😉
Joy. It’s another profoundly unscientific “consensus” study. At least one person thought that the 97% PR figure was not enough, and that magic 99.9% would sway the crowds. As if there was even one fence-sitter sitting, waiting, saying, “97% was too low…”
For the herding type of human, “consensus” is magnetically convincing. Not so for the independent minds who have seen prediction after prediction fail. If a 97% consensus on a highly complex, immature science is difficult to believe, a 99.99% one is comic. More of the same unconvincing stuff will do nothing except set off the BS meter. This new study will sway no one. The supernatural purity of it will work against “The Cause”.
A consensus is the one and only argument of the unskeptical, and they are doing it to death.
One fan, James Powell, was so enthused he spent nine months reading titles and abstracts of 24,000 papers, and found only four scientists (4!) who didn’t agree with the consensus. Some 69,402 other scientists apparently endorse “the consensus” (whatever it is) because they used the terms “climate change”, or “global warming” and they didn’t also make a clear statement that it was false, or claim that something else explains the rise in temperatures better than CO2. I’m pretty sure the perfect 99.99% consensus includes Roy Spencer, William Braswell, Richard Lindzen, and pretty much any other publishing skeptic you can name bar The Special Four Skeptics: F. Gervais, S. Avakyan, Will Happer, and Heinz Hug.
Here’s the news:
The 97 Percent Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Is Wrong—It’s Even Higher
[The consensus is 99.99%] …”according to James L. Powell, director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium, who reviewed more than 24,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate change published between 2013 and 2014. Powell identified 69,406 authors named in the articles, four of which rejected climate change as being caused by human emissions. That’s one in every 17,352 scientists. “
Avoiding thousands of skeptical scientists is a minor achievement. Surveys of meteorologists, geologists and engineers, show half or more are skeptics. Likewise lists of thousands of named skeptics who endorsed a very skeptical statement far outnumber his “list” of unsurveyed believers-by-default.
But his study may give us insight into the size and purity of the government-funded climate science industry, which apparently numbers around 70,000 scientists. Though it could be that he’s inadvertently measuring the odds of getting a paper published in the peer review press with both “climate change” and an actual definitive statement that something other than CO2 causes it — the odds are about 0.0058%. No wonder most professional scientists know to avoid those magic keyword combinations. Though in Powell’s study, if you discussed how the sun explained global warming in the conclusion or the press release (but not the abstract or title) you’d be listed as endorsing the “consensus”. Smile!
…
Given the $7 billion in funding from the US government for the 2015 financial year, marked for climate science and clean energy, it is hardly surprising that there are a lot of papers about “climate change” and “global warming”. There are a lot of people studying how big the crisis might be, how to solve the crisis we might be having, and what the effects of this crisis might be (if we are having one). What there is not, are institutions of people specifically tasked to investigate how minor CO2 is, how beneficial it is, or to assess if the Sun controls most of our climate. Around the Western world there is no government funding specifically to audit or find problems with the man-made global warming theory. There are no programs with the sole purpose of finding natural causes to provide the counter arguments ($0). The purity is near complete. Skeptics mostly have to fund themselves. That’s a very high barrier to publication.
How to ignore thousands of scientists:
- Pretend that science is not about cause and effect, arguments, or evidence. It’s a voting game. Do we vote for gravity?
- Assume that “peer review” is part of the Scientific Method. Too bad for Edison, Einstein, Darwin, and those other non-reviewed guys and gals. Their work doesn’t count.
- Cut the study years back to 2013 – 2014. Who knew that these were the magic years of “scientific truth”?
- Include thousands of irrelevant studies. It’s hard to believe there are 12,000 papers a year studying the cause of global warming. Does his study include every possible variation of the effects of global warming instead, like lemur movements, and butterfly ranges? Hard to say without access to “Web Of Science”, but Powell guesses we’ll say these papers are not about global warming, and provides an example of a paper, which not so reassuringly … is not about global warming. Read the title: “Investigation on critical breakdown electric field of hot sulfur hexafluoride/carbon tetrafluoride mixtures for high voltage circuit breaker applications.” He argues that the authors say it is about global warming, because they mention the keywords “global warming” in the abstract. (I don’t suppose they they might be trying to justify their work or funding?) These authors may well be believers who are searching for a substitute for the greenhouse gas called SF6, but they aren’t studying the cause of warming. Have they even read a single paper discussing the critical water feedback assumption in climate models? Why would they? It’s not their job.
- Set the bar absurdly high. The abstract has to say “AGW is false” or specifically say that some other cause better explains global warming. This filters out, or counts as “believers”, scores of studies which imply that natural warming is more important, or that the models are exaggerating warming, or find observations that contradict some aspect of anthropogenic global warming, or are just plain cautious. The authors can discuss that in their conclusions, or leave the obvious implications unsaid — it’s easier to get published that way, and besides, abstracts are strictly limited, usually to 150 or 250 words, so no author is going to waste this precious space. These authors get included as “believers”.
A serious study of consensus would look only at papers aiming to assess the cause of global warming. Even papers on Arctic ice and Mt Kilimanjaro wouldn’t count. It would study the conclusions, not just the abstracts. It would still be profoundly unscientific — as any “consensus” study is — but it might at least raise it above the level of propaganda, having some sociological value. The Powell study is a parody. Ahem. But he is selling a book.
A better study of a consensus would survey scientists themselves instead of guessing what they think, and it wouldn’t just survey “climate scientists” but all scientists. The Scientific Method is the same no matter what field of science it is applied to. Any study that claims there is a consensus among scientists is being dishonest if it limits its attention to a tiny subgrouping of science. (As if only a secret guild of approved members have received the magic training.) If climate scientists have overwhelming evidence, they’d have no trouble convincing nuclear physicists, materials engineers, industrial chemists, and geologists — yet they are failing dismally.
A thousand holes in the theory is a 99.9% consensus?
From James Powell’s methodology:
2. I looked for clear statements that AGW is false or that some other process better explains the rise in global temperature. I did not count articles that report some discrepancy, such as the growth in Antarctic sea ice for example, but do not use that discrepancy as the basis for claiming that AGW is false. Any theory has discrepancies, observations that the theory cannot yet explain. They provide the next set of research problems. One discrepancy does not falsify a theory.
So one discrepancy does not falsify a theory? Einstein would disagree with that, but what would he know?
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Albert Einstein
Skeptics can cite over 1,000 papers
I think the real intellectual depth of this project is revealed here. Powell has seen the list of 1,350 papers that skeptics cite and argues that these don’t count because “they are not about man-made global warming”. If only he applied the same standard to his “in” list? He points at one paper on the Popular techology list that discusses how volcanic activity under Antarctica generates large amounts of meltwater. Powell announces “What does this have to do with AGW? Nothing. Magmatic activity does not explain why between 2002 and 2012 Antarctica lost 69 ± 18 gigatons (billion tons) of land ice per year. One might as well say that the hot spot under Yellowstone is responsible for global warming.” In other words, Powell, who admits he believes the theory of man made global warming, and says that only expert opinion matters, has put his own not-so-expert and prejudiced judgement onto 70,000 papers. He has decided the implications of each finding, and knows how many gigatons of ice lost in Antarctica are due to volcanic activity that we can’t really measure. Who needs radar altimetry (which shows Antarctic ice mass is gaining or staying the same?)
So a paper showing that ice melting might not be due to AGW does not support skeptics, but a paper discussing the critical breakdown electric field of SF6, definitely supports the consensus? One standard for thee…
Possibly most of the thousand studies showing that climate models are wrong would count as “believer” articles in the Powell survey because they don’t effectively say “AGW is false” in the abstract. A study could show climate sensitivity is a mere sixth of what the IPCC claims, but that would be a believer article too, I presume, because it still discusses some warming due to man-made CO2 and may not offer an alternative cause.
He’s reduced the scientific debate to a “Yes:No” question. How much warming will man-made CO2 generate? “Yes” says James. Everything above zero is a consensus. Awesome. Welcome to the Idiocracy.
UPDATE: TdeF at #16 on the size of the “climate” researcher field
Also if you just count only meteorologists with a bachelor’s degree in Meteorology as true Climate Scientists (and that excludes Dr. Karl, Al Gore,Tim Flannery and the entire Climate Council), there are just 11,100 in the US according to the bureau of labor statistics.
UPDATE#2: Less than half of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certain claims that man-made CO2 is the major driver of climate change.
I knew Climate Change was a sexy area of research sure to attract a bit of dosh but seriously, has there really been “24,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate change published between 2013 and 2014”? FFS, that’s 65 papers per day. Gimme a list of all those papers Mr James Powell and I might believe you’re not just pulling those numbers straight out of your [snip].
Pointman
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“24,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate change published between 2013 and 2014″ is not bad for settled science.
200
Sorry Jo, got carried away. The patent dishonesty of these people drives me mad.
Pointman
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Pointman,
I might not be Jo, but you’re excused. My wife is sick of me complaining about the idiocy of it all. Especially the stupidity of trying to reduce a trace gas that is feeding your food supply or turning your food supply into fuel as you reduce the very gas your food supply relies upon to grow – totally N-U-T-S! Almost as nutty is burying your oxygen (in the form of the O2 bit of the CO2) for a few millennia. What are these people on?
100
Why not include the definitive Gerlich & Tscheuschner “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the frame of physics”?
This conjecture “has been falsified”! 🙂
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Not Quite O/T but try http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.vmNT89bE.dpbs
The second movie on the top 10 climate predictions (and do view right to the end if you’re a troll).
P.S. Love the shot of the dog.
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House votes to slash climate research H.R.257 (2016)
It remains to be seen exactly what this 99.99% will be worth in the coming Year, especially after Pairs and the US Elections in 2016.
The House passed a spending bill in June that would make cuts to climate research:-
The $51.4 billion spending bill would fund the fiscal 2016 budgets for the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, NASA, the National Science Foundation and related agencies. NOAA — which is housed within Commerce — would get about $5.2 billion, a cut of more than $270 million
The Obama administration criticized the climate research cut, as well as a $200 million cut to earth science missions in NASA’s budget ..
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I hope the US will cut the legislative power of the EPA, it’s administrator Gina McCarthy came out with some disturbing views on it’s need to prove or even disclose ‘the science’ for that matter while testifying before the House Science, Space and Technology committee.
These are the types that love to round up dodgy survey figures and use the phrase “moving forward” in the twisted context of benefiting mankind.
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Actually since ‘Climate change’ is beyond all doubt. Surly no more research is needed. 🙂
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…..and don’t call me surly.
20
Even Kim Jong-Un can’t get 99.99%.
Serious observers will soon realise how silly and lame this analysis looks, and rush to bury it.
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Rick Bradford @ #3.3
Ah ha! Kim Jong-Un and James Powell are just rank amateurs at rigging these consensus and voting numbers.
Vladmir Putin can do a lot better than that!
107 percent turnout? Another side to Russia’s vote [ Mar 6th 2012 ]
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Sounds like the election in Liberia where one candidate got 67% of the registered vote and LOST. reported by Graham Greene.
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My Stat 1 Professor would say, “percentage? You have [20|256|12,145] cases. What are the real numbers? Do it right.” I’m not sure whether he thought applying percentages to small numbers (inflating the apparent importance) or to big numbers (throwing out important information) was worse. He regarded percentages as a waste of his time.
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At some point in their lives many people believed in 1) The Tooth Fairy, 2) The Easter Bunny, and 3) Santa. Their belief did not make any of them true. The same applies to CAGW.
