I know are more than happy to take action which we know is good for the environment – reforestation, protection of natural habitat, recycling, reduction of particulate pollution, improving water quality and so on. Strong economies with high standards of living have a better track record of doing these things. That is why sceptics are concerned that we do not take action which will damage our economy without sufficient evidence that there will be worthwhile environmental benefits from doing so.
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Like removing those disgusting wind turbines.
One of the most environmentally devastating things create by man !!
Yet the poster child of the wannabe Green agenda.
Go figure !!
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There is so much wrong with Dr Bain’s reply – such is its scientific naivete – it’s difficult to know where to start – so I’ll just pick a couple of key points.
No, it is not admitting there is a social and political dimension to the issue. It is admitting there is a social and political dimension to the IPCC. The IPCC promotes itself as scientific, but behaves politically. We know (for the evidence is clear in Climategate and the testimonies of scientists) that the summaries for policymakers have little reflection of the broad scientific findings, but are rather bent to satisfy political aims, with inconvenient findings ignored. “No evidence for AGW” gets warped into “95% confidence of AGW.” One would have to be wilfully ignorant not to know that by now. This in no way counters the assertion that the issue i.e. whether or not catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is real, is wholly, 100%, scientific.
Is he joking? There is no shortage of “alternative” reports. But actually, a real scientist knows full well that the onus is on those who are selling the new hypothesis (in this case that of AGW) to prove their case with solid evidence backed up with the raw data and code used to form that evidence. If the raw data and code are withheld, then there is no way of verifying the claims, and therefore the null hypothesis stands. THAT is where we are now.
I wonder if Dr Bain has ever criticised any IPCC scientist for withholding raw data and code from those wishing to test the theories? Has he ever criticised them for – ahem – “losing” data? (Yeah, right, who the f believes that, REALLY? Don’t insult us!) Is he happy for some IPCC scientists to whine that the act of demanding all relevant raw data and code (on which trillion-dollar life-changing decisions are made) is “attacking science?” Because I tell you this: when I read those kinds of quotes, it definitely does NOT give me cause to trust these people.
[ Good post. Block quote added for impact] ED
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Dr. Bain,
It’s really all so simple.
Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?
Taking a page from Jo’s own skeptics handbook let’s reduce it to the essential point.
Where is the peer-reviewed paper and data that proves that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models?
No arguments by authority, no insults to my mother’s heritage. No name calling.
It’s really a simple question.
If the CAWG scientists can show this they will have my support, otherwise they will have my continued derision.
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Is there anyone who could suggest to the good Dr. Bain that he read some of the most recent articles on Climate Audit? Starting with this one:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/08/lonnie-thompsons-legacy/
Maybe, just maybe he does not understand just how flaky the data are… Maybe he does not understand that the data has been cheery picked and withheld to the degree that it might be impossible — even for believers — to prove CAGW.
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I usually comment on Bishop Hill but cannot let Dr Bain’s use of “fellow-travellers” go unchallenged. I suggest that it may be a nod and a wink to the cognoscenti, harking back to PM Whitlam’s description of himself as “a fellow traveller with Christianity”, which the self-appointed great and good no doubt found wryly amusing. Amongst the latte set Gough remains an iconic hero, despite presiding over a chaotic and dysfunctional government. Witness the continued use of the arch word “parlous” (for perilous) in the media, introduced by Gough four decades ago and still going strong. An entrenched belief in their own erudition and intellectual superiority is hallmark of the elitist Left.
The implication of a climate change skeptic ideology is deeply ironic, considering that dogmatism, irrationality and intolerance of heretical views are part and parcel of the CAGW belief system. Dr Bain, we are challenging the Gaian religion, not setting up one of our own. Might I suggest in the interests of the objectivity of your research, that you venture outside your left-wing academic echo chamber and attempt to understand the views of those poor misguided souls (as you would portray us) who nevertheless have a massive weight of scientific evidence on our side. Clearly the common sense of the Queensland electorate in the recent election has made no impression on you.
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Perhaps Dr. Bain could provide us with a study on the growing religious aspects of AGW and some of its proponents. You know, terms such as racism, deniers, fire from the sky, holocaust, end of days, which are really quite amazing. And always the collectivist term of “we” being used. Yanno, WE all are in this, WE all have to do something, WE all have to sacrifice…
Dr. Bain, how about it? Or, perhaps you could not get funding for such a study, odd that 🙂
One general comment, people can think for themselves, they assess information, watch trends and keep an open mind with regards to all data and information. You would prefer that they be told what to believe? Really, good grief that almost sounds religious itself, no, 🙂
Actually Dr Bain, reading the missive you sent, I do believe you have religion 🙂
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The real long term trend? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/this-is-what-global-cooling-really-looks-like/
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I think Jo hit the key point here…Dr. Bain proposes that, in order to properly address the IPCC reports, we would need a similar but opposite report…but Dr. Bain doesn’t know that it already exists.
Why doesn’t he know about the NIPCC report?
Dr. Bain, the sources you trust to provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision are withholding from you the exact information that you state would be necessary to modify your thinking. How do you feel about that? And knowing that your sources are withholding information, are you still absolutely confident in your worldview?
And finally, Dr. Bain, please consider your initial reaction to this news. Do you instantly dismiss the NIPCC report since it wasn’t mentioned by your trusted sources, and besides, it’s so much more comfortable to keep your current worldview than to challenge it, or do you rush out to examine the report…as someone concerned with understanding the whole picture would do?
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Looks like a climb down from the hockey stick, but still talks about runaway AGW recently…
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Will Dr, Bain read any of these comments here at this Thread to actually see what people think of what he said above.
You tell me.
He would probably say that he has more important things to be doing.
What he said above in reply to Joanne was probably a dismissive throwaway, and (even though I have no idea of his thinking) his thoughts as soon as he pressed the Send button would probably be along the lines of … “There, handled. Matter finished. Next!”
Tony.
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When he alludes to comments from Jo’s
alleged Nazi collaborators, erm…“fellow travellers” he does not encourage his critics by giving credit where credit is due. There is no obvious way to determine if the alternative views he summarises were from email sent to him directly or were from comments he read here.Poor Paul. We have probably scared off the poor soul.
Scared off by the nasty skeptics, or just ensuring the debate remains intractable? Your guess is better than mine.
For the regulating class and their fellow travellers the preservation of an intractable debate allows their music to go on, and the public will dance to their tune.
Unless, of course, we can highlight to the public that this is the strategy being deployed and that the terms of debate should not be surrendered and exchanged so easily.
No we will not go quietly into the night.
We will not “Move on” from the scientific basis and get lost in taxation administrivia.
Check the facts, drop the tax!
Never mind the Tea Party, we need a C-Party.
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Considering his “responses” elsewhere, (i.e. at Judith Curry’s and WUWT), my guess is that he has very little interest in what we have to say. In the interim, Dr. Bain may have received some “coaching” because – cutting through all the padding – the only “novel” part of this “response” (compared to his earlier efforts) that I can find is his variant on the very familiar reverse onus “theme”.
However, as Jo and others have pointed out, it would appear that even in making this suggestion, i.e.
Dr. Bain has illustrated how shallow his own pre-study “research” on this matter has been. One is inclined to conclude that perhaps the only disclosure from the Climategate emails that was of any interest to him was a document entitled “The Rules of the Game”, a PR strategy piece from a U.K. “sustainability communications” company that calls itself futerra.
Here’s one of the “principles” espoused by futerra:
So the BIG name “climate scientists” – none of whom, to the best of my knowledge, have any skills or academic background in policy development, and notwithstanding the so-called “policy relevant but non-policy prescriptive” reports of the IPCC – have given themselves licence to tell our politicians (and others whom they know will not bother to conduct any exercises in due diligence) “how we should deal with climate change”.
