Since I was one of those who responded to Judith Curry promoting Steven Hayward’s recent article on, what he calls, Climate Cultists, I thought I might write a few thoughts about this. My response to Judith may make it seems that I’m bothered by someone writing an article with such a title. No, I’m not really bothered by someone from the American Enterprise Institute (an institute that, apparently, once offered to pay scientists to dispute the IPCC reports – H/T Steve Bloom) writing an article suggesting that those who accept mainstream science are cultists (especially as he seems to have some rather old-fashioned views about sexual harassment). I don’t really care. It’s a free world. He can write whatever he likes; I don’t have to read it. If I’m bothered by anything, it’s that someone with Judith Curry’s credentials and influence would promote such an article. Again, it’s a free world, so Judith is – of course – free to do as she wishes.
Some have suggested that maybe one should at least try to read the article, rather than simply judging it from its title. I tried that. It says
the categorical demand that debate about science or policy is over because the matter is settled
Nonsense. Virtually noone credible is suggesting that the debate over policy is settled. If anything, most are arguing that this is precisely what we should be debating, rather than continually “debating” the scientific evidence, which might not be settled, but is much more settled than many would have you believe.
He continues with
The computer models are still too crude and limited, especially about the crucial question of water vapor “feedbacks” (clouds in ordinary language)
Well, no, water vapour “feedbacks” is not the same as clouds.
He then has the standard “doubt” section, saying
While climate skeptics are denounced for mentioning “uncertainty,” the terms “uncertain” and “uncertainty” appear 173 times, while “error” and “errors” appear 192 times,
Well this just illustrates that Steven Hayward doesn’t understand the difference between scientific uncertainty (more properly called “confidence intervals”) and being uncertain. It also illustrates that he seems to think that uncertainty implies that we should wait to be more certain, rather than considering that this uncertainty could mean that things could be more severe than expected.
The article then says
The basic theory says we’re supposed to continue warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, but since the late 1990s we’ve stopped.
Nonsense, we haven’t stopped.
So, I did try reading it and, as far as I can tell, not only is the title ludicrous (does anyone really believe that there is a cult of climate change believers) but the article just illustrates that Steven Hayward really doesn’t understand (or doesn’t want to) the scientific evidence associated with climate change/global warming. So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a ridiculous article, with a ridiculous title, written by someone who has a ridiculously poor understanding of climate science (and that’s a generous interpretation).
Here’s what I’d be interested in reading : an article that can make a Conservative climate policy argument without mis-representing/undermining the current scientific evidence. I don’t think I’ve seen a good example of such an article yet, and I’m not convinced that it is actually possible. I’m more than happy to be proven wrong though.
...and Then There's Physics 
You did better than me. I didn’t make it past the first paragraph of his article: it wasn’t worth the punishment.
Rachel,
It was hard going 🙂
Try Barry Bickmore or Mark Boslough or Kerry Emanuel, although Emanuel steers clear of policy arguments
Eli,
That’s a point. I’ve read some of Barry Bickmore’s stuff. Kerry Emanuel’s article on Tail Risk was good. Not aware of Mark Boslough, but will look him up.
FWIW, this is part of what Eli was getting at with his question. Pretty much anyone doing the Sgt. Schultz act is not worthy of respect. If the answer to what to do about it is nothing, or nothing now they are pretty much Lomborgian scum. How to handle the problem is another issue entirely. Of course, there is always Eli’s simple solution.
Here’s an article by Barry Bickmore, that seems quite sensible. If I didn’t already know, though, I wouldn’t have thought it was written by a Conservative 🙂
Pingback: The Climate Change Debate Thread - Page 4236
+1 Eli
If I’m bothered by anything, it’s that someone with Judith Curry’s credentials and influence would promote such an article.
I also read the whole damn thing, well up to the political part, I am no expert for American politics. Every single paragraph contained a serious errors. That a scientist is not bothered by that and attends her readers to such a 4th grade text is beyond my understanding.
And even if you would look beyond the hatred and the errors, there was no interesting new idea in this article, just a repetition of long debunked nonsense. Except maybe that the authors acknowledges that the IPCC honestly reports about uncertainties (confidence intervals) and limitations. You do not see so much praise for the IPCC that often in that parallel world.
ATTP I could point out where you make the same mistakes you complain about in your writing above, but I don’t think you’re ready to accept that there are two viewpoints.
The first edition of Kerry’s What We Know About Climate Change — an excellent primer on the subject for interested nonspecialists — has a chapter on policy options that was weakened by his politics showing through. He noted that the Cape Wind project was opposed by the Kennedy clan without mentioning that their less Democratic neighbors did as well, and blamed the retreat of fission on (paraphrasing from memory) the stranglehold of hippies on American energy policy. I haven’t heard him repeat those lines since then, so perhaps he took somebody’s corrections to heart.
Has anybody seen the 2012 edition? I just discovered its existence.
There is no “conservative” argument against climate change. Let me sum it up [Mod : redacted unnecessary characterisation]:
1) We have known that the world is much warmer than it should be since Fourier (1824).