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yes grasshoppa
but all three bring goodies
belief in CAGW will bring goodies to the special boys and girls
doubters are not special
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Of course they are believer. To me, any person who bases the opinion or a paper on the non-existing “greenhouse effect” or/and the nonsensical “global temperature” is technically a believer in AGW. Believers are different, right, and there can be some disagreements between them.
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What he actually meant, without realizing it is that “one discrepancy does not falsify a MODEL.”
A model is a simplified representation of a reality. Models are based on THEORIES. It is useful as an analogy and a test subject. It can be used as a predictive tool to test THEORIES.
All models are correct. They are examples of what I call “Computational Reality”. They do what they are designed to do. What they are NOT is (necessarily) examples of “Representational Reality”, i.e. the real world made small.
James Powell has conflated Computational with Representational reality. A model that does not reproduce observation has flaws that may not invalidate its usefulness, but demonstrate that it has limitations and non-real world characteristics. The model must therefore be used carefully and with suspicion.
Powell has made a critical mistake promoted by the likes of Michael Mann. Proxies are not the same thing as the thing proxies attempt to imitate. Models are computational proxies for something you can’t test directly.
The near-religious belief in computers has lost the human-basis, just as the religious belief in the Bible has lost the human basis of translations. Just as translators of the Bible have been considered divinely inspired and therefore unable to err, so have the programmers of computers. Neither the denim-encased Bible nor the model pushed out by a Cray computer can be wrong.
The infallibility of models and proxies is the fundamental assumption behind CAGW. A single discrepancy DOES falsify a theory, but not not invalidate the USE of a model.
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Any postulate has … Any hypothesis gets binned and formerly accepted theories are debunked, and models are as you described them.
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My favorite D@mned with faint praise use of the magical get out of peer-review free statement was by Joan Feynman et al. The subtle dig would of course go right over the heads of the thick witted Alarmist crowd including those who did the peer-review.
The zinger was various authors have noted that solar irradiance proxies and global surface temperatures declined for an interval during the middle of the present century while the concentration of greenhouse gases such as CO2, which cause global warming, rose monotonically.
What happened in the middle of the 20th century?
The 1974 CIA report “A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems” tells us:
it was cold enough to cause poor grain crops and have the CIA worried enough to investigate, yet the the above study states this cold spell happened ‘ while the concentration of greenhouse gases such as CO2, which cause global warming, rose monotonically.’
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Gai @ #7
I’m a bit late to the party again but as a now old retired western Victorian grain farmer I sure remember those grain prices in 1974 and the fright that a very large number of countries recieved when quite suddenly there appeared to be a growing shortage of grains world wide.
For us they were truly Golden years. Good seasons and exceptional prices, a very rare combination in agriculture.
An old friend and my mentor into agri-politics albeit as it turned out, at a state level only, was also a grower member of the then very respected across international grain trading and buying organisations, the Australian Wheat Board, “Jim” Nuske OBE.
He often said that the 1974 shortage of grain world wide was considerably worse in having to try and allocate grain fairly amongst buyers than trying to dispose of Australia’s wheat crop in times of surplus.
The AWB board in the most literal sense, once at least had the most senior grain buyer of a significant nation literally on his knees in the AWB sanctum begging for grain to feed his nation’s people.
As growers we received $150 AUD / tonne for our grain in 1974.
For perspective Australia’s minimum wage in 1974 was very roughly around $120 or so dollars a week.
To put that in today’s dollars we can use the Reserve Banks [ RBA ] Inflation Calculator
We enter “$150″ in“1974” which in “2014” would be the equivalent of in 2014 dollars $1148.83 per tonne of grain
Or quite close to the 2014 Full-time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings of $1, 476.30
[ ref; 6302.0 – Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, Nov 2014 ]
And that is an inflation level of 659% in 40 years @ an average annual inflation rate of 5.2%
—————-
Todays Australian grain prices for wheat are being quoted at around $290 /tonne.
I am not sure how many of today’s Australians would fare if they were getting about twice the weekly wage rate of 1974 which would probably amount to around $250 a week.
But that is what Australia’s grain farmers are supposed to live with and then they get severely criticised when they state the plain truth that they can’t survive any bad seasons without some help.
Here in western Victoria it costs all up, around $700 / hectare each year to live as a farm family, to run a farm, to sow and grow a crop and harvest it and transport it to the storages per year.
Farms are now about 1500 hectares up to 2500 hectares often as a one man and one woman operation.
An annual outlay of probably in excess of million dollars for a smaller farm on up from that for larger farms just to run for the year.
Scale is the only way in which Australian farmers can now compete on the world scene against massively subsidised farming operations in just about every other country
In the 1970’s the furtherest north in North America that grain was being grown was in Canada’s Peace River districts in northern Alberta on the 56 degree north latitude.
56 degrees north runs north of Lake Baikal in Siberia and north of Moscow and just north of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Finland, Estonia and Latvia with the mitigating temperature effects of the Baltic grown grains as far north as above 60 degrees latitude N.
But all this could change if we once again move into a period of colder climatic temperatures.
Temperature is not the real problem
Length of the growing season and the extreme variability of the growing seasons in colder climatic periods are the problem.
If we again move into a colder climatic period similar to the early 1970’s or colder then much of those most northern grain growing regions will fall by the wayside as far as predictable food crop / grain crop production is concerned .
And what you may read of the conditions below in this Finnish paper on growing food crops in the cold of today’s northern latitudes may very well extend much further south into the world’s main grain growing regions if we do enter another Maunder type minimum.
And the consequences?
Read the last section of the quote below!
___________
To quote from a Finnish publication on grain production in the most northern latitudes;
Crop production in a northern climate
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ROM,
Thanks for the additional proof. With the drive world wide to bankrupt small farmers, a Maunder type Minimum is going to be a major crisis, especially since Clinton decided to get rid of the US grain reserve and now even the grain storage silos are gone.
The USA produces about 25% of the world grain crop IIRC.
60
Well more profit for Oz then when the inevitable Northern Hemisphere crop failures come (Inevitable because glaciation is the normal state of this planet). A few long winters in a row in Europe or America could tip the NH over the edge.
30
“How Scientific discovery progresses… “
Science seems to progress through the efforts of individual scientists not by large groups of them agreeing with each other, and it is interesting how the history of consensus in science works and this is given in the example of Alfred Wegener. (Plate tectonics)
The theory of continental drift was first presented by Alfred Wegener to the German Geological Society in 1912, the theory was not accepted for many years, and it did not help that Wegener was not a geologist.
For many years it remained “unfashionable”
David Attenborough, who attended university in the second half of the 1940s, recounted its lack of acceptance.
“I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed”
One has to ask how could so many of the then contemporary Scientists be wrong ?
200
The 1963 paper ‘Magnetic Anomalies over Oceanic Ridges”, published in Nature by Vine and Matthews, can arguably be considered the ‘proof’, or more accurately, the presentation of convincing evidence that plate tectonics was more than a bizarre theory. Not really that long ago, in the scheme of things. A lot of fundamental geological principles, and theories worked without plate tectonics, and they still do today…
The problem is, it seems those who have the loudest voices in the AGW debate are those who have had the least exposure to anything resembling scientific rigour, and the scientific method.
I would imagine if Vine and Matthews had said “no, sorry, we can’t release our data”, or “here’s some of the data, which has been re-processed in a way which is still a secret”, then their paper could well have been ignored by decent geologists, and the world would have kept on spinning.
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One of the more curious aspects of the pate tectonics revolution was that – as you said – “A lot of fundamental geological principles, and theories worked without plate tectonics, and they still do today…”. This pertains for instance in petroleum geology. Yet an examination of producing oil fields shows a pretty strong correlation between oil production and plate junctions, including aulacogens. But, when regional powers ignored the geological “facts” they have not infrequently found at least traces of oil and thus the abiotic proposal.
40
“Not really that long ago, in the scheme of things. A lot of fundamental geological principles, and theories worked without plate tectonics, and they still do today…”
This also applied very well to Ptolemy,s earth centric system.
To geologists plate tectonics is like the theory of evolution biologists or relativity to physicists. There is before and after. Before there was confusion, special cases, inability to explain and simplify earth processes. Now plate tectonics explains not only everything here but also can be applied to the other planets, origin of life, atmospheric developments. Plate tectonics has allowed science to realise that the earth is dynamic, just like the expanding universe led to realisation of the dynamic universe.
The global warming crap tries to portray their position in a light of the new and bold science. But there is plenty of examples of pseudo-science in the past and GW is no different.
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In both situations, the general scientific community was able to (eventually) see reason, and change their outlook on the world.
If the argument is correct, that the majority of scientists doing genuine climate-related work lean towards accepting AGW, I do not know what sort of evidence it would take for them to change their minds.
As ‘the climate’ involves so many different aspects, and research can be done in so many different scientific fields, I am still not sure what an actual ‘climate scientist’ is. Geologists can be climate scientists, so can physicists, biologists, mathematicians, oceanographers, meteorologists, astronomers, chemists…etc.
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ScotsmaninUtah
July 12, 2015 at 6:04 am · Reply
“How Scientific discovery progresses… “
Maybe this could be titled “How Scientific discovery regresses”?
“The 8 Stages of Scam”
in the link at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/07/the-sound-of-se-483.html
100
Followed the SDA link to American Digest page. Loved the prognosis at stage 7:
…the retreat of the orthodoxy is covered by a smokescreen of fresh concerns for some other catastrophe…
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Very simple; Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis had very little resemblance to the modern theory of plate tectonics. To conflate the two is to commit an act of stupidity on the same order as those warmunists who crow that the fact that the climate changes proves that CAGW is also a fact.
89
A chap called Holmes proposed plate tectonics after reading Wegeners works.Wegener established that the continents were not fixed- the prevailing view.He established that fossils matched as well as the geology between North America and Europe.Being a meteorologist by training set himself outside the rigid scientific system.Best known for discovering jet streams and pioneering the use of kites and balloons to determine atmospheric conditions.Wegener nonetheless will always be regarded as the originator of the theory of continental drift.
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Wegener postulated that continents moved, he did not provide a mechanism for this movement. Subsequent work by many others has provided evidence supporting movement, and theories for the mechanism.
What’s your point, Akatsukami?
100
In 1949, my 5th grade teacher told us about the continental drift theory, pointing out how closely the coastlines of South America and Africa matched. It seemed good enough proof to me.
131
The matching fossils were the clincher for me.
60
I think the distribution of certain types of fauna is convincing: things like the distribution of the various families of snake, or the connections between the Rheas, Emu and Ostrich, or the fact South American mammals used to be marsupials.
40
jorgekafkaza
A mate of mine often recounts bitter memories of pointing out to his 5th grade teacher that the coastline of Queensland and N.S.W fits nicely into Peru and Chile with NewZealand and Mexico as a bit of a wedge. The teacher upon realising that observation undermined the theory she was teaching, victimised him severely. I would possibly get the same treatment here for pointing out that many dinosaurs could not support their own weight under current gravity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U
I may be unpopular in the extreme even though something of this scale could explain far more global warming than the the worst of the failed models predicted. That is global warming caused by cosmic radiation in a non Svensmark sort of way.
“While Neutralinos are stable particles, they annihilate in pairs, releasing energy in the form of standard model particles”
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6YjEBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Such an enhancement in the signal could arise if we live in a clumpy halo.”