And to add insult to the injuries he has already inflicted, Dr. Bain sees fit to “stereotype” and reduce to a conveniently lowest-common denominator the descriptions of those who find the credibility of the IPCC somewhat lacking, for a variety of reasons.
Not the least of which are those articulated by Baa Humbug (and others) above. To which I would add …
Is Dr. Bain aware of the extent to which self-citation by authors pervades the IPCC reports?
Is Dr. Bain aware of the very short shrift that is given to the comments and criticisms of the expert reviewers of the drafts of the IPCC reports? [For example, pls see The climate change game … Monopoly: the IPCC version ]
Is Dr. Bain aware of the somewhat fluid nature of the so-called “scientific consensus”? It is most consistently flogged by green advocacy groups (and MSM “journalists” and so-called scientific academies – none of which have conducted any due diligence, either). However, even among the IPCC authors (past present and future) there are differences in the definition of this “consensus”. Mike Hulme, for example, a few years ago “shrunk the consensus“:
Yet a CLA (that’s IPCC-speak for Coordinating Lead Author, in case Dr. Bain happens to be reading this and is unfamiliar with the jargon) has declared that:
Is Dr. Bain aware that the output from (unvalidated and – far too often – unverifiable) computer modelling exercises is not considered to be empirical evidence?
Is Dr. Bain even aware of how very little-human generated CO2 is present in our atmosphere?
Or is it simply the case that Dr. Bain has taken to heart the “principle” espoused by futerra: Has he made up his mind that the views of those who prefer to investigate and think for themselves are merely “irritating but unimportant”?
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Quote Dr Bain-
“But if you and others truly believe the science is wrong, then in my view the most productive approach would be to produce an alternative expert report (say the ISPCCE – Inter-Scientist Panel on Climate Change Errors)”
Bain exposes here just how ignorant he is of the alternative view & how he did NO research on the sceptics side of the argument (thinking of NIPCC)
Quote Dr Bain –
“I expect you could find a source of funding for it”
I expect this is an underhanded sly remark suggesting funding from the fossil fuel industry
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On the
nonsensconsensus:An article on the syllabus for science education in the Australian notes:
(Emphasis mine)
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That implies the Queensland government has given a frontal lobotomy to an entire generation. Poisoning children and converting them into pliable servants instead of teaching the lessons of the Enlightenment. A new Green Youth in the making, ready to betray their family and friends and report collaborators to the commissars, and ultimately to betray themselves.
Sounds dramatic, and definitely generates alarming headlines, but the truth is not nearly as awful. Here are the opening paragraphs of the Senior Physics syllabus document [Word DOC]:
I say every single one of those sentences is literally true when read in context.
Which, if any, are false, and why?
The only word choice I can quibble about is the “mental constructions” which although literally true carries the connotation that the model is only mental, rather than also being preserved and articulated in mathematics and the written word, and being constrained by measurement rather than imagination. I think that is a subtlety and requires a bit of distrust on the part of the reader to interpret it as being an intentional back door for post-modernism.
They add a bit of fluff about the environment, but to me the word environment literally includes the built environment and industry because it is everything.
The QSA continues….
Really doesn’t sound like post-normal indoctrination to me. What am I missing?
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You and they are missing a connection to reality. The presumption that is projected is that science is an arbitrary assemblage of words and diagrams that are agreed to by some collective. The larger the collective the more “true” it is thought to be. When ever this is tried, it does not work except by accident. The problem is that there are far far more ways to be wrong than to be right.
You see, reality is what it is no matter what people think nor how many think it. The choice is simple: learn reality, act consistently with reality, and have a chance to live. Fail to do that to a sufficient degree and you are done for rather quickly.
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It’s late and due to other unrelated activities I have run out of patience today. Lionell you are making shit up.
The opening paragraph said “observation, experimentation” and “viable in light of current available evidence.”
Therefore I already cited evidence that the QSA insist upon their students’ theories and models of the world being connected with reality.
You exhibit only mistrust and an active imagination when saying they are missing reality.
So who’s missing the connection with the reality of this document?
Sure, I have only read the first page since that is what generated the headline. If I were to discover on page 18 they extol the healing powers of crystals then I am prepared to change my mind, but that would be adding new evidence as far I know. When I see new evidence, I change my mind. What do you do? Insist the document does not say what it says? Insist the words somehow don’t mean what a literal English interpretation would mean?
Just because they didn’t phrase it the way you would phrase it does not mean the science essentials are missing.
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“Science is a social and cultural activity through which explanations of natural phenomena are generated.”
This is the point of lack of contact with reality. Society and culture does not think, form concepts, nor act. Only individuals do that.
Where in this is there a contact with reality? There is none. Each of these are based upon floating abstractions and emotion rather than reality, reason, and logic.
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I have my usual iceagenow links ready to go but instead of just putting up the links like i normally do and let the reader come to there own conclusions this time i thought i wold add a little comment for each.
The reason being is that we have so much talk lately about evidence and consensus i wanted to show everyone how i can falsify the CAGW y=theory with just 3 links thereby smashing the concensus some here cling to.
Link #1
http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/uk-met-office-admits-wettest-june-century/
This link tells you the UK has just received its highest June rainfall since records began in 1910 it also tells you April was a record for rainfall, also it was the coolest June since 1991.
Russia recently has had record rain, the QLD/NSW/Victorian floods are othe recent examples, a simple google search will show the world over has experienced an increase in rain fall of recent years but this was not supposed to happen was it.
Remember the booga booga about eternal drought? and why was that? Well lets go to the hypothesis. According to Hansen et al a small increase in CO2 would lead to a large increase in atmospheric water vapour. There would be less low level cloud (negative feed back) and an increase in high level cloud (positive feed back) so straight away we have warming. Also worthy of note is that rain comes from low level cloud ergo less low level cloud less rain and by logical extension we get more drought.
Therefore in the end we get more and more water vapour suspended above our heads and this ladies and gentlemen gives us the catastrophic in CAGW.
However as we can all see with our very own eyes country after country is getting (in some cases) record rain fall. This rain can only come from an increase in low level cloud which in turn acts as a negative feed back so strike one for CAGW. Also dont forget if it rains there is less of teh stuff in the atmosphere (no longer suspended above our heads) so no more “catastrophic” its just back to plain old AGW now.
Link #2
http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/whistler-mountain-bc-canada/
This link discusses how much snow that is still present at Whistler mountain but this story is repeated the world over. What was that idiots name from East Anglia that stated children we never know what snow is just before the snowiest northern hemisphere decade on record? Was it Viner? Bet he still has a cushy job scaring the shit out of little kids somewhere. Sorry i digress.
Back to the hypothesis, remember we were told that in a warming world there would be less ice and due to this loss of ice there would be less albedo which in turn would warm the surface of the planet (where the ice once was) and expunge the Earth of Methane, CO2 and Water Vapour (take your pick which) thus leading to further warming thus leading to further ice melt, once again another mystical positive feed back.
Once again we can see with our own eyes that this is not the case, in fact if anything the opposite is true so a mystical positive feedback has been turned into a “not thought of before” negative feedback.
So now we have a situation where the two largest (mythical) positive feedbacks that were suposed to cause global warming hace turned into a “why did i not think of that” negative feed back and guess what the planet had not warmed for over 15 years, this is not due to the ameturish cobbling together of “sulphates from China” but simply due to that fact that the hypothesis is flawed.
I will leave you with this final link
#3
http://iceagenow.info/2012/07/canberras-coldest-mornings-1965/
Yes i can here the warbots now chanting in unison “AW gee shucks this is weather not climate” and you may be very well right but if so then why to your authoritive figures claim hot weather to be “a sign”. No if your authoritive figures can claim such things then the Canberra cold is “a sign” of global cooling now run off and prove me wrong.
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One:
People shouldn’t confuse things like the seasonal cycle, that’s not going to go away, we’re always going to have winters. And they shouldn’t confuse things like heavy rainfall, and actually ironically one of the projections of climate change, as you warm the planet, you do intensify what we call the hydrological cycle and that’s the amount of water going from the oceans up into the atmosphere and then falling back as rain. INCREASING HYDROLOGICAL CYCLES PROVE AGW.
Two:
Putting aside the difference between weather and climate, climate change projections show that a warming planet generates more precipitation in areas that typically experience rain or snow. Rising ocean surface temperatures already have increased the temperature and moisture content of the air passing over the United States, setting the stage for heavier snow and rainstorms. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that global warming has increased the frequency of storms that dump heavy precipitation over most land regions that experience storms. Most deserts, conversely, are getting drier. INCREASED SNOW PROVE AGW
Three:
Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase…. “According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, The study, based on observations and models, finds that most major countries, including the United States, are “likely to face unprecedented climate stresses even with the relatively moderate warming expected over the next half-century.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/10/461167/march-came-in-like-a-lamb-went-out-like-a-globally-warmed-lion-on-steroids-who-smashed-15000-heat-records/
HEATWAVES OVER PROLONGED PERIODS THAT BREAK FORMER RECORDS PROVE AGW
Ross J.
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Irreversible???
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Ah ha,
Increasing rainfall proves AGW?
Increasing Snow levels proves AGW?
Increasing temperatures prove AGW?
I assume
Increasng drought proves AGW
Decreasing Snow proves AGW
Decreasing rain (also known as drought) proves AGW
Increasing cold proves AGW (well it must be getting colder if there is more snow and if more snow proves AGW then so must more cold prove AGW)
One must marvel at the omni potent force of CO2 no wonder you fools view it as a GOD.
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Yes, yes, this old chestnut again.
Everytyhing proves it.
But to be a proper theory, something has to disprove it. It has to be falsifiable.
Now I wonder if you could provide us with what condition, over what timeframe, disproves the entire theory?
Let me guess : nothing can disprove it because it’s right.
You don’t even understand why people laugh at you.
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Brc,
The time spent here arguing with all issues would stretch the credibility of anyone being shouted down. We are without any argument in the minority voice here on this site but elsewhere we would be heard more clearly and not scoffed at.
I have looked into the recent record historic heatwave that has caused the USA much consternation. We are seeing a SWING back to global warming belief in the US due to their experience – OBSERVATIONALLY.
Watts Up has gone out to sea and done a “re-tread” of some post many months ago. The word tends toward the classical argument usage.
It’s called D – – – – L!
Let’s take a classic and tear the logic apart about this USA based Heatwave:
There are at least some skeptic people here who can sight mathematical mistakes that are delibate in this latest re-tread post by Watts Up. The post from RealScience dot blog has addressed this lack of mathematical honesty, so I don’t have to address it here. The conclusions of this article are nonsensical.
The point was made and debunked back on the “Eastern U.S. Heat Wave” post. Seems like some re-tread arguments that have already been debunked are being rolled out again to fool …. well, who? Get ratings up on a Web site while still looking relevant even obstinate in the face of real support and evidence of the true consequences that when a world warms, this is what we see as foretaste.
As for Aleo’s post, he’s avoided addressing the issue: What has happened to summertime NH mid-latitude temperatures in the last 30 years? Answer: they are warming, and there now seems to be more severe periodic heat waves, while other neighbouring regions experience spells of colder than normal temperatures.
Some of the states in the US southeast are on course to have their three hottest summers ever, in a row! This is an extremely unlikely event in a random system.
If the emerging El Nino really kicks in, then 2013 should be the hottest year in the history of human civilization. Couple this with low Arctic ice pack influence on the jet stream Rossby waves, and next year should see some really severe weather patterns.
Prediction: Australia is about to go ballistic with global warming as well this Summer due to a strengthening El Nino. No longer in a La Nino phase. We know well now that La Ninas do a terrific job in heat transference of the atmospheric warming into the oceans. Now stand by for more droughts, climbing record Summers and the great dry out to return. The temporary respite whereby some have prematurely stated its over – red rover – It aren’t over. It’s coming back with a vengeance and in the lives of many directly affected by it.
Ross J.
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“Prediction: Australia is about to go ballistic with global warming as well this Summer due to a strengthening El Nino”
I darn well hope so, the last few summers have been totally crap !!!
About time we got back to normal summer weather !!!!!
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You think so? How much would you like to bet on this?
Nominate this El Nino Ross. There is an ENSO meter on the side-bar at WUWT (from NOAA I think), it’s sitting on +0.5 at the moment. Nominate how high it’ll go by the end of january next year.
I’m happy to bet a reasonable amount you propose.
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“It’s called D – – – – L!”
Let me guess DIURNAL ?
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Ever heard of a ‘Toxx clause’, Rosscoe?
How about this for a wager then. If you’re prediction comes true, then I will gladly convert to the cause of AGW, and spruik its message from the rooftops.
IF, however, your prediciton fails, you admit that you are wrong, that AGW is a scam, and start pushing ofr a more open and honest discussion on ‘the science’.
Deal?
00
Here are some climate science style “predictions” for you Ross James.
KRudd will beat John Howard in the election.
JuLIAR Gillard will oust KRudd as Prime Minister.
In the following election Gillard will promise there will be no carbon tax.
Some months later Gillard will break this promise.
Note how all my predictions are 100% correct, Ross James?
That’s how “climate science” forecasts work.
Let’s apply it to your comments:
Yes, they do, NOW. But only AFTER we started getting more rain and snow. Prior to that the projections were that Australia was going to become a desert wasteland because of never-ending drought, and in the NH “snow would become a thing of the past”. When it didn’t turn that way, the “climate scientists” simply changed their projections to match reality.
Finding something out “after the fact” is hardly a “projection”, Ross. And where is the slightest scrap of evidence that it had anything to do with global warming, other than that which occurs in 25 to 30 cycles?
Ummmm, well, no, Ross, they are not. The Sahara, for instance, is shrinking at quite a remarkable rate.
Well, of course it does Ross, now that we have increased snow and the “climate scientists” have altered their projections to reflect that reality. However, up until 2007, after several years of diminished snowfalls, the claim was DECREASED SNOW PROVE AGW.
See how easy it is to be right all the time Ross? You just keep changing your claims to reflect the current circumstances, and then loudly proclaim how right you got it.
.
Unfortunately for you and the climate scientists, the internet has a long, and almost infallible memory.
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You quote the IPCC as saying “An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that global warming has increased the frequency of storms that dump heavy precipitation over most land regions that experience storms. Most deserts, conversely, are getting drier. INCREASED SNOW PROVE AGW’.
If you pick up a copy of IPCC SREX (special report on extreme weather) and turn to chapter 4, you will find that the IPCC concludes that CO@ and so-called global warming have absolutely no relationship to extreme weather WHATSOEVER!
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Rod Stuart
Extreme weather events are different. The study of increased HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE in found in the IPCC reports. They are separate issues.
You obviously have not read the IPCC reports. Neither would you ever believe the projections of the QLD’s Climate Change report 2010 that predicted some of the catastrophies that affected QLD lives due to GLOBAL WARMING.