“The cosmic ray positron excess is intriguing, as there is no simple astrophysical model that can explain it. We are left to consider a primary component, such as from neutralino annihilations.”
http://www.academia.edu/8322953/Cosmic_ray_positron_excess_and_neutralino_dark_matter
20
“I would possibly get the same treatment here for pointing out that many dinosaurs could not support their own weight under current gravity.”
I doubt the atmospheric pressure was the same. If the atmosphere was a lot thicker the temperature would be higher (which it was) The atmosphere could support giant flying dragonflies of more than two feet (60 cm) in length, as well as flying dinosaurs (which it did). The additional partial pressure of oxygen would also allow more muscle mass and a larger animal to exist.
30
Thanks gai. It is nice to know someone is thinking. The elevated pressure back when everything was different sure would have helped. So the extinction of them could have been due to ongoing normal natural change either way. Both theories could coexist! What effect would that much change in atmospheric pressure have on radio isotope dating ratios? There being a different cosmic radiation penetration depth under your scenario.
20
Also of interest and useful for taking down the Authority Fallacy
Three myths about scientific peer review
So much for peer-review. All it did was keep an editor from ending up with egg on his face for publishing a really awful paper. Now of course thanks to Pal Review they get published anyway.
SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted
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I was intrigued by the logistical challenge of collecting, classifying, selecting and then reviewing 24,000 papers , within a 2 year period, a task greater than studying an entire IPCC assessment report – itself a task of superhuman endurance. So I followed the link as far as the authors synopsis where I found, prefaced Key data that underpin (sic) global warming I found Michael Manns Hockey Stick graph!
What with this and the extinction of bumble bees I think the faithful have finally entered the twilight zone.
Only 4 bloody sceptics – Lewendowsky found more than that and even named them to boot.
I wonder if even the Guardian will run with this.
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The Guardian will run it with the headline. “Abbott out in the cold on warming” or some such garbage. Its mana from their particularly queer heaven this nonsense.
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You can fairly well guarantee that The Age will run with this. They are already hysterical about Abbott’s view on the RET, wind power and Paris.
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I can already picture the SMH kool-aid brigade shaking and dribbling with excitement as they wait for the first opportunity to cite the 99.99% figure as a winning argument to any septical post. I can’t wait!
40
I have a pretty strong love hate relationship with Dawkins.
He can identify herd mentality when he is dissecting religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVr9bJ8Sctk (2:55)
But seems utterly unable to make the mental leap to climate change being the exact same phenomena.
The strongest claim in AGW right now is the number of so called scientists that apparently believe it. Considering how utterly bogus and completely meaningless the consensus numbers are, that’s not much of a claim though.
The day numbers of believers = likelihood of coming to pass, is the day God will pop out of the ether and yell SURPRISE!
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I can’t believe it ! We have now almost reached a tipping point. The trend in climate change consensus is so serious now that unless we stop burning fossil fuels that the number of scientists that believe in climate change will exceed 100% . It has increased from 97% to 99.99 % in only 2 years . By the end of this year the consensus will surely be more than 100% and then all is lost. It will have gone to a level beyond the point of no return. By 2100 this figure could be 2,3 or 400% . There will be so many scientists in consensus nothing will get done . We are surely doomed.
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LMAO nice one Zig
60
You laugh now, but you won’t be laughing when it actually happens. You see, you’re operating under the misconception that each “climate scientist” is only a single person! You’ve failed to take into account Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, and soon to be known as something entirely different in academic circles.
Thus the faithful:scientists ratio can easily exceed 100%, possibly even 200% or more, depending on how many extra disorderly personalities the average climate zealot is possessed by. Judging from what I’ve seen lately in Science and other publications, the latter number is quite large, indeed.
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In defense of cowardly scientists, a lot of their papers are solid yet there is always a single sentence in the abstract that says under ‘climate change’ this paper is fairly irrelevant. The sentence can also be found in the conclusion.
They have a house mortgage and are desperately in need of a science grant to give their life meaning, but as global cooling begins to bite we’ll need to discuss what to do with these disgraceful human beings.
151
“We are surely doomed.”
Relax, everyone. One Direction have mobilised their millions of fans to the climate cause. It can’t fail now. We’re saved.
90
We could all e-mail James Powell with our credentials and views about his “consensus”
jpowell AT usc.edu
81
“one in every 17,352 scientists”
So the 1998 (and 2002) Oregon Petition which said man made Global Warming was rubbish, actually signed by more than 32,000 US scientists with name, address and qualifications has been utterly ignored. This was no click the box survey.
On this evidence alone, the absolute minimum number of scientists in the US against the proposition of man made global warming is 17,352x 32,000 or 555,264,000, nearly twice the total entire population of the US. 99.99% of all statistics are made up.
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WOW! 4 scientists got research funding, without giving a nod to climate change. The big question, is how the hell did they manage that?
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Don’t worry, I’m sure the editors have been removed by now.
20
Also if you just count only meteorologists with a bachelor’s degree in Meteorology as true Climate Scientists (and that excludes Dr. Karl, Al Gore,Tim Flannery and the entire Climate Council), there are just 11,100 in the US according to the bureau of labor statistics.
If 99.99% of these agree with Man Made Global Warming, they need to find the 1 man who disagrees and take him for a long walk (on a short pier?). Pier pressure?
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Shock Poll: Meteorologists Are Global Warming Skeptics
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Oh gosh. I’ll have to inform the Vice Chancellor of my University to stop hiring Ph.D.s, they’re far too expensive, when only Batchelor Degrees are necessary to be `true scientists. He Needs To Know.
Parliament needs to know as well, because The Law relating to University staffing and practices will need a major overhaul in light of this startling discovery.
Thanks for the `hesds up.’
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I note your sarcasm, but I actualy agree that better results may happen by using Batchelor Degrees instead of PhD’s.
PhD’s are often too sure of themselves and can become overwhelmed by their own intellect (and other peoples praises).
30
Push-poller Howell has decided that every skep utterance is inadmissible, including ‘a’ and ‘the’. Can’t imagine how we even got our 0.1% to scrape in. But maybe that was just for a touch of scientific realism, in amongst all the push-poll artistry.
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Indeed; how did 4 people manage to get counted? This is like a worm-hole in space-time. It should have been impossible, yes?
10
The more complex a theory, the easier it is to falsify. In fact, it’s begging for it. The AGW theory has become an accepted climate version of the Grand Unifying Theory. The obvious fact that it doesn’t remotely explain all or even a fraction of the observations means it is irretrievably falsified. The departure of models from empirical observation is the well identified policy based side show that drives the social engine room at the UN under Christiana Figueres. It is an entirely separate toxicity.
However, remember we were never really dealing with real science, when we dealt with climate ‘science’, pervaded by ersatz skientists, or the ‘settled’ eco-skience purveyors where the speculative precautionary principle is the highest bar for evidence, where the outcome is known a priori, deliberately and deceptively encapsulated in the UN definition of klimate khange that replaced ‘global warming’ in 1998.
Surveys of the literature
on any particular subject will yield no more than the obvious fact that the literature concerns itself with that subject. So what? In the current political klimate, one will, as a rule, need to look elsewhere for disagreement with the klimate meme. This differs little from other areas in which modern scientific endeavour is seen. The flavour of the moment always captures the funding and publication, as institutions and individuals strive to remain relevant, current and fashionable. Just look at the party political line at The Conversation if you have any doubt. The absence of disagreement, of intellectual contest is a glaring red flag.
It will be fascinating to see how the meme of the moment manages the encroaching mini ice age. Perhaps it won’t matter, because the UN will have the World focused on economic survival in a decarbonising world….or will it really? Thankfully, herding cats springs to mind.
As for ‘klimate skience’ it has become the academic equivalent of bubonic plague, infecting everything through its funding vector, to wit the NASA mission to Pluto, New Horizons. The Press Briefing given to the American Astronomical Society/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Orlando, Florida, October 9, 2007 makes the case in point.
Slipped into the series by Dr. Phillip Marcus a professor of engineering at Berkeley concerned chiefly with Computational Fluid Dynamics, entitled, “New Horizons was at the right place [Jupiter] at the right time,” was the insertion of the clanging non-sequitur, but seemingly required genuflection to Gaia on the tail of “On Earth – Change.”
It’s as extraordinary as it is odd in context, no less bizarre than a case of green boils in the black death.
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99.9%? wow! Even the “progressive” countries run by such luminaries as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, okay maybe not the Kym Dynasty where it is 100% and all the other “progressives” aka Soviet, People’s Democratic Republics et al, ie mass murderers all) never claimed 99.9%. I mean with a little bit of rounding that means 100%. Therefore there is no dissent to the alarmists and everybody agrees. I just love “progressive” stats.
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And in further news from Royal Astronomical Society (RAS):
“Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to ‘mini ice age’ levels: Sun driven by double dynamo.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 July 2015.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm.
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That sounds very bad!
70
Sell short on solar panels.
50
What is really amazing about this is that 24,000 papers were published about this non-event in just two years. That’s about 1,000 times too many. Anyone who has worked with scientists knows that most published papers are very lightweight; this demonstrates that very clearly.
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1,000 papers per month? At 20 papers per publication per month, that requires 50 Science publications on entirely Man Made Global Warming. That does not leave much room for any other subject in Science.
Of these 1,000, only 2.4 papers even questioned man made global warming.
There is not a religion in the world with this success rate. Even Doubting Thomas was 1/12 or 8.5% skeptical. Given that Judas was not counted, 9.1% skeptics among the Apostles.
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We may think all this mushy science around climate will run its course and discredit itself alone. Not likely. People are more likely to conclude that if they have been sold one lemon they will suspect they have been buying other lemons. Reputable science will pay the price.
In Brussels dialect, to this day, the word for architect is a term of abuse, dating back to the building of the ghastly Palais de Justice in the 19th century. I wonder if in future years we won’t be calling all dodgy intellectuals “climate scientists”. That would be just, but let’s hope the simple word “scientist” doesn’t become a pejorative.
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I have a degree in science and at this point I will not recommend my University nor do I view any scientific paper without deep skepticism.
Unfortunately Post Modern ‘science’ has infected everything.
For example look at the rot in a scientific field that concerns us all where we would expect honesty and integrity of the highest order – Medicine.
British Medical Journal: US scientists significantly more likely to publish fake research, study finds
PLOS Medicine: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
…………
This one is enough to make anyone in the USA a bit uneasy:
The FDA Underreports Scientific Misconduct In Peer-Reviewed Articles: The Benefits Of Negative Science
DISGRACEFUL!
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If there are thousands of climate scientists in consensus, how come we only keep hearing the same 3-4 voices?
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Not mentioning our very own Karoly,England,Gergis Huff Goldbugs etc.The latter being well known for his love of underwater observations ( may be a freshly speared coral trout for dinner) at the expense of others.I tell you all this climate alarmism with its back-of the cereal box science is enough to make one somewhat sceptical.
81
I’m 99.99% sure that sooner or later someone will make up some inaccurate statistic on climate change.
130
meanwhile, at the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto a mere 100 protesters get positive MSM coverage while 400 attend Gore’s training session (guess they couldn’t be bothered to join the protest):
8 July: CBC: CanadianPress: Climate change ‘disaster waiting to happen,’ Toronto summit told
Protestors demand ‘total transformation’ for how societies work to address global warming crisis
SCROLL DOWN TO SINGLE PHOTO CAPTION: More than 100 people showed up to a downtown Toronto hotel calling for “total transformation” of how our societies work in addressing the climate crisis.