The link however to extreme weather events is getting stronger then in the IPCC 2007 science reports – science is not static animal. in evidence as precedents are developing as events and when coupled to climate models that back up those events as global warming causation.
Remember this report is now six to seven years old.
Ross J.
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Ross, take your pills and go to sleep now……..
you’ll feel better in the morning.
If you take more pills.
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As the planet warms, intensity of the hydrological cycle increases and that’s the amount of water going from the oceans up into the atmosphere and then falling back as rain.
OK, that could just be regular nature – if you want to blame something else, you have to demonstrate the cause.
Rising ocean surface temperatures already have increased the temperature and moisture content of the air passing over the United States, setting the stage for heavier snow and rainstorms.
OK, but the ocean temperatures change over decadal timeframes anyway, and always have, If you want to blame something else, you have to demonstrate cause.
So where does that leave you Ross?
Your point three: “The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience …” How likely Ross? What is the probability? What is the margin of error? If I put a dollar on the table right now, what odds will you offer me?
According to projections … by the middle of this century … the study [by] Noel Diffenbaugh … based on observations and models, finds …”
Ross, Can’t you see that you can’t base projections of doom and gloom forty years in the future, based on observations.
Unless, of course, you also believe in time travel. In which case I’ll have my dollar back.
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Dr Bain dare not read the counter arguments to CAGW less he be persuaded by the facts to change his mind and as a result watch his funding and reason for his academic existance evaporate.
How can he pontificate on the reasons why people donot accept the virtual CAGW world when he is reluctant to seek out the information these non-believers present?
Those within the church of AGW believe they alone can discern the truth but have yet to realise that the internet has blown away their monopoly on being “the smartest guys in the room”.
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Look we have a new hockey stick only this one looks like a billiard cue?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/this-is-what-global-cooling-really-looks-like/
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Longer term view posted on thread
http://i49.tinypic.com/9prvqh.jpg
It is all proxies all the way down.
How would I know I wasn’t there then?
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Hey Bain here is something for you to take back to………wherever it is you come from.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-10/delegates-to-discuss-climate-impact-on-reefs/4119988/?site=sunshine
selected quote
The facts are sea levels have risen by less than 3CM, so who here is the denier?
I am sick to death of the lies you people tell.
[We achieve nothing by being rude – please keep comments polite, as well as to the point. Fly]
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Oh i am sorry Fly let me rephrase.
Would the people in Cairns please refrain from telling blatant lies in an effort to gain financially through deception and also to maintain your positions of influence as i do not like it.
Kind regards
Crakar24
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Edmund Burke, wrote in 1796, “Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.”
Winston Churchill, in a speech to the House of Commons, is supposed to have paraphrased the above when he said,
“It is obvious to me, and to many of the Members of this House, that the Honorable Member who has just spoken, has been considerably economical with the truth, on the matter of …”
00
Also the 25% figure is untrue. That is the increase in the H+ content: pH is -[logarithm10] so pH has decreased by 1.21%!
But would you expect the anti-technocracy to understand such details?
Nope, because to do so would demean themselves: technocrats are untermenschen who deserve to be put into forced labour in the new killing fields.
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i’ve avoided this thread because i have no scientific background whatsoever.
however, when Dr. Bain says: “the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change”, he insults my intelligence.
Dr. Bain: either call it “anthropogenic global warming”, and argue your case on that – or more precisely, for the public at large -argue the case for “catastrophic manmade global warming”, which is what was used to scare the public in the first place.
in fact, i would ask you to argue for “catastrophic manmade global warming requiring the immediate and massively expensive dismantling of industrialised society” which is what the public has been terrorised with by CAGW zealots, including the MSM, for years.
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Climate Change and Global Warming, while not the same thing, are causally related. Both have been used (almost interchangeably) in the literature for over 50 years. Note that it’s the IPCC not the IPGW.
Looking at the words alone, AGW/ACC is a nebulous term. However it is general practice to accept it as the noun which implies the following:
A) Human activities change the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere enough to exert a forcing on the Earth’s climate.
B) That forcing results in a 2.5-3.5C rise in mean global temperature per equivalent of CO2 doubling over the course of hundreds of years.
C) There is a more cost effective plan of action to deal with that scenario than simply ignoring it.
Although the term AGW/ACC only specifically relates to A) it would be misleading to say that Joanne accepts the science of AGW, because she doesn’t accept B) or C).
Scientists are unlikely to adopt the term ‘catastrophic’ because it’s arbitrary and relative.
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Edit:
00
The fact that sheisters like the IPCC and “climate scientists” use misleading terms in misleading ways, does NOT make them interchangeable, OR correct.
Let’s give them their full names and examine them.
CAGW = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming means:
Catastrophic – the outcome will be disastrous for large numbers of people.
Anthropogenic – caused by humans.
Global – the entire planet.
Warming – getting hotter.
Or, terrible things happening to lots of people because the planet is getting hotter and humans caused it.
Climate Change.
Climate – the observed changes in weather over a period of time, traditionally 30 years.
Change – to become different or undergo alteration.
Or, somewhat meaningless statement along the lines of “changing weather becoming different”.
The simple reasons for the swap in terms are because:
There is utterly no evidence that anything “catastrophic” is going to happen.
Observation and empirical evidence shows we have been here before and will be again – it’s cyclical.
There is utterly no evidence that humans have anything to do with what is happening.
The ONLY claimed link between humans and climate is the alleged effect of rising CO2 on temperature.
CO2 continues to go up, temperatures don’t.
Ergo, no link between humans and temperature via CO2.
There is utterly no evidence that the globe that the globe is currently warming.
In fact all observation and historical data suggests we are now entering a cooling cycle.
Hence the need to substitute scary scary CAGW with meaningless “climate change”.
00
however, when Dr. Bain says: “the majority of climate scientists agree that there is a high likelihood that anthropogenic climate change”, he insults my intelligence.
..
in fact, i would ask you to argue for “catastrophic manmade global warming requiring the immediate and massively expensive dismantling of industrialised society” which is what the public has been terrorised with by CAGW zealots, including the MSM, for years.
——————————————————————————–
In a nutshell.
That amorphous meme claim which is brought out ad nauseum as if it answers our varied objections is the most irritating of all, your final version nails it down.
Not only has it the potential to stop the meme’s mindless repetition by putting this back on a real science footing, but it brings back into focus the real cause and effect as the scare actually affects everyone world wide.
They go to considerable lengths to separate these two, substituting the catch all climate change for catastrophic man made global warming and the various disaster scenarios of polar bears and rising sea level for the real affect of dismantling industrial society.
Exactly what those who accept that meme as if science and those who don’t know what the arguments are about because they have other concerns more pressing than exploring the science and those of us who go around in circles arguing the science need to concentrate our thinking.
The counter meme. T-shirt printing time?
00
.
T-SHIRT TIME
Global warming is bad?
Try living in an ice age
without electricity
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I love the precise terminology “high likelihood “….
What a JOKE !
[Snipped – We gain nothing from being rude, or personal. Fly]
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Voting appears to have been disabled.
00
.
No, actually it is broken and has been for a couple of weeks.
People are working on it, but no joy so far.
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Luna Lovegood suspects that the “thumbs” were stolen by Nargles.
Within the world of WordPress, that is probably as good an explanation as any other.
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.
Nah.
Big Oil commissioned the CIA to sabotage it so they could reduce Jo’s weekly payout from a squillion dollars down to a paltry gazillion.
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How absolutely patronising,
In one sentence Dr Bain has simply dismissed any view, analysis, scientific investigation or input from anyone who is not on the oficial government approved “climate Scientist” list. A significant proportion of this disenfranchised supposedly passive worldwide 7 billion now have the ability to interconnect and exchange ideas worldwide at virtually no cost to themselves, all outside of government funded channels. Large numbers will be intelligent enough to understand the science in depth and some of them might be even be more capable and more able to understand technical or localized issues than those “climate scientists”.
Do you not think that with the fast filtering and worldwide feedback that goes on at sites such as this there is the possibility that intelligent life, analysis and ideas exists outside the UEA, IPCC etc.
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Funny isn’t it that now all the Enviro-bores friends aren’t listening to them anymore the only place they can come and vent is Jo’s place…
And now for something completely different (unless your an Ozzy citizen)…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2171149/Even-dead-dont-escape-carbon-tax-Heartless-cemetery-charged-Australian-family-55-funeral.html
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Truthseeker
Well thank you very much. I would just point out that you didn’t bother presenting any evidence for why I supposedly don’t know anything about science, therefore I am rejecting your assertion as unsupported by evidence.
Well if you bothered reading my post you’d see that I didn’t mention definitions of science at all. What I presented was different explanations for the meaning of the word “consensus”. But I note that you completely ignored this.
So that means there is a consensus that the earth is an oblate spheroid, because in this context “consensus” simply means “most people agree that it is true”.
See, you have completely missed the point of my post which has resulted in you giving me an example of the point that I made that you ignored!
I never asserted otherwise. You are simply embarrassing yourself!
Wrong. “Consensus” is a word in the english language that has a variety of meanings and senses. You are using one but ignoring others.
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.
What a comeback!
Well done!
So stroNg and yet so concise! AMAZING!
1. Therefore I am rejecting your assertion as unsupported by evidence
2. Well if you bothered reading my post
3. But I note that you completely ignored this
4. See, you have completely missed the point of my post
5. You are simply embarrassing yourself!
6. Wrong.
7. You are using one but ignoring others.
Can you send the Greg Combet, Wayne Swan & Julia Gillard book of
LIESadvice on how to respond please!It’s composed of 90% BS and 10% Fiction!
Great, great reply – another
unhingedunthreaded response!00
This post still doesn’t actually engage with my argument that many here are just getting worked up over a misunderstanding of the range of meanings the word “consensus” has.
I’m not surprised you get worked up about the term “science is based on consensus” when all you do is consider ONE meaning of the word consensus.
Here is a dictionary that shows that consensus has TWO common meanings:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consensus
Most people here assume that consensus, with regard to science, can only mean meaning “2”, but it can also mean meaning “1”.
So basically many people here are getting worked up over their inability to understand that “consensus” can mean different things.
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Adam,
It is not that we don’t understand what the word “consensus” means, in all of its nuance and shades of meaning. It is just that the use of the word within the scientific context is a very new phenomena, and one that has always had political overtones since its appearance sometime during the past quarter century.
The concept of consensus or agreement is actually the antithesis of the way that science (outside of the climate science fraternity) is done. As you point out, the word implies majority opinion or general agreement. It also means weight of opinion.
Science is much more combative than that.
A scientist has an idea and mounts a series of experiments to demonstrate that idea. And every time the experiment is run, it gets the same results. Does that prove the idea is sound? No, Because in normal science, every other scientist in that field will try to prove that the idea is false, by running different experiments based on the original idea. And if they succeed in proving the idea false, the differences between the experiments can be used to modify the idea and make it more robust. And so it goes on and on.
Eventually, people get bored in trying to find flaws in the idea, and the world moves on. But there is still not, and never will, be a consensus that the idea is right. And there is always the chance that some smart young graduate will come along with a new set of eyes, and blow the idea out of the water.
One such young graduate was Albert Einstein who simply looked at an idea in a different way, and in the process pushed the boundaries of physics into totally new, and unexpected realms. But Einstein knew that there can never be any consensus in science. He is reported to have said, “No number of experiments can prove my theories to be correct. But it will only take only one experiment to prove them wrong”.
So my view on this is that the only consensus that is valid in science, is the consensus around the stuff that has been shown to be falsified in the past. But you may not agree, and if you can demonstrate that I am wrong in holding that view, then I will gladly admit that I am wrong. Because that is the scientific method.
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An excellent example of this happened in my field (optics and quantum mechanics) just a few years ago (2004): The argument about whether light is composed of particles or waves has existed for centuries, if not millenia. Early in the 20th century, based on the new theory of Quantum Mechanics, the “big names” in physics — Bohr, Einstein, de Broglie, etc all agreed that light is both waves and particles and furthermore, any experiment that detects one characteristic cannot simultaneously detect the other. This has been the consensus among virtually all prominent scientists (such as Richard Feynman) ever since.
BUT THEN: Researchers at a small university in New Jersey devised and performed a simple experiment that explicitly did the “impossible” — measured the particle and wave characterists of light simultaneously. The experiment was so simple that it could have been done anytime in the last 50 years, using nothing more than equipment found in standard undergraduate physics labs.
Has this shattered the previous consensus? No — new textbooks continue to propagate (and new science graduates parrot) the thoroughly demolished “authoritative” pronouncments of famous scientists, blissfully unaware that these ideas in no way describe reality. It’s enough to make one doubt the supposedly “self-correcting” mechanism of scientific progress.
No, Adam Smith; Consensus (of either definition) isn’t a part of science — it is anti-science.
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Well, that is a downside of being human. Most of us want our moment in the sun, most of us want to appear to be the smartest person in the room, and most of us want to hang on to the small modicum of respect (and power) that we believe is owed to us because we are “the smartest person in the room”.
In New Zealand, we have an expression, “He (she) is a legend in their own lunchtime”.
A less well know story about Einstein: A reporter once ask him if he thought he would ever be proven wrong. Einstein replied, “Of course, it is only a matter of time, and research”. When asked if he would change his papers, he replied, “Of course not, why would I do that? They were the best I could produce at the time, and they will hopefully remain as a record of that, but others will have to write new papers, and those will be debated in their turn.”
I dislike the word consensus, because it implies a final position. A point of stasis. You cannot go anywhere else without “breaking the consensus”. I much prefer to talk about “conversation”, because it implies a group focus, and and some degree of common understanding, but one that remains capable of evolving, and expanding.
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No, as I clearly pointed out to you, it is only “wrong” if you assume that the word “consensus” only has a single meaning.
Consensus can mean a “compromise” or “agreement”, or, it has a ‘lighter’ meaning, where it just means there is a majority that believes something.
What exactly is wrong with the statement:
“There is a scientific consensus that the Earth is an oblate spheroid.”?
If you read it with the ‘light’ meaning of “consensus” it simply means that far more scientists believe the Earth is an oblate spheroid than those that don’t. It doesn’t imply anything about how different scientists reached that conclusion, it is just a short way of writing “there is far more evidence to suggest the earth is an oblate spheroid than alternative theories such as the suggestion that the earth is flat”.
It seems some people here willfully read the term “scientific consensus” to mean that a bunch of scientists got together and compromised about the shape of the Earth, but this is idiotic because it is based on a misunderstanding of what the word consensus can mean in various contexts.
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The consensus of the group, which includes Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, various other activist scientists, members of various environmental NGOs (WWF, Greenpeace, Environmental Defence Fund) and the UN bureaucrats of the UNEP and WMO is that they are now in a position to promote CO2 as a dangerous atmospheric gas and hence convince politicians eager to find new ways to tax the populace to share a portion of that tax with the UN and environmental NGOs thereby keeping these fraudulent con-artists in the money and in power.
That, Smith, is the consensus they keep banging on about.