Ontario, Quebec and California are teaming up on a cap-and-trade system in which businesses have a greenhouse gas quota and are able to sell credits to reward efficiency and innovation…
Calif Gov. Jerry Brown: “At the lower level, the subnational level, we want to do what we can to light a fire under our respective national leaders to get things moving because climate change ***doesn’t wait for anybody,” he said.
“It’s a disaster ***waiting to happen.”…
“We can’t any longer claim ignorance of the price of further delay,” (Ontario Premier Kathleen) Wynne told the crowd. “The oceans will continue to rise and we’ll experience longer, more intense heat waves and rainstorms, erosion, flooding, wildfires — our ecosystem is compromised, our infrastructure is at risk.”
(Quebec Premier Philippe) Couillard spoke about the success the province has had with carbon pricing and moving to an environmentally focused economy…
Before the summit began, more than 100 people showed up to a downtown hotel with one protest organizer saying she’s upset both the climate meeting and an economic summit at the same hotel are closed to the public.
“We’re protesting the people who have been brought in to determine our future and the future of the planet,” said Tings Chak, with No one Is Illegal Toronto.
“We’re demanding total transformation of how our societies work in addressing the climate crisis that doesn’t sacrifice our communities.”…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/climate-change-disaster-waiting-to-happen-toronto-summit-told-1.3142584
10 July: National Observer: Fram Dinshaw: Following summit, Al Gore trains next generation of climate leaders in Toronto
Young delegates welcomed Al Gore’s leadership on climate change as a breath of fresh air even as ***Stephen Harper’s government skipped the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto on July 7-9.
After delivering his keynote speech at the summit downtown, the former US vice-president addressed delegates at the Climate Reality Corps training session in Mississauga on July 9-10. He warned that climate change could trigger a sixth great extinction if left unchecked, but ended his speech on an upbeat note by outlining achievements from solar panels powering African mud huts to clean-tech jobs powering British Columbia’s economy.
“Speak up. Win the conversation. Don’t let denial go unchallenged,” said Gore to his mostly young audience.
One young person speaking up was Corrina Serda, a presenter and mentor who has been involved in environmental action since her ***childhood and has now given more than 180 presentations of her own on climate change.
“I think the one key message from his speech, at least in my opinion, is that we still have hope that renewable energy is going to be really great for our future and that we all have the opportunity to turn this around and that is a real tangible goal for us,” said Serda.
She contrasted Gore’s leadership to that of the federal government…
“I’m of the opinion that we can reach a critical mass this year especially through all the different events that we’re having in Toronto and the area. If you look at it there’s 400 people from Canada here at the training today. All of those 400 people are from across Canada and they’ll go back to their own communities and tell people about it. If they even reach 10 other people or 100 other people, it really isn’t that hard to do. We could reach 40,000 people” said Serda…
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/10/news/following-summit-al-gore-trains-next-generation-climate-leaders-toronto
9 July: Toronto Sun: Antonello Artuso: Gore praises Ontario’s carbon pricing stance
“What these two provinces and others are doing in Canada is attracting global attention,” said Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president and environmental activist, who spoke on the final day of the Climate Summit of the Americas.
A spokesman for Premier Kathleen Wynne said Gore was not paid a speaking fee for his appearance…
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Speaking as a Canadian, don’t take the silly Toronto “climate summit” seriously. It was invitation only and a gathering of true believers trying to hype the fraud. The overwhelming reaction in Canada wasa resounding yawn, followed by the question of what idiot at border services let gore into the country.
00
SMH: KIDS TALK CLIMATE CHANGE
Students at Scots Grammar and the Kambala School don’t think students learn enough about climate change
. . .
What a 100% failure of the Australian Education system.
111
A Klimatariat high priest speaks from the pulpit.
“I expect by 2050 … people just don’t go outside,” said Professor Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at UNSW.
“The weather events that have not even been imagined yet will become common and we will be seeing events unprecedented in our region’s history.”
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There is something hiding under the bed, and I don’t know what it is, and I am too scared to look, but I know it is horrible, and it is going to jump out when I am asleep, and eat me all up.
These people aren’t even second rate. If events can’t be imagined (i.e. made up) then they cannot exist, ever, period.
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The scariest thing is the UN-IPCC is still around in 2050, and that they’re still ONLY 95% certain:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is now 95 per cent certain that humans are the main cause of current global warming.”
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I expect by 2050 … people will go outside again after the horrid decades of the Gleissberg cycle.
The weather events are easily imagined because it will be similar to now.
Nothing that is about to happen is unprecedented in local history, the periods from 1810-1830 and 1900-1910 are well documented Gleissbergs.
30
***GLOBAL GOVERNANCE? SURELY NOT:
10 July: CarbonBrief: Roz Pidcock: A Carbon Brief guide to the Our Common Future conference in Paris – Final day
In the biggest gathering of scientists ahead of COP21 in December, thousands of climatologists, social scientists, economists and policy experts have descended on the UNESCO headquarters in Paris today to kick off the Our Common Future under Climate Change conference.
***There’s an almost ***unfathomably large amount of research being presented here in the next four days. So here’s Carbon Brief’s selection of talks, posters and events caught our eye…
Carbon Brief will also be holding our final media workshop today. Come along and talk to us about how the media covers climate change, learn more about what journalists look for in a story and tell us about your own media experiences…
Friday 10 July
9am Joseph Stiglitz – Bridging the carbon gap in the context of the financial crisis…
10-11am Panel Discussion
No shortage of big names this morning, with a second session in the main plenary featuring a discussion between Laurence Tubiana, founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), Rachel Kyte, group vice-president of the World Bank, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research (PIK) and Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science…
***12:50pm David Victor – The emergence of new structures for global governance
With the failure of top-down bargaining strategies, can bottom-up methods such as “building blocks” and “climate clubs” break the diplomatic deadlock?…
PLUS FULL DETAILS OF OTHER SESSIONS
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/07/a-carbon-brief-guide-to-the-our-common-future-conference-in-paris/
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Describing Science as of a piece is to imply that it can be determined by deduction without recourse to observation.
Is this fellow suggesting that to falsify one theory is to falsify Science in its entirety?
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Thanks Leo,
THat quote: “Science is of a piece, all fitting together like a beautiful tapestry” is perfect. Since science is supposed to be coherent across all parts and fields, then climate science should be able to convince the rest of the scientific world. They can’t.
154
This attempt to fortify AGW by wrapping it in the scientific vigour of other areas of science is pathetic and indicative of the disdain alarmists have for other areas of science. They literally are prepared to sacrifice scientific integrity generally to bolster the validity of alarmism.
What an insidious thing alarmism is.
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10 July: CarbonBrief: Scientists: 2015 is a critical year for ‘bold action’ on climate change
by Roz Pidcock and Robert McSweeney
The window for limiting climate change to 2C at a feasible economic cost is rapidly closing, but science is the basis for finding the right solutions. That’s the conclusion of the Our Common Future under Climate Change conference in Paris this week.
Keeping global temperature rise to 2C or less will mean greenhouse gas emissions must be zero or even negative by the end of the 21st century, the conference’s scientific committee says. That will require “bold action” starting now – delaying deep emissions cuts or not pursuing clean-energy technologies will only make solutions more difficult and more costly later down the line…
Climate change and its impacts were the focus on Tuesday when the conference opened, with talks ranging from measuring ice sheet loss from space to extreme events and how climate change is ***eroding the cultural heritage of Paris…
Big gatherings like this drive the science forwards and connect the dots between different disciplines,Dr Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, tells Carbon Brief.
“[What we’re all doing here is] digging into the meaning of the scenarios that we’ve developed, not only what they mean for climate change, but also other things like land use, biodiversity, aerosol emissions, air quality … We’re trying to get beyond just ‘is the world warming and what does that mean?’ [to a] more holistic picture. So that if we are making long term planetary strategic decisions, [we know] what they mean for ***everything.”…
Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research (PIK): “We should not see this conference as the scientific input for the [UNFCCC] negotiations. The science is quite clear now. For that, there is no need for such a conference. The purpose of the conference was to generate new ideas after the Paris COP. We should not just focus on the Paris COP. There is a day after Paris, too. Climate policy is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”…
On the final day, the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz had top billing in the keynote speeches. From his viewpoint as an economist, he discussed why tackling climate change in the aftermath of a global financial crisis is not necessarily bad timing…Rather than trying to agree a cap-and-trade system, or relying on voluntary emissions reduction, a global carbon price is the way forward, he argued…
For those countries that didn’t join the “coalition of the willing” of a global carbon price, they could be penalised through cross-border taxes, which – he added – would be legal according to the World Trade Organisation…
Many of the presentations from the conference, including the one given this morning by Stiglitz, have now been placed online (LINK). A Youtube channel (LINK), featuring recordings from many of the sessions, has also been created.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/07/scientists-2015-is-a-critical-year-for-bold-action-on-climate-change/
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What do these fools take us for? (my bolding)
I don’t know if anyone else finds this puzzling.
Why does everyone think that all it will take to solve this so called Climate Change/Global Warming problem ….. is ….. TAXES.
Tony.
190
The sovereign risk in that statement (ie. the WTO thinks that taxes discriminating against sovereign countries is now legal) is truly scary. It’s quite akin to Franz Kafka’s The Trial, wherein one is absolutely guilty of charges that do not, and will not, exist
90
Actually we should be grateful to Dr Powell for producing this study.
It is so obviously flawed that, in the decades to come, it can be held up as the prime example of CAGW “Consensus Craziness”.
191
News in The Age this morning! “PM escalates war on wind”
“Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Gorman have issued the (Clean Energy Finance Corporation) with a directive …prohibiting new wind funding. It is understood the directive was issued without the knowledge of the Environment Minister Greg Hunt, angering the minister”
Very good news in one way, but it looks like a government divided, which is not good politics. Best way forward now could be to replace Greg Hunt.
100
Of course politically that could be the aim. Hunt has done nothing to warrant being removed, but poked and prodded might become disloyal and therefore a target for discipline – Politics is a strange sport. Also, by going direct the P.M. has redirected any warmie revolt at himself, leaving the Minister to court the climate faithful, that is, he has wrapped insulation around Hunt while still cutting funding to wind, politically I think this is a winner. And I agree with the PM the fund should not be used for established (low energy intensity) technologies, it should be used for emerging high intensity ones that benefit Australia – like Thorium or Uranium.
In general greenies are so hopeless, I know because I used to be one (still am to some extent, that why I know how hopeless we are)
Let me make a significant point in bold no less.
You really can’t unknow (Uninvent) something, Greenies are afraid of the destructive power of uranium used in nuclear weapons – fear is the greenies trade but.
The only effective way to counter nuclear weapons is to make them ineffective by inventing new and better defences against then, making them more of a threat to their owners or by USING ALL THE URANIUM FOR SOMETHING ELSE. Once the world has run out of uranium, Nuclear weapons will go the way of the dodo.
10
OOPs. should probably say DIRTY Nuclear weapons. There is a prospect for creating a clean hydrogen bomb (One which doesn’t need a Plutonium bomb to trigger it)
01
So “James Powell …spent nine months reading titles and abstracts of 24,000 papers ….”, that is 88 papers per day over 273 days. To then claim that he was able at this rate to classify 69,402 authors as endorsing “climate change” and only 4 who did not agree is an impossible task even for a speed reader.
It is time that we called this sort of person for what he really is – a liar! For too long we have politely put up with this sort of lie from so-called climate scientists when much of their output has been plainly ridiculous psuedo-science fiction.
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summary of the interview with Field, (thinking of his “children”), and IPCC language as “poetry”.
read all for his opinion on Twitter, gender diversity, etc.
10 July: CarbonBrief: Roz Pidcock: The Carbon Brief Interview: Prof Chris Field
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s department of global ecology and professor for interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University. He is the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) working group two(WGII) and US nominee for the chair of the IPCC.
Field on whether working on the IPCC is a burden on an author’s time: “At least among the colleagues that I interact with, there’s a genuine enthusiasm about being able to contribute in a constructive way to what’s really the defining problem of our era.”
On making the language of the IPCC as clear and simple as possible: “It’s like trying to write ***poetry, but with hundreds of people shouting suggestions in different languages. So it’s a real challenge, but I think it’s the most important challenge we face.”…
On where future research on impacts needs to focus: “We’re only beginning to pull together the science on the question of whether changes in climate are really contributive to changes in patterns of human migration, changes in patterns of conflict, changes in risk, so people falling into poverty fast.”…
On scientists as advocates: “The fact that someone has a PhD behind their name doesn’t mean that’s all they are…If I speak as a parent, I speak from my personal experience and my aspirations for my own children.”
On expressing his personal views if elected IPCC chair: “It would be irresponsible to ignore the strong identification that whenever I appear as IPCC chair, I will be identified as such, rather than as the parent of two lovely children.”
On the IPCC’s process for catching any errors: “In AR5 we were a lot more attentive to quality control than we were in the AR4.”
On whether young scientists should aim to work on the IPCC reports: “I think that climate change is probably the defining challenge of the 21st century and there’s a huge need for more expertise, especially expertise among scientists who are focused on testing and developing solutions for the climate change problem.”
On climate sceptics: “I think that having an IPCC that is visible, transparent and has high quality leadership is going to be an important part of making sure that the science isn’t marginalised in any country.”
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/07/the-carbon-brief-interview-chris-field/
41
Global Warming enthusiasts love to have absolutes. One puzzle though is the creation of a single absolute and certain Global Temperature, even by satellites. There is not one temperature, is there?
To create one absolute Global Temperature, you need to add up a lot of individual temperatures, from night and day, summer and winter, arctic and equator across a planet presumably weighted by area. This requires a model and no matter how it is constructed, it will yield a single number and you can give it a value to 0.000001C. Variation in this number has a meaning, but what meaning? Is warming in the arctic more or less significant than warming in the temperate zones. Similarly for warming in the much colder Southern Hemisphere. You can change the number dramatically by just changing the way you add things up.
However what does it all mean? Does it mean the world is all changing as claimed or some areas and with what weighting? You cannot measure one side of a room to the other without a 0.05C change, but it does not mean the room is hotter or necessarily hotter than the next room or hotter than the room was 50 years ago when you measured with a thermometer to only +/-0.5C.
The question then is what meaning you can really attach to such a number? Until you get variations which are substantially more than the variations from model to model you cannot say anything with any certainty except total failure to change, the current situation. So this Global Warming is collapsing without ever being scientifically significant.
As for an alleged certainty of 99.99% based on the silly idea that consensus and truth are identical, that could only be written by someone with no comprehension of science at all. Extremely complex systems like the temperature, the weather or even the colour of paint never have such certainty.
112
Statistically speaking the 95% confidence level is the lowest acceptable level of significance for an experiment, 99% is a pretty good correlation, but being 99.9% confident about something is beyond belief and certainly nigh on impossible in the real world.
30
Statistically speaking the 95% confidence level is the lowest acceptable level of significance for an experiment, 99% is a pretty good correlation, but being 99.9% confident about something is beyond belief and certainly nigh on impossible in the real world.
30
OK, I am 99.9% confident that I will die. Does that make it nigh on impossible in the real world? I am now confused (but apparently still alive).
20
You mustn’t forget the feedbacks.
Isn’t a lot of that 99.9% built on the belief in there being a consensus already ?
Consensuses have this habit of being self reinforcing. A lot of it may be down little more than laziness: ‘if that’s what people expect to hear Ill go along with that for now, rather than get distracted by having to defend another position, on something which isn’t really the subject of my paper’.
I’d bet the consensus sensitivity to conformism is a lot more than the climate’s to CO2
20
I think that’s called hysteresis. Not to be confused with hysterics, of which there’s no doubt more than a little involved too.
30
***it’s now 100%.
10 July: RTCC: How do scientists rate the prospect of a global climate deal?
2,000 of science’s best minds mingled this week in the last meeting of its size before December’s crunch Paris summit
Climatologists had four days this time. Negotiators will have two weeks. None of them question that climate change is the critical task at hand.
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Human activities are to blame for much of the warming to date. Its solutions require a bold commitment to our common future,” reads the scientists’ declaration…
But planetary chaos isn’t a foregone conclusion, scientists believe…
Intentionally, businessmen or policymakers haven’t been invited, save a few politicians from the host country.Are these messages from science’s best minds getting through to those key cogs of the global economy?…
“Bridges between political and scientific process are not traditionally easy to build,” said Carlos Nobre, of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute.
“Nowadays we are stimulating the co-design and co-production of knowledge. The policymaker should participate in the knowledge process.”He calls the process of delivering climate plans as a “global poker game where no one wants to show their cards”…
Seriously tackling climate change offers huge economic opportunities, but to get there, a “enforceable” price on carbon among a “coalition of the willing” across borders is essential …
Penny Urquhart, one of the authors of the latest climate review by the UN scientific agency, the IPCC: “If this is the farthest that we’ve got after 21 years of negotiation, one begins to despair”, she adds…
For 2007’s Nobel peace prize winner and IPCC member, Jean Jouzel, countries’ tardy action is galling.“We need to be clear at this point: if we want to keep the temperature up to 2°C, we have to leave 80% of fossil fuels on the ground…
***Chris Field: “It is an opportunity; the time for action is now. This conference is a deep expression of the ***entire science community for solution to build a sustainable future”.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/10/how-do-scientists-rate-the-prospect-of-a-global-climate-deal/
51
2,000 of science’s best minds mingled this week in the last meeting of its size before December’s crunch Paris summit
One transatlantic flight can add as much to your carbon footprint as a typical year’s worth of driving.
. . .
Let’s say only 1000 of those scientists did a one way trans-atlantic flight to Paris 2015, that is 1000 years of climate destroying driving that needs to be mitigated.Now.
100
wow, just wow!
9 July: Guardian: Roger Harrabin (BBC): Is it ok for scientists to weep over climate change?
The devastating impact CO2 emissions are having on oceans recently brought one professor to tears during a radio interview. But does such passion validate or weaken science in the audience’s eyes?
The interview came half way through a long day for the professor, who had left her young children in the early hours on a visit to the Marum labs in Bremen…
As the professor spoke about the future of the oceans for Radio 4’s World Tonight I noticed the tears in her eyes.
“Stop recording now,” she said. “I can’t be crying on the radio. It’s demeaning to women scientists, especially after Tim Hunt [The UCL Professor who controversially resigned after quipping that women scientists get emotional in the lab].”
I argued that the audience would be moved by her commitment, and the interview continued with tears flowing.
“I love the oceans,” she said…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/09/is-it-ok-scientists-weep-over-climate-change
pure psyops:
9 July: Yale Environment 360: How Can We Make People Care About Climate Change?
Norwegian psychologist Per Espen Stoknes has studied why so many people have remained unconcerned about climate change. In a Yale Environment 360 interview, he talks about the psychological barriers to public action on climate and how to overcome them.
by Richard Schiffman
That question is the focus of his recent book, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, in which he analyzes what he calls the five psychological barriers that have made it difficult to deal realistically with the climate crisis…
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Stoknes — ***who co-founded three clean energy companies and helps lead the BI Center for Climate Strategy at the Norwegian Business School — talks about these barriers and about how the discussion of climate change needs to be reframed. “We need a new kind of stories,” he says, “stories that tell us that nature is resilient and can rebound and get back to a healthier state, if we give it a chance to do so.”…
Per Espen Stoknes: My work starts with what I call the psychological climate paradox. Long-term surveys show that people were more concerned with climate change in wealthy democracies 25 years ago than they are today. So the more science, the more Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments we have, the more the evidence accumulates, the less concerned the public is. To the rational mind this is a complete mystery…
Stoknes: We need stories that tell us that we can collaborate with nature, that we can, as Pope Francis has urged, be stewards and partners of the natural world rather than dominators of it. We need stories about a new kind of happiness not based on material consumption…
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_can_we_make_people_care_about_climate_change/2892/
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Hubris Exhibition
‘Climate scientists have been trying to educate us on this for so long that they are frustrated and exhausted and feeling exasperated. Some have become cynical saying that it seems as if humans are wired to self-destruct, maybe our genes aren’t well equipped to deal with these long-term issues. It seems we prefer to eat all our cake today and not care about the coming decades.’
Stoknes
80
wonder how much Stiglitz understands about the economics of wind and solar, the developing world’s continuing reliance on coal, etc? my guess would be NOTHING:
10 July: RTCC: Alex Pashley: ‘Green economy’ route out of financial slump – Stiglitz
Liberal economist and austerity critic says pricing pollution must be part of a package to enhance growth
“Creating a green economy is not only consistent with economic growth, it can promote it, especially when there is a lack of aggregate demand, as in the aftermath of the financial crisis,” he said in his concluding remarks in Paris on Friday…
Speaking at the Our Common Future under Climate Change conference, he called for an “enforceable” price on carbon polluting among a “coalition of the willing” as key to tackling climate change…
Critics say a tax on polluting would drive businesses to jurisdictions without taxes, known as “carbon leakage”. To counter this, complying countries should charge a tariff on imports crossing the border, Stiglitz said.The professor at Columbia University in New York slammed the leading alternative proposal, a transnational cap-and-trade system, as “doomed to failure”…
Stiglitz added voluntary reductions in carbon, which will form the basis of an international agreement expected to be signed in December, wouldn’t be collectively sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/10/green-economy-route-out-of-financial-slump-stiglitz/
Big Finance creates a “fury”, but campaigners can’t even say outright there’s a “loss of credibility”, only that there’s a “real risk” of losing credibility! LOL:
9 July: Guardian: Alex Pashley: Green Climate Fund partners with Deutsche Bank to green fury
German bank’s huge financing of global coal projects prompts environmentalists to question UN fund’s integrity, reports RTCC
A UN piggy bank to help poor countries deal with climate change partnered with a leading coal funder, sparking an outcry from green groups.
At a meeting in its South Korean headquarters on Thursday, the Green Climate Fund approved Deutsche Bank and 12 other financial entities to receive and distribute cash.
Germany’s leading investment bank is the world’s 10th largest backer of coal, with €15bn invested in the industry from 2005 to 2014, according to the BankTrack network.
Over 20 campaign groups said they were “tremendously discouraged and disappointed” in a joint statement, adding that the fund was at ***“real risk of losing credibility”…
The GCF declined to respond to the criticisms…
Abyd Karmali, climate finance expert at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, tweeted in a personal capacity to support the decision.
“No credibility loss for #GCFund,” he said. “#climatefinance will scale via financial intermediaries that access mainstream investors.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/09/green-climate-fund-partners-with-deutsche-bank-to-green-fury
51
11 July: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Met Office caught out over its ‘hottest July day ever’ claim
Was the recent ‘record’ merely caused by a blast of hot air from a passing airliner at heathrow?
Since my story last week headed “Mystery grows over Met Office’s ‘hottest day’”, there have been further developments. How could the Met Office justify its widely publicised claim that July 1 was the hottest July day recorded in Britain, based solely on a reading of 36.7 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit) made at Heathrow airport?