And if you could just tear yourself away from the “Oh I’m so nice and kind I want to save the world and all it’s poor people” self worth boosting attitude of yours and really research what this whole AGW scam is all about, you would have woken-up and smelt the coffee.
But that’s never going to happen because that would mean you admitting to yourself (let alone others) that all this time you’ve been a gullible fool and a usefull idiot to those who call the tune.
It’s a difficult thing to do and only people genuinely honest with themselves are capable of doing it.
From one of my favourite films Smith.
May the Wilberforce be with you.
Albert Finney to Ioan Gruffudd
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Holy crap! I’m astonished that you did’t realise that that movie quote is actually the character quoting the Bible.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+9&version=NIV
But this doesn’t make you Jesus.
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Holy crap! I’m astonished you didn’t ‘get’ my post.
John Newton may have “borrowed” that line from the bible. I don’t know, nor is that relevant.
He wrote the poem Faith’s Review and Expectation. Most know it as Amazing Grace.
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!
Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the vail,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be for ever mine.
The scene from the movie:-
(Newton) “I once was blind but now I see. Did I write that too?”
(Wilberforce) “Yes you did.”
(Newton) “Well now at last it’s true.”
Sorry Smith, I keep forgetting highly educated and productive people like you just don’t have time to watch movies. My bad.
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Astonished, Baa? I’ve been reading you guys’ interaction with this Smith character and I’m convinced he can’t follow any argument that requires even a modest amount of logical thinking. The way he grabs single sentences out of context and makes that the central point of his reply reminds me of early attempts at getting computers to “converse” with people.
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Adam even definition ‘1’ of consensus is questionable given how those involved with the IPCC and in particular the Summary for Policy Makers, have manipulated things in a most unscientific way to present their ideologically or activism views as the scientific consensus. I thought this whole matter was well covered by Western Australian DR John Happs in his open letter to Australia’s chief scientist Professor Ian Chubb.
Needless to say Chubb did not take action or respond, after all, he’s the same guy who unquestioningly accepted false claims by climate scientists that they had received death threats. So Chubb isn’t the investigative type – perfect as a Government appointed chief scientist!
You can read the letter here: http://undeceivingourselves.org/I-ipc3.htm.
In his letter he provides pretty solid evidence supporting his claims that:
(1) Many former IPCC contributors are now criticising the IPCC’s “science” and “process”, and
(2) A majority of scientists now reject the notion of catastrophic man-made global warming.”
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Got him in a corner there Jaymez
KK
🙂
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The thing about concensus is its use implies a position on something which is uncertain. Therefore it is probably wrong, or at least not quite right and so is likely to change in time.
To cite a consensus therefore as evidence of anything is fallacious.
To say that a debate is over because of a consensus, even a real one, is just nonsense.
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Excellent analysis JV
I think there would be a consensus on that
KK
🙂
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There is nothing about the use of the word “consensus” that implies a complete lack of doubt.
Look up the word “consensus” in a dictionary, it doesn’t mean that people’s views can never change at a later time based on the presentation of new information.
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Hi Adam
GFYS
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Sorry ‘ that should have been GPYS
Geophysical Year Survey.
That’s not bad education, that’s alzheimers.
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My evidence is your own words which over a number of threads have shown that observational data and evidence have not been part of your arguments on non-political topics. You argue from authority, use misdirection and do not engage in any technical discussion. All these behaviours are evidence of a non-scientific background and outlook.
You brought up agreement and compromise in a discussion about the nature of science and whether consensus plays a part. I just pointed out how incorrect that was. Nice try to send the argument to an irrelevant dead-end. Epic fail.
With the shape of the earth argument you completely missed the important word that I used which was “evidence”. This is another example of such considerations being invisible to you. There is the observation of a ship disappearing over the horizon at sea that is evidence of a world that is not flat. There is the evidence of observations from space that is evidence of a world that is not flat. What the consensus view does not change what it is and is therefore irrelevant to the discussion. Another epic fail.
You have quoted a valid meaning of the word “consensus” and then try to say that meaning 1 does not equal meaning 2. In the context of defining science, there is no difference between these definitions. “Opinion” and “agreement” are political terms and mean nothing to the universe at large. How the universe operates is not related in any way to how many people think that it operates. Epic fail … again.
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Funny! When you open your mouth too much, your own words can and will be used as evidence against you:
AND my favorite:
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This post doesn’t demonstrate how I am wrong.
You made a baseless assertion that I don’t know anything about science, or more correctly the philosophy of science which is what this discussion is about.
It is up to you to prove my claim concerning the use of the word “consensus” is wrong.
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What is needed is not another report by a group of non-believing (in AGW) scientists as this will be dismissed as special pleading. Rather, we want a group of truly independent uncommitted experts to review all the evidence both in favour and against the AGW hypothesis. Best chaired by a lawyer – see the research paper “Globval Warming Advocacy Science: a Cross Examination by lawyer Jason Scott Johnston, of the University of Pennsylvania now University of Virginia, and with say a physicist (most global science is based on physics), a statistician and a computer modelling expert, preferably one knowledgable of using computer models for predictions. In Australia, perhaps we should be lobbying the Opposition to consider this as soon as they achieve government. Johnston’s paper is highly recommended as a clear examination of the deficiencies in the science and IPCC Reports – find it either from a link on the Australian Climate Madness webside or just search Google for Jason Scott Johnstobn
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.
Anybody else noticed that since we had a discussion about the likely location and make-up of “Team Smith”, the team seems to have shrunk down to just the Special Needs student?
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Funny that, eh!
Wonder what his Doctorate is.
Tony.
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Sorry Tony, but you wouldn’t understand it.
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Baseless assumption there Doctor, so, er, I guess you lose the debate!
Tony.
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Good one Tony!
Yes, he won’t win the debate.
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I just wonder why it is that he won’t even mention it.
After all, he was the one who originally brought the matter up, saying that he was in fact a Doctor, the subliminal intent being that he was somehow better than us because of that fact, and yet, at no stage has he ever mentioned what his Doctorate is in.
I mean, I’ve had no worries at all in mentioning that all I have is an Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering, nothing really, and probably only worth as much as a Kindy graduation certificate, a nothing recognition only of my Trade training.
I really wonder why he’s so touchy when asked what his Doctorate is actually in, and how easy is it just to say that I wouldn’t understand it.
All we want to know is his specialist discipline that adds such value and weight to what he has to say here, as he, from such lofty heights, scoffs at all of us as ‘know nothings’.
So, what’s it to be Doctor Smith. You know mine, and laugh at it so often, as I also do. What’s yours then, eh! A real Doctorate should be something to be proud of. It indicates all those years and years of Higher Academic learning. All my puny certificate indicates is years and years of doing.
Tony.
PS. Hear those crickets?
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.
I was wondering WHO his doctor is.
On a related note I have a young relative with a degree in Science, with a major in Eco-Feminism.
Go figure.
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Well congratulations. You realise I am only one person which means you are way ahead of most others on this forum.
But I my consolation prize is that I get to laugh a lot whenever someone makes the baseless assertion that I am more than one person.
It is funny because it seems based on the idea that what people post here is really, really, really important that it needs to be monitored by a team of people!
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Is that something to do with plant genitalia?
If it is, I don’t want to know.
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No offense meant, but “Eco-feminism” differs from Witchcraft in what way?
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Did he claim to have a Doctorate?
Perhaps he just doctors.
But in what on might wonder… Evidence ?
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Joe V.
Here’s where Adam Smith mentions his correct title.
From Unthreaded Post September 2011
Tony.
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WOW, abuse, baseless speculation with a hint of paranoia all in the one post!