When the blogger Paul Homewood (on Notalotofpeopleknowthat) tracked down four weather stations around Heathrow, none showed readings on July 1 above 35.1…
He therefore asked the Met Office for further details about how its figure was arrived at. Its reply was that this information could only be supplied for £75 plus VAT. But it then, in light of all the interest this was arousing, issued a long press release. Despite claiming that its Heathrow weather station met all the requirements of the World Meteorological Organisation, it failed to answer any of the relevant questions. What it did include, however, was a graph revealing that the wholly untypical 36.7 figure had only been fleetingly reached in a marked 1.7 degree temperature spike at 2.15pm. Was this merely caused by a blast of hot air from a passing airliner? No answer on this from the Met Office.
But this was the only evidence for its claim, blazoned unquestioningly across the media, that July 1 2015 was the hottest July day ever recorded (still significantly less than the highest temperatures recorded in August). We have long known that the Met Office will do almost anything to promote its fond belief that the world is growing ever hotter. But do we pay it £220 million a year (and its chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, a salary with pension rights worth £240,000) for genuine science? Or just for propaganda? If the latter, we are not getting much of a deal.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11733731/Met-Office-caught-out-over-its-hottest-July-day-ever-claim.html
11 July: WUWT: Saturday satire – Hot spot or not?
Josh writes: It is good to see Christopher Booker writing about the UK’s ‘hottest day of the year’ in the Telegraph again. Paul Homewood’s excellent posts, on which his article is based, are well worth reading.
The story on Paul’s blog starts here, with more here, and Booker’s first Telegraph article, followed by more doubts, some Met Office spin, then a belated response, comment moderation, and finally more Met Office spin. It’s quite a saga….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/11/saturday-satire-hot-spot-or-not/
61
pure comedy:
8 July: RTCC: Ed King: The INDCs are a mess – and the UN needs to take control
Genius behind idea of pledges was national ownership, but there are too many variables for a clear picture
So far 45 countries have posted their INDCs, including the world’s top three emitters: China, the US and EU. In all they now cover over 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But there’s a problem. As Morocco’s environment minister Hakima El Haite told RTCC this week, the pledges are hard to compare as they are not measured in the same way…
Where the EU says it will cut emissions on 1990 levels, Australia says 2000, and the US and New Zealand say 2005.China isn’t aiming to cut emissions, but to peak by 2030, although it’s not clear at what level. India could aim for an energy intensity target…
Poorer countries said the costs linked with producing accurate data were beyond their means…
As Gerard Wynn from GWG Energy explains, the US doesn’t like 1990 because its emissions kept rising after that; it’s is easier to target cuts from 2005, when the country’s emissions more or less peaked…
Every time a new INDC is published, it’s given a rating ranging from “sufficient” to “inadequate”. Only one country, tiny Bhutan, is cited as a “role model” country, despite not having submitted an official plan yet…
What this means is someone – somewhere – needs to get a grip…
The ability to measure, report and verify emissions is central to the climate challenge. Unless this is done to a commonly agreed standard, working out whether Paris is a success and ensuring it drives tougher climate policies could be ***tricky.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/07/the-indcs-are-a-mess-and-the-un-needs-to-take-control/
***TRICKS ARE A STAPLE OF THE CAGW SCAM, ED, SO DON’T FRET.
guess u aren’t fretting now anyway, cos u have some new celebs on board!
VIDEO: 8 July: RTCC: Ed King: One Direction launch Action/1D climate change campaign
Boyband call on “truly amazing” fans to pressure governments ahead of UN climate summit in Paris this December
Phew. Fears a UN climate deal could be in trouble have been quashed with news hit boyband One Direction are mustering support for global emission cuts.
The ***jet-setting four (not five – get with the news, people) have released a call to arms to their supporters, known colloquially as Directioners…
Expect the UN to sign them up as climate ambassadors ASAP. Robert Redford was always a bit old.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/08/one-direction-launch-action1d-climate-change-campaign/
71
It’s arguably one of the most successful propaganda tactics of this whole sorry exercise.
For those attracted to the simplistic, dramatic and politically fashionable (80%+ of journalists according to the research) citing a “consensus” of experts relieves one of the necessity for critical thinking.
The two most obvious questions, are never asked.
1. What is the consensus?
There is overwhelming agreement amongst scientists and virtually every rational person, that the Earth has been warming since about 1850 and that it ceased warming about 17 years ago – the trend hasn’t been consistent. There is agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that CO2 has been increasing in the atmosphere and that mankind is making a contribution to atmospheric CO2.
That’s it.
There is not a scintilla of evidence of a qualified scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming represents a serious threat to the future of humanity and the planet and dramatic increases in government regulation, power costs and reductions to economic growth and standards of living are necessary to “save the planet”.
It just doesn’t exist in any way shape or form – yet has been regurgitated unthinkingly for a decade.
2. Secondly, even the “consensus” cited, doesn’t stack up to the most cursory examination.
Suggesting that the majority of relevant papers which are silent on AGW, demonstrate support of it, is to put it kindly a great leap and at it’s most accurate, absolute crap to quote Abbott.
These tactics in and of themselves, should give rise to suspicion and scepticism.
The alarmist remedies proposed are so significant, that an independent, wide ranging enquiry with the powers of a Royal Commission to examine the science underpinning the policies sought – a cost/benefit analysis if you will – must be obvious?
It would cost a fraction of the taxpayer funds currently being squandered on solutions which are the costliest and least effective in reducing CO2 and if the alarmist position was indeed vindicated, a public vindication.
So let’s bring it on…..
101
The fact are:
1. ClimAstrologists REFUSE to debate skeptics
2. Many news outlets REFUSE to print the skeptic view point
3. Skeptic comments are BANNED from the likes of the Groinaid and the L.A. Times despite the fact they are cleaner, calmer and more reasoned.
4. Skeptic scientists are FIRED and vilified.
5. Disagreement with CAGW is now seen as a mental disorder.
6. Calls are made to have skeptics put on trial, branded on the forehead and even killed.
These fact speak of POLITICS, and dirty politics at that, not science.
Any time the politicians (and the big money behind them) goes to this much trouble for this long, you know they are trying to put a very costly and nasty con over on the ordinary people.
Christiana Figueres, a disciple of Al Gore, was appointed as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Jan. 2015 she said;
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,”
United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres said that democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China, she says, is the best model.
Why do I say nasty?
DEMOCIDE: DEATH BY GOVERNMENT
20th Century Democide: 169,202,000 Murdered
In light of the Democide above, Ted Turner, founder of CNN and the UN Foundation saying ““A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” does not give me the warm fussies.
60
As an Addition to my comment above (in moderation)
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, the executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security gives us an idea of what a sudden collapse of the electrical grid in the USA could do. He is talking a sudden Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) that would wipe out electronics as well as the electrical grid but it gives you a ballpark idea of what the sudden collapse of the grid would cause.
Do we really think politicians can halt 83% of CO2 emissions (Obama’s goal) without resorting to nuclear power as a replacement and keep advanced civilization from collapsing?
Or is the collapse of our civilization the real goal?
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” — Maurice Strong, Founder of the UN Environmental Program, Chair of the first Earth Summit 1972
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” — John Holdren (Obama’s Science Czar) with co-authors Anne & Paul Ehrlich, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970, p. 323
40
[snip. email coming Eugene]
It is sad that at this stage of his life the only person who can take him seriously is himself.
Eugene WR Gallun
30
New art added to the post. I had to do it…
41
Was there chocolate involved … ?
10
Jo Nova
Logged out and then back in and just caught the change. I am laughing. And probably damn near the truth.
Eugene WR Gallun
30
Apparently they don’t read papers published by the Royal Astronomical Society, or watch their presentations.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm
20
Yet another CON senseless
10
So if we combine these stats with the 30,000 known sceptics from the Oregon Petition how many scientists does that make in the world? Does it exceed the planets population?
10
AH! I see TdeF has answered already.
Thanks. I should have read a bit further before posting.
10
“Skeptics can cite over 1000 papers”
Hard bitten readers of science journals, of which about 9,000 are tracked by Science Citations , soon learn the wisdom of asking what becomes of what they read?
The two most astute rules of relevance are Sturgeon’s Law : 90 % of published papers are crap.
And Minsky’s indispensible Corollary to Sturgeon’s Law : So are 95% of the remainder.
Still, that leaves Skeptics with , at least in theory, as many as five non-crap papers to cite .
Alas, however there is one further test: Besides skeptics does anyone elase cite them ?
Readers are invited to run their favorite five through Science Citations for a reality check.
Could .0058% also be the percentage of Jo’s commenters that have actually passed a first year graduate level university course in atmospheric science ?
211
Well you obviously don’t know a) the number of professional pilots who read this blog, and b) that every single one of them must have done at least two years of atmospheric physics, or related subjects, as part of their degree (unless the rules have changed, since I did it). I understand that also applies to Architects, and Structural Engineers, who have to understand how the elements can effect the dynamics of whatever they are designing or building.
These are the skeptics, who don’t need to read past the abstract of climate science papers to realise the 99.9% of them are rubbish. They know what doesn’t work, especially when they hit clear air turbulence, or the bridge falls down in a strong wind, so they don’t need the hassle of publishing or reading theoretical academic papers, because the board of inquiry reports are quite sufficient.
See Russell, in the rarified atmosphere of academia, counting how many jellybeans you have accumulated, and comparing the colours of yours with the colours of the guy down the corridor, might seem tremendously important. But out in the real world, the people who ultimately pay your wages, look at your dire predictions, regarding the lack of jellybeans, and say, so what, we will just use another confection.
When climate change starts to interfere with aerodynamics, or when it starts to make buildings and bridges deteriorate, then you might just get noticed. Otherwise nobody else, other than politicians, who can use it as an excuse for more taxation, cares a damn.
121
Ahh, but Russell, the beautiful thing about the lop-sided nature of this debate is that it’s so difficult for controversial skeptical papers to get through peer review, they get a real review before they’re published. If an idea is posted on a blog before it’s published, criticism starts in hours. In the climate science pro-believer world, they can post crap in Nature and it can take 5 years before a critic can get a reply in [MBH anyone?] — forget the chance to critically review it before publication.
True there are skeptical papers that I don’t cite, but the “crap-percentage” is a magnitude different. “Me too” unskeptical papers that repeat the same mistakes as a hundred previous papers are waved on.
Skeptics are so much better armed in debates — daily practice.
92
Why would anyone consider a graduate level theology degree in atmospheric science?
10
This sort of data makes pharma results look quite lame, lol, this guy is just taking the piss!
50
Jo Nova.
An appeal to Authority (Einstein’s in this case) – I thought that was against your forum guidelines? It is a failure of logic.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”
I do not think Albert Einstein said that – anyone that is a fact that is easy enough to check.
“So one discrepancy does not falsify a theory?”
Correct, one discrepancy does not necessarily falsify a theory. I suspect you are confusing theory with scientific hypothesis or with scientific experimentation.
I don’t actually like James Powell’s survey, but what he said about theories and discrepancies is correct.
212
Harry ‘The Deceiver” Twinotter,
Youe keep making false statements.
Yes. He did say it.
Furthermore, if it’s easy enough to check, why didn’t you check before making your unfounded accusations?
Abe
102
Not only did Einstein say it, Harry, he said it when he was disparaging the concept of peer review through a formal publication process, and the resulting “consensus”.
Einstein, like a lot of scientists before him, would just send copies of his papers to other scientists, whom he respected in the field, or thought would be interested in his findings and conclusions, and who would attempt to duplicate his work. That was how science was done, at the time.
That all ended with the Second World War, when an embargo was enforced by the Allied Governments, in order to prevent Germany (and later Russia) from benefitting from Allied research.
Don’t they teach you kids about the history of science, as a 100 level paper any more? If you don’t know about the failures of previous generations, you are doomed to repeat them, as we now witness.
122
Rereke Whakaaro.
I do not think Einstein said that. I did do a document search before I posted and I could not find it.
But if someone does know he said it, and can provide a reference to the document he said it in, that would be evidence. If the document does exist, it will probably be in German. Someone just saying that he said it is not evidence – lots of quotes are falsely attributed to Albert Einstein, it is an attempt at “appeal to authority” or simple name-dropping.
From some of the comment I have been reading some people do not understand peer-review. And you can still get studies published without peer-review, probably not in the prestigious scientific journals though.
17
Mumpsimus.
It was at a press conference when he left Germany.
But SBW.
31
Graeme No.3
Do you have a reference?
Einstein did talk about theories in some of his papers, but I have never found that quote. It is possible it exists and I missed it because it was not translated from German into English.
But if people are quoting him, then they should be able to produce a citation for the quote otherwise they are indulging in poor journalism. So I am sticking with my “argument from authority” call.
04
The sculptor Jacob Epstein tells this story: “When I was doing Professor Albert Einstein’s bust he had many a jibe at the Nazi professors, one hundred of whom had condemned his theory of relativity in a book. ‘Were I wrong,’ he said, ‘one professor would have been enough.’ [3] http://www.conservapedia.com/Albert_Einstein
10
Graeme No.3,
I did do a document search and I could not find it.
/Harry Twinotter off
Kudos, 😉
Abe
00
Harry Twinotter,
Argument from ignorance. Just because you could not find it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, because the absence of evidence is not evidence of absense. Please review my full response to this below.
Abe
11
Let me guess Wiki and SkS were his “search” locales…..
What could possibly be wrong with that?
11
Be fair Mark.
He probably also searched Marvel Comics and Computer Gaming World. It was, I am sure, an extensive search.
12
Rereke Whakaaro.
Easy enough to prove me wrong – show the reference to where he said it.
12
I was replying to Mark D, Harry. I wasn’t addressing my comment to you.
21
Harry ‘The Deceiver’ Twinotter,
You suspect? On what basis?
There’s a big difference between a scientific hypothesis and scientific experimentation. Which of the two is being confused? Do you know? Can you explain why?
Once again you’re making unfounded accusations with absolutely nohing to back them up.
Abe
122
Um, making unfounded accusations (or pronouncements) with absolutely nothing to back them up, is what Klimate Seance is all about.
Harry is the perfect example of a journeyman in the craft.
122
OUCH!
Unfortunately you are correct.
One wonders if we will have any scientists and engineers who actually understand the scientific method and can use after our wonderful UN Common Core education is finished brain washing the current crop of students.
Of course Common Core education is for the Great Unwashed. The privileged get a classical education via private schools.
71
gai.
I think scientists and engineers understand science and the scientific method better than your average internet warrior.
I suspect the Dunning-Kruger Effect may be the answer.
17
Harry,
I was manager of a chemistry lab for over 30 years. The new chem graduates in the late 1980s and 1990s were so pitiful and useless I had to keep firing them. I finally out of desperation told HR not to send me a resume unless the applicant was over 35. I hit gold the first time out and for every new hire there after.
61
Harry, Have a look at my comment at #47.1, in response to Russell. Being an average internet warrior and being a scientist or engineer, are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, many of the folks here, that you would call “internet warriors” are working scientists and/or practicing engineers, and some are polymaths.
Politically, they are not allowed to speak out, and express a private opinion, in public, because of the terms of their employment contracts. Why do you suppose that is?
A lot of the Request for Proposals I have seen recently, emanating from Government, contains clauses around sustainability, and managing the organisations’ carbon footprint, even though those things are not material to the work being tendered. The message is clear. You follow the bureaucratic line, or you don’t win the contract. That is not science. It is not even politics. It is bullying. And people don’t like being bullied, so they come here to express their views.
Of course, the real questions are, “Why are you here?”, and “What is your motivation?”
00
Rereke Whakaaro.
What is my motivation? Simple, I oppose anti-science. I also oppose those who attempt to use anti-science rhetoric to influence public opinion.
Jo Nova is misquoting a scientist who has been dead for decades. I do not have to explain why that is wrong.
You are attempting to build a straw man (I never said anything about “mutually exclusive”), but I will answer anyway. It is a puzzle the average internet warrior who has no formal qualifications in a field, thinks they know more than scientists and engineers who do hold qualifications in a field. And what is their justification for thinking that?
12
Define “anti-science”. You choose to use the term, you therefore need to explain what you mean by it.
Yes you do. You have to explain why, and how, what she said. was a misquote.
You also need to explain why it is wrong to quote a dead scientist. In the fantastical world of klimatology, are we only allowed to quote the undead?
What you wrote was: “I think scientists and engineers understand science and the scientific method better than your average internet warrior.”
That is drawing a distinct comparison between one group and another, and you failed to acknowledge that people could belong to both groups, thus implying a distinction that is not actually there. It is a cheap public relations trick that does not often work on this site.
11
Rereke Whakaaro.
I explained why I think it is a misquote.
12
Rereke Whakaaro,
well it is certainly what Jo Nova does. An out of context quote (which is probably false anyway) is her evidence for something?
That sounds more like sloganeering than science.
110
As I said, Harry, university science faculties don’t seem teach the History of Science any more.
But without understanding the past, it is difficult to explain what is happening today, and impossible to extrapolate into the future.
Perhaps that is why the current batch of Klimatologists have little reverence for the painstakingly recorded historic observations.
72
Rereke,
You are correct. I have read some of the old textbooks and papers from 1880 – 1920.
Those scientists were very very careful. They knew what calibration was. They knew what the error of their instruments were and they knew the effect of reading min and max thermometers at different times of day were.
To think these people did not run careful experiments and do careful observations is to do them a grave disservice. In my opinion they were much better scientists than what we have today.
Here is an example of a paper in The American Meteorological Journal, Volume 8 from 1891
Here is another example:
Meteorology: A Text-book on the Weather, the Causes of Its Changes, and Weather Forecasting By Willis Isbister Milham (1918)
Milham 1918 mentions the Six thermometer and says the accuracy was not good so the US weather service used the two thermometers. Instructions were written and given out to the observers in 1882. There were two thermometers, one max (mercury) and one min (alcohol).
For the maximum thermometer the instructions state:
“…When a maximum thermometer is not read for several hours after the highest temperature has occurred and the air in the meantime has cooled down 15° or 20°, the highest temperature indicated by the top of the detached thread of mercury may be too low by half a degree from the contraction of the thread….”
That would indicate the max thermometer should be read just after the heat of the day and any adjustment for reading at the wrong time of day (morning) should RAISE the maximum temperature not lower it!!!!
71
gai.
A subject change followed by a rant and some anecdotes – really?
14
No change of subject, Harry. Gai is just quoting from the literature.
11
Rereke Whakaaro.
That is your opinion.
If you do have a science background, you will know what you just claimed is not logical. You yourself go about ignoring scientific evidence, then try to project this onto other people.
13
And what evidence would that be, Harry?
Output from computer models?
Damned right, I ignore those, because they are not evidence. At best, they are only investigative tools, but they do not prove anything at any time. The are manufactured artefacts that are not even complete. Look back on this site. They have been discussed and dissected at length.
22
Rereke Whakaaro.
“And what evidence would that be, Harry? Output from computer models?”
A straw man argument. The scientific theory of global warming does not depend on climate models. It depends on multiple lines of evidence.
And the output from climate models is scientific evidence – they are an experiment. Just because you personally do not like them is not evidence of anything, other than your own opinion.
12
Harry Twinotter says:
” .. the output from climate models is scientific evidence – they are an experiment. ”
And there, in a nutshell, you have the irreconcilable difference between the warmists and the sceptics.
51
Harry,
It is hardly a straw-man. I doubt you know what the phrase means. You seem to be parroting.
The fact of the matter is, that there is no empirical evidence for anthropomorphic climate change, outside of the bounds of normal variability. There is no reproducibility of observation. There is no discernible warming or cooling trends in temperature outside those that are manufactured by the modellers, by artificially reducing the historic records. And there is no scrutiny of the data, and the data correction procedures, outside of the small group of anointed “climate scientists”.
What are the “multiple lines of evidence”, over and above, and distinct from, the climate models? You claim they exist, so please share with the rest of us.
And finally, a computer model is a human construct. You are right, they represent an experiment. But they do not, and cannot, provide scientific evidence, because Scientific Evidence must be independently reproducible, or independently observable. Neither of which are possible with Climate Science, as demonstrated when independent atmospheric physicists asked for, and were refused, access to the documentation held by Phil Jones, at UEA.
31
Rereke Whakaaro.
I cannot argue with a Conspiracy Theory. Other than to say Conspiracy Theories require no evidence. The “lack of evidence” is explained by a theory that people are hiding or manipulating the evidence – this is circular reasoning. It is not even logical, if people have hid or manipulated the evidence so well, how can any assumptions be made about this evidence?
01
Ah, so you avoid my question, by trying to claim that the question is, “A Conspiracy Theory”.
There is no “conspiracy theory”. Phil Jones publicly, and on the record, refused to release the data, and the details of any adjustments made to that data.
To demonstrate a conspiracy theory, you need to identify the conspirators. If you cannot do that, your claim becomes a circular argument.
21
So, Harry, I ask again:
What are the “multiple lines of evidence”, over and above, and distinct from, the climate models? You claim they exist, but appear to be incapable of naming them.
21
I’ve heard the term multiple lines of evidence and would like to hear what they are as well. Weird weather (of all sorts) in various places should not count as several lines of evidence or really even one line. I understand the multiple lines of evidence for evolution as including: the fossil record, the classifications of living things, dna and dna errors, biochemistry, embryology and biogeography. Do the multiple lines for climate approach those in any way? Please share. It’s referred to enough that someone must have written it down somewhere.
20
Rereke Whakaaro.
“There is no reproducibility of observation. There is no discernible warming or cooling trends in temperature outside those that are manufactured by the modellers, by artificially reducing the historic records. And there is no scrutiny of the data, and the data correction procedures, outside of the small group of anointed “climate scientists”.”
Sure sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
And your cherry-picking of Phil Jones, I do not know what your are referring to. Are you implying he controls all the climate change data in the world?
02
Twinotter: “Sure sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.”
Jo: Sure sounds like you have no real response.
You could have pointed to raw data trends that support you case (if they existed). You could have pointed to the BOM process of repairing errors like the nearly 1000 days of minimums adjusted to be greater than maxes (if they had fixed it). You have nothing but weak insults.
Rereke could easily be describing confirmation bias and systematic problems with one-sided politicized funding. You “see” conspiracies. Is that projection of your own mental state?
32
Sigh.
I guess I will have to answer the “multiple lines of evidence” question, even though I am sure some will just dispute it or claim the measurement were “manipulated”.
I can’t believe people are unaware of this evidence. A skeptic would have looked at it.
Evidence for global warming without the climate model projections:
– most of the IPCC AR5 report.
– an increase in the global average temperature, especially since the 1950s.