I’m just one person who happens to disagree with you mate. But the fact so many here think that there generally silly views need to be monitored by a team of people is something I find hilarious.
But I guess that is just part of the whole “us few against the establishment” conflict that many here think they are part of.
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A bit OT but global warming FRAUD related.
The ABC is at it again !
Solid foundations of alarm…..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/solid_foundations_of_alarm/
More taxpayers money squandered on green COMMUNIST schemes !
How many more green grants will sink like this?….
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_many_more_green_grants_will_sink_like_this/
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.
You’re on the wrong team – Unions very unhappy with the LIARS Gillard, Combet and Swan!
So much UNION verbal disatifaction!
Another good response TEAM of one, NOT!
unhingedunthreaded!00
True science says that we do not have to have a “dominant theory”, what happens in between is never a clean switch. Currently the evidence for at least lowering catastrophic projections of the concensus theory into rather banal changes is rock solid and likely to be completly wrong on the forcing factor (start by reading The skeptics handbook, and ask why they have not explained the failure of their projected temperature gradient yet still push their theory as fact). While this contradictory evidence is deliberately ignored by the CAGW crowd, with our current state of knowledge there is no definitive overall alternative?
If it is known to be incorrect, should the climate scientists and their backers the UN/EU/Ms Gillard still believe and act as if the existing incorrect theory is true? Of course not, so why is that the current state of affairs with official climate science.
Perhaps your research would be better directed at the concensus as to why they utterly refuse to leave the comfort zone of current belief rather than at those who bend with the wind and question evidence and change their opinion accordingly. Jo is right, the argument is about science, if Hansen, Mann and co produced scientifically irrefutable evidence for a change the skeptics would follow them – and be enthusastic in both suggesting and implementing mitigating measures.
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Dear Paul Bain I am sorry, I cannot be kind.
Either you are very new to the debate and have ignored skeptics so far, or you do as if? Where I am astound and asking myself how can you be so naive and ignorant when you published a study on how to address “deniers”? How can you talk about addressing them without at least trying to understand what do these people say? This is so superficial that it is simply mind blowing.
At first to the apology. Maybe would be good to read through Pointmans’ post about the D-word here:
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/the-nigger-word/
To your appeal to authority. Paul we are now in 2012. It is long since 2009 when climategate first made waves into the blogosphere. I personally have spent now about 18 month learning and understanding the skeptics case, the hockey stick issues, the basis of the science. I am not a payed shill of oil industry, I did it in my spare time once I found some intriguing aspects in the CAGW science.
If people can listen to scientists and understand the duality between particle and wave as here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
how can you assume they are so stupid not to be able to understand atmosphere physics when explained to them?
I have done my studies Paul and I know how to read a scientific paper, how to appreciate the work and how to smell a rat. If you go to the blogosphere and read through the comments you will find many engineers, physicians and other who understand science and see the difference between science and “science”.
The science of CAGW is based on so much garbage that it is clear why the proponents do not want to discuss it. What you propose has been done already (NIPCC) – again how can you talk about talking to skeptics when you do not have a clue? Appeal to authority in such a moment makes the issue only worse. Are you aware how Ivar Giaever names this “science”? Pseudo-science. Why? Have you asked yourself why a Nobel laureate would do that? You haven’t heard about it? Why not?
You ask us to finance a parallel study? Wait, where is the skepticism of the scientist? What do scientists first when they have a theory? They try to falsify it. This is what scientists do Paul.
So I ask myself, what do you know of science Paul? We are mostly volunteers, working in our free time not payed through billions and billions of grants? And we find immediately flaws in the science? What science is this Paul?
First and the most disturbing thing with CAGW science is the tampering with the data, not showing raw data and methodology clearly. This is the first request and hopefully you will become a STRONG supporter of this request. No scientific publication should be accepted for any discussion about CAGW without a clear documented methodology and raw data archive made available. Can we agree on this Paul? Do you find this request acceptable? This would be sufficient, but there is some more…
Second no adjustments to the data in the dark! Any adjustments to raw data should be clearly highlighted, reasons explained and data of course should be available also without adjustments. Do you agree with this point too?
Third, modelling is not data. Model result is not data. More models it is still no data. Many more models of the same still only models and no data.
Fourth, a theory needs to be formulated and validated or falsified. Where is CAGW theory formulated? How can it be falsified? What is the greenhouse theory? Do we talk about heat transfer through radiation or is it something else?
You want skeptics to communicate to you on actions that would be done for climate? Paul would you do actions pro-human against climate? Cheap electricity in the developing countries is the priority. Electricity throughout the villages and towns of Asia and Africa. Would you support this initiative? And I mean real electricity available all the time to cook and read and cool and surf! not only when the wind blows or the sun shines. Are you aware of all the damage done by the wrong priorities setup for combating 0.0x°C? Do we have the money to do it NOW?
Discussing open priorities, putting everything on the table, not hiding the cards, and building yourself an educated opinion, and then vote your options, this is real democracy Paul and not “trust in me, I’m a witchdoctor”.
The CO2 that we emit is beneficial for the plants. Are you aware how much? Are you aware that NASA satellites have documented greening of vast areas (about +10% biosphere in 3 decades). How much of the food we eat now is due to the enriching of the atmosphere through CO2 from 280 ppm to 400 ppm? My guess would be about one third, but where are the studies to show this? Is this of no relevance to us? Do we really want CO2 to go back to 280 ppm? Do you want this Paul?
The Earth had 15 times+ more CO2 and the planet did not fry, so there is no danger of it happening now because of our emissions.
So Paul please before engaging the skeptics, do your homework. We have done ours, we know much more then the alarmists about climate, about radiation physics, about data archiving, pal review, peer-review, scientists, tree-rings, ice-cores, co2, h2o, ch4, radiation, satellites and many more. We understand the case and we can judge the science that is presented to us. We are pro-human, pro-nature and we suffer when we see what the pro-climate folks do to both for no benefits, just for named fears that exists only in their imagination, not based on sound science but on extrapolations, tampering the data to confirm their own fears… but I repeat myself.
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Lars Per, well said. I’d give a thumbs up if I could.
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WOW! I got a star! Haven’t had one of those since … sorry, I’m not going to disclose how log it’s been since I earned one of those … but, suffice it to say that it was many, many moons ago!
My thanks to the star-picker 🙂
It is interesting to compare Dr. Bain and his defense of his paper with the (far from perfect, but far more nuanced and, IMHO, perceptive) observations of Jon Krosnick, a communication and psychology professor at Stanford University.
Paul Voosen, E&E reporter for Greenwire – whose choice of phrasing in some instances provides tell-tale signs of his own biases and willingness to accept without question the assertions of some “climate scientists” – discusses a recent study by Krosnick. According to Voosen, Krosnick “has been studying the public’s belief in climate change for 15 years.”
Some excerpts from Voosen’s article that Dr. Bain might want to consider [h/t Tom Nelson via an E-mail correspondent who had alerted me to this and all emphases mine -hro]:
Fancy that: Climate scientists undermining trust in themselves and their message(s) by their advocacy and activism! Who woulda thunk it, eh?!
For all of his padding and stereotyping, it certainly doesn’t seem to be a possibility that has even occurred to Dr. Bain!
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MV stated:
Dont forget MV it is the school holidays.
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Here I am at the end of this thread after not being able to look in for a short time. If I had to make any comment after reading Jo’s post and much of the commentary it would be, “I’ve been here before…and before…and before…”
I suppose this counts as one of the not so helpful posts. But for the record — it’s like a bad dream. Dr. Bain is playing a game in which he seems to give a little but never enough to admit that he has no case. And I doubt that it will change.