– a decline in the average temperature of the stratosphere
– the various Hocky Stick temperature reconstructions that show the current rise in the global average temperature is unprecedented for around the last 1,000 years
– the increase in greenhouse gas levels, especially CO2.
– physics of the Greenhouse Gas effect based on known Quantum Physics. Also deduced from experimentation, some of which was done as far back as the 19th century.
– climate sensitivity deduced from ice cores and past temperature changes (paleoclimate record), climate sensitivity deduced from interannual variation, climate sensitivity deduced from the 20th century observational record.
– measurement of an increase in downwelling infrared radiation
– receding mountain glaciers
– decline in the Arctic sea ice extent and volume
– rise in the global average sea level
– correlation between greenhouse gas increase and global average temperature increase, both in the recent observational record and in the ice core record
14
Harry DHC-6,
Hey I think I’ve finally cottoned on to what you’re doing here.
You’re having a jolly jape, now aren’t you?
Tony.
30
Joanne Nova.
“Jo: Sure sounds like you have no real response.”
That is your opinion.
Rereke Whakaaro appears to be talking about the global temperature record. You seem to be referring to the Australian record only.
“Rereke could easily be describing confirmation bias and systematic problems with one-sided politicized funding.”
Well yes he might, I don’t know. You are assuming that is what he could have meant. I do not ‘see’ conspiracies, I was referring to Rereke Whakaaro claim of a conspiracy (a claim not backed up by evidence). Personally I do not see any conspiracy in the climatic record adjustments, that is my point.
“Is that projection of your own mental state?” Ad hominem.
“You have nothing but weak insults.” You could not be more ironic if you tried, many of your articles contain insults. And look at some of the comments on this forum. Well OK your opinion is I “have nothing”, and have not raised any valid points. I beg to differ.
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Harry,
Serious, serious issues, dude.
31
Well, that explains a lot. You come in to the show at the intermission, and then wonder why everybody else understands the story line but you.
Yes, I am implying that Phil Jones controls, or at least used to control, the repository of all of the climate change data, as the head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
The stated role of the CRU is to improve scientific understanding in:
•past climate history and its impact on humanity
•the course and causes of climate change during the present century
•prospects for the future
Many requests have been made for the past climate history data, some of which were made under the UK Freedom of Information Act, and all have been denied by the CRU, under Phil Jones.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), one or more of his staff members became highly concerned about unwarranted alterations being made to the raw data, with the apparent intent to create the impression of warming, over and above natural variation. This staff member or members consequently leaked, onto the web, a lot of correspondence between the various people involved, in discussing how the changes were to be made, and the desired results. A lot of us were appalled by these actions and some of us considered it fraud.
There was, in typical English style, a total whitewash of the whole incident, with Phil Jones being “exonerated” in public, but privately … who knows.
The net result of all this, Harry, is that nobody who knows the history trusts the data, nor the adjustments made to it. The CRU continues to stonewall any and all requests for information about the data and any “adjustments”.
Does that explain why there are so many sceptics? Many of us are working scientists and engineers, and hate the way that this has evolved.
If you want the blow-by-blow discussion they are probably still on this site. Copies of the leaked CRU material are also probably still on the web, although they might be hard to find, now. I haven’t tried recently. They made me feel ill, the first time I saw what was going on.
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Harry Twatter, can I call you that?
It’s too late to learn how to field strip an M60 when you got a stoppage in the middle of a firefight.
Get your head outta the Skeptical Science comments columns ’cause they just parrot back the same formula they cut and paste from Mother Jones and The Guardian.
Do some math, do some physics and then open your eyes to the real world.
If you don’t like it, little soldier, you can always curl up into a ball, kick your little legs and [snip] offa my goddam parade ground.
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Rereke Whakaaro
“There was, in typical English style, a total whitewash of the whole incident, with Phil Jones being “exonerated” in public, but privately … who knows.”
I don’t think I need to say anything more about Conspiracy Theories.
04
Harry Twinotter,
When all the facts are out in the open for all the world to see it’s no longer a theory.
When all the facts are out in the open for all the world to see it becomes a matter of public record.
Abe
11
Well, you believe what you want to believe. That is fine by me. It is your life.
But I am mildly interested by the fact that you obviously don’t want to look at the older posts on this site, nor do a search on the internet to check out what I told you.
I have no motivation for lying to you. Other people, who are in a position to profit from creating scary stories about the world getting warmer, may have different drivers.
But of course, you will say that is another conspiracy theory, and you would be right. People conspire, because they can get power, or money, or status, from doing so. I get none of these. But ask yourself, “Who does?”
And two final questions for you personally: What do you gain by commenting here? What are your motivations?
You are unlikely to win any debate here, by raising the Conspiracy Theory Bogie-man. It is such a weak argument.
21
Twitter, you switched from “lines of evidence” to bits of evidence, I gave broad large lines of evidence for evolution. Each line I list d has thousands of bits. Random bits mean little. First off a report by the IPCC is not a line of evidence (it could present such or summarize such), it’s not independent of the other factors you present either. Listing different things that are part of different components is not the same as saying different lines show the same information. Having a theory with multiple components and then showing evidence for the individual components is not separate lines for the theory either, I don’t know how good your list is, it has so much junk in it.
22
H2O (Ah! I get it! Harry Twin Otter. H2O. Or is that just an unintended co-incidence?),
Whet your appetite with this:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/09/16/who-chose-the-eleven-an-answer/
Then dig into a generous serving, but check your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach!
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf
If you’re pressed for time in between Greenpeace meetings, just note in particular:
Page 20, para 53
Page 21, para 62.
Page 25, para 78.
Page 53, paras 212-216.
Some food for thought in that before you go slagging off Rereke again.
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Thank you, Andrew.
I didn’t have time to find those references, not they will make any difference to Harry’s belief system.
As they say, “You can take a Horticulture but you can’t make it think”
31
“As Albert Einstein once said, ‘Don’t believe every quote you read on the internet, because I totally didn’t say that.'”
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Nice twist on The Liar’s Paradox!
(Not a true paradox, but that’s another kettle of fish.)
Abe
21
Why do some people keep fish in a kettle? Why don’t the fish swim out the spout? Inquiring, and bored, minds would like to know.
00
C.J.Richards.
Ha ha I like that one. It is a bit like the Abraham Lincoln meme.
03
Einstein didn’t really believe in falsification. When asked what he would do if relativity had not been confirmed by the 1919 experiments, he said “Then I would feel sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct anyway.”
12
This essay perhaps puts that statement in a better context. http://lesswrong.com/lw/jo/einsteins_arrogance/
10
Rod McLaughlin.
You extrapolated that hypothesis from that one quote?
12
… and the rest is fish.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
The reply to the claimed 99.99% purity of New Zealand’s lakes.
20
Don’t forget why W.C. Fields didn’t drink water. (I can’t repeat it without being snipped.)
10
To get a good idea of the actual scientific consensus, what is needed is a poll, via ‘secret ballot’, of members of organizations like the APS, along the following lines:
Do you strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree regarding the following statement:
“There is a strong scientific basis for the claim that if atmospheric CO2 continues to increase at the present rate, it will cause catastrophic changes in the climate by the year 2100.”
Of course, I’m not holding my breath until the leadership of such organizations permits such a survey.
30
97% ‘s not enough,
To carry the climate-change bluff,
An ‘unequivocal’ sign,
Is 99.9,
Showing,scientists sure know their stuff.
50
Nearly missed this, what with travelling and lack of time to read the blog and the limerick’s late appearance in the thread. A quick search before brekky and here it is! Thanks Ruairi 🙂
I hope a few others find it now.
10
“One discrepancy does not falsify a theory.” That statement is not quite a rejection of the Einstein/Popper view that one falsification falsifies a theory. A “discrepancy” is an unexplained result. It may be compatible with the theory, it’s just that no-one has worked out how yet. On the other hand, it might be a complete falsification, like the the anomaly in the perihelion precession of Mercury turned out to be.
30
Honestly though Jo,
When it comes to this paper it’s probably true, if you consider that mankind generates a lot of heat 33,000 GWh per day JUST FROM BODY HEAT ALONE. It’s trivial to say that mankind has some sort of thermal impact on the planet. It’s trivially true, it’s only surprising that 4 people disagreed!
What’s in dispute and the only thing that’s pertinent to taking any action is whether after all the feedbacks and losses are taken into account that human caused warming is SIGNIFICANT. This is the only politically important point and it’s routinely ignored or redirected back to the trivially true “Humans heat the planet” pseudo-argument. It’s important to reframe the debate from do Humans cause warming to how much warming is ok.
30
Thank you Jo, who would have thought that the once respected disciple of “Science”, has been dragged down to the level of “Political Science”, in a short couple of generations. Lenin’s Long March Through the Institutions”, appears sadly, to be “successful”.
40
.
Many of those people who were gullible or naive or uninformed enough to believe that the %97 concensus was real (it wasn’t) or that it means something (it didn’t), will most likely see this as an increase in the consensus rather than a more accurate tally of the [non]existing consensus.
This has most likely been one of the the motivations for producing the current paper. If it worked once, why not again?
Looking forward to Paris in December, the new paper also means pumping new life into the dying carcass of CAGW. All of the controversy, discussion, rebutals, and counter rebutals, will only serve to further promote the ‘meme”.
As they say, ‘Bad publicity is just as good as good publicity, if not better’.
Abe
10
Reminds me of the 1995 Iraqi referendum on whether Saddam Hussein was doing a good job. Amazingly 99.96% of the 8.4 million votes cast said “Yes.”
20
To the denizens of JoNova,
There has been a lot of brouhaha concerning the quote:
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Apparently there are questions as to whether Albert Einstein actually said these words and even as to whether he accepted what the words imply.
First stop, wikiquote. This exact quote does not appear on that page, but it does appear in the discussion page:
“It never says ‘yes’ to a theory” is clearly identical in meaning and context to, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right.”
“If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter ‘Maybe’, and if it does not agree it means ‘No’.” is clearly identical in meaning and context to, “A single experiment can prove me wrong.”
The first order of business is that clearly Einstein accepted falsifiability as the criterion for determining the validity and soundness of a theory in science in as early as 1922.
The next thing is that clearly the quote itself has been attributed to Einstein by many sources. Just because there is no written record of it does not mean he didn’t say it, and a clear case of an argument from ignorance.
We accept the testimony of witnesses in court when they say they heard something, especially when there are a multitude of witnesses testifying to hearing the same thing.
But even if you want to get all ‘technical and sciency’ on me, we’re back to the quote for which we do have written evidence. So at best, he said it but it was never written down, or at worst, it’s just a paraphrase of something else he did say.
No matter how you slice it, the quote stands.
Off topic but apropo to the whole CAGW ‘meme’ and how it has attracted so many adherents, here’s a quote by Einsten on Bolshevism from an interview in 1929:
Notwithstanding his left-wing socialist tendencies, doesn’t this all sound so familiar?
Abe
00
Comment #58! 😮
Does that mean I belong to the club of the 0.0058%?
Psyche! (Brooklyn slang for, “just kidding, gotcha”)
Abe
10
And Abe, Albert Einstein wrote –
What I take from this and your quote (“The scientific theorist is not to be envied…“) is that Einstein understood that it was our human abilities that limited us from being able to find absolutes in nature.
Basically as we humans only have a restricted view, we can only make educated guesses at the larger relationships inherent in the whole of nature.
10
Thank you for clearing that up.
And since a paraphrase of the common usage appear in Wiki, we all know it must be true. 😉
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