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After reading Dr. Bain’s second reply, and re-reading his first, I think I now see where he is coming from regarding his focus on social/policy issues rather than the science, and his point is not without some validity. To recap from his first reply, he states:
Replace “social/policy” with “political” and this makes sense. In other words, he is assuming that, regardless of the scientific evidence (or lack therof) for CAGW, the political reality in many places is that some kind of policies will inevitably be implemented. If this inevitability is accepted, his focus on what kinds of policies would be most acceptable (or least unacceptable) to all parties is perfectly rational.
Regarding this statement from his first reply, I think the real reason is that the skeptic community, in general, does not accept the inevitability of AGW policy implementation. What is rational under the assumptions Dr. Bain appears to be using does not make much sense under the assumptions much of “skeptic-dom” appears to work under. If you presented me with the question “assuming some kind of AGW policy will definitely be implemented, what would you prefer to see?”, I would probably play along with the hypothetical scenario and give you an answer based on what seemed to have the best cost-benefit differential. But I would likely never broach such a thing in a public skeptic forum, not out of any sense of intimidation or perceived disapproval but simply because we’re not operating under those assumptions.
So, regarding those subjects who expressed a willingness to support this or that policy based on “positive social benefits” – it’s not that those views are necessarily seen as “illegitimate”. Rather, they are seen as beside the point. What is “illegitimate” is pursuing and implementing a policy without regard for whether the rationale for that policy is valid. That is simply irresponsible governance. And choosing the policies which can be slipped through with the least opposition doesn’t make it any more responsible.
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I should clarify that, in the last sentence of my previous comment, I’m not accusing Dr. Bain of being irresponsible. Rather, if I might (loosely) use some familiar terms, it appears that with regard to the potential for catastrophic AGW legislation his work explores the strategy of adaptation, while skeptics pursue a strategy of mitigation.
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There is no need for skeptics to consider an “adaptation” response to climate change legislation at the moment, as it will be scrapped the moment Gillard and co. are awarded the royal order of the boot.
Your argument also fails because the electorate were never asked what sort of legislation might have been acceptable to them; the carbon tax is a fait accompli arbitrarily imposed by Gillard and Brown. Have they listened to the majority of voters (66% from memory in the latest Newspoll) who just don’t want it, or ever offered to modify it to make it less objectionable?
Bain needs to take a long hard look at his own partisan assumptions. To him such laws may seem a product of the “natural order” of policy, that can be presented in such a way as to appear acceptable to the majority. Gramscian cultural hegemony revisited, with supreme irony as the Leftist elite is the current ruling class.
Defunding or reduced funding is the key when the time comes, of the ABC, green NGOs, left-wing academia and all the other underminers of our hard-won way of life, despite the inevitable howls of protest. It is enough in a democracy for a government to deal with and modify policy while taking heed of legitimate political opposition, without continual white-anting by hordes of taxpayer-funded activists, egged on by their many admirers in the lamestream media.
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Do you honestly believe that a change of government will automatically result in the ETS ending?
You do realise that the Coalition is proposing to spend about $11.5 billion on carbon abatement in the first 3 years after it is elected right? You can read the policy for yourself here:
http://liberal.org.au/~/media/Files/Policies%20and%20Media/Environment/The%20Coalitions%20Direct%20Action%20Plan%20Policy%20Web.ashx
It seems you don’t understand that Australia has a system of representative government. We vote for politicians, the politicians form a government, the government forms policies that it then legislates.
Oh, and did you know that in 2007 all major parties supported an Emissions Trading Scheme? Did you know that there’s still 15 Coalition Senators elected at that election who promised voters that they would support an Emissions Trading Scheme?
Government in Australia has never operated based on opinion polls. Most people didn’t want the GST, but do we have a GST?
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The GST was taken to the people at the 1998 election, and grudgingly endorsed as a modernising measure. That is what Gillard should have done with her execrable tax, which is economically vandalistic and environmentally ineffectual given Australia’s piddling contribution to CO2 emissions, even if the horror, oh the horror, of CAGW is fully accepted.
I am glad to have gotten on your goat “Smithy”, and when having my quiet celebratory beer on election night will spare a thought for you and your mates Brookes and James, all wailing, gnashing your teeth and rending your garments in the stark realization that Aussies aren’t the gullible sheeple you want them to be.
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And most people voted against it. Only 49.08% of people voted for the Coalition on a 2 party preferred basis at that election. 217,000 more people voted against it than for it, but it still became law.
It’s actually a fixed priced Emissions Trading Scheme. Both party’s supported an ETS from 2006 to 2009. The next Coalition leader will support a carbon price of some sort, Tony Abbott is the last major party leader who will oppose carbon pricing.
What on earth gave you the impression you were annoying me? [snip] ED
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Lots of erudite discussion here but one point – I was led to believe that the term ‘denier’ was the linear mass density of fibres. Don’t any of you girls wear real stockings now?
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We do not discuss stockings here – it is a family blog 🙂
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Love your comment – a one liner and understandable – also funny which is a relief from the would be PHD’s
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Does that include Christmas stockings or is this a non religious family blog?
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It takes a lot of deniers to make a good yarn.
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On ya Joe V,
That should tie up this warped thread and it’s time I weft. — JN]
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Regrettably, very few.
But to those who do,
Here’s to you.
.
Thankyou.
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His entire complaint, that it is improper to bring in politcial questions about alleged bias in government support of this theory depends on the accuracy of this statement about fuinding for unsupportive investigation.
“I expect you could find a source of funding for it”
Professor Jones, merely 1 alleged researcher, got £13.6 million from the state. If Dr Bain can support his statement by pointing to eeven 1 sceptic treated similarly he has a very strong point. I cannot say |i know of anybody treated 1% as generously but he may know better.
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Looking like my pearls of wisdom are in moderator’s Nirvana…
[didn’t find anything recent in the spam filter] ED
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thanks ED, then it got lost at posting, and I worked half an hour on it yesterday 🙁
[sorry! I found it in spam further back in time than I first looked. It has been let free.] ED
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Thank you 🙂
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So much for the hockey stick. Warmist Fred Pearce of the New Scientist reports that maybe the world really was hotter not so long ago………..
MORE:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/trees_make_a_hockey_stick_snap/
carbon DIOXIDE is plant food and not pollution !!!
election now !!!!
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Follower of Stalinism in the defunct USSR called themselves “fellow travellers”. Stalin called them “useful idiots”. It’s interesting that Dr Paul Bain refers to people who disagree with anthropogenic global warming as “fellow travellers”. Am I alone in thinking that he is still being offensive? There may be a precedent before Stalin, and with different connotations, in which case I apologise for my ignorance.
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This thread has turned into a left versus right, (spy versus spy ), duologue and is neither enlightening nor entertaining.
Close it Jo
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… and Karoly is busy getting rogering over his book review of Mann’s comedy.
Follow the links back to Climate Audit … at the Gergis et al thread.
… and Watts kicks Brooksie’s butt, again!
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There are interesting parallels in contemporary history between previous organisations posing as honest and the present situation. The Mafia an organisation embedded in society with complex webs of influence ruling by a system on rewards and punishments, living by a code of Omertà (an imposed code of silence about the truth) and totally opposed to progress and prosperity for ordinary people is a good example. There are of course differences, the Mafia probably arose out of local resistance to centuries of institutionalised oppression. The IPCC and their fellow travellers (used advisedly) have no such excuse. Finally, what is hope on the horizon is the people of Sicily, not the governmental institutions, fed up by that organisation and its behaviour took action themselves and may well be winning.
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