2) Arrhenius, over a century ago forecast global warming as CO2 rose in the atmosphere as by then the “blanketing effect” of CO2 and the physics of light/EM spectrum refraction/dispersal were clearly understood.
3) It is a matter of scientific measurement that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen steadily since the industrial age began
4) Although we are not sure /how much/ warming will result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 we are sure it will warm. This is where the models, more sophisticated than I or the rabid right can imagine, provide differing answers. But all the answers suggest that temps will rise, the only debate is by how much.
5) And in fact, it is a fact of scientific measurement that global temperatures /have/ risen since the 1850s. It is a fact, etc, that glaciers have retreated, that the Arctic ice cover has retreated, that the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps are melting, the sea level has risen, and recent analysis suggest that this process has accelerated.
[Mod: Inflammatory] The left “believes in” global warming, it advocates collective (i.e., “socialist” action, how we laughed) and therefore it is to be vigorously opposed by the right, not because of logic, not because they are correct, but just because. [Mod: Agree but would prefer this was left unsaid or said differently] What a tool.
The only good news is that the ever declining prices of solar power (both PV and CSP); the precipitous fall in battery costs, and the slower but inexorable decline in wind power costs will make it — has /already/ made it in some places — cheaper to go renewables than coal. Moreover, the world’s largest emitter (China) has taken a high-level commitment to reduce the energy intensity of GDP dramatically and will cap and then cut CO2 emissions. Their suddenly found moral fervour is greatly helped by the fact that renewables are now close to grid parity. It will be very hard for the unhinged right to stand in the way of market forces though no doubt they will try.
Sourcewatch entry for the American Enterprise Institute:
So your basic fossil-fuel-funded denial factory subverting democracy by misinforming the public and policy makers.
[Mod: This comment has been removed by the moderator – potentially defamatory]
TinyCO2,
You’re more than welcome to do so; I don’t claim to be without bias or that I always notice irony in my own writing. However, maybe you could start by clarifying what you think I’m complaining about. The only thing close to a complaint is that someone who I had thought was trying to be a credible scientist is promoting something that is full of errors.
I’m more than happy to accept that there are two (or more) viewpoints. What I’m not really willing to accept is that there are multiple viewpoints about the science that are all consistent with the evidence.
Nick,
Generally I agree. I will say that there are clearly some who regard themselves as conservative who understand the science well and have perfectly credible and reasonable views about what should be done. You’re – I guess – referring to those who regard themselves as conservatives but who are largely clueless about the strength of the evidence, or refuse to acknowledge the strength of the evidence.
ATTP I could point out where you make the same mistakes you complain about in your writing above, but I don’t think you’re ready to accept that there are two viewpoints.
Alas, there are indeed two viewpoints: there is the viewpoint of those who accept what the climate science and all its corroborating evidence is telling us (that the burning of fossil fuels has very bad consequences in the medium to long term) and wonder when we’re going to get off our collective arses and do something about it. And there is the viewpoint of those, for whatever reason (though usually one or more of: religious beliefs, political ideology, greed/disdain for their fellow human beings and/or progeny), are in denial of the science and prone to dissembling/advocating that we do nothing to change our unsustainable ways.
My comment was more about the logic of global warming. It’s simply absurd to argue that global warming doesn’t exist and isn’t happening. However, you could for example argue (I do not) that it would be too expensive to do anything about it. You could argue about the method we should use to control and reduce atmospheric CO2. There is clearly a whole range of policy options from do nothing through cap-and-trade, carbon tax, subsidies etc. Argument there is not just reasonable it’s vital. But let’s not continue to “debate” the science. It’s crystal clear.
And I apologise for my intemperate tone. In Oz we have just experienced the hottest year, the hottest two years and the second hottest May /ever/. 25 years ago in our little mountain town, we got the first frosts in April and snow 2 or 3 times every winter. One frost in May, one so far in June. This June (winter in the southern hemisphere) it has been warm enough to go outside in shorts and without a jumper. As warm as winter is 500 or 1000 miles further north. It’s quite obvious that the climate has changed and that it is getting worse, I shudder to think what this coming summer will be like if the likely el nino actually happens. Last summer was bad enough.
I get angry because I want my grandchildren to survive.
Nick,
I agree completely with your first paragraph. I would certainly disagree with those who argued against action but accepted the evidence, but I’d respect them for making such an argument. I have little respect for those who’s argument against action is based on a distorted view of the evidence.
As for intemperate tones, I completely understand why people get upset and angry and have done the same myself.
FWIW, Nick, I frequently have to edit my comments heavily before posting here. Like you, I am thinking of others (my son is seven in a couple of months) and like you I am finding the delusions, mendacity, cynicism, smugness, selfishness and stupidity of the contrarians increasingly hard to take. I want to kick somebody’s arse very hard indeed.
The FIFA issued an official response:
http://cheezburger.com/3731460352
As you read the following remember this is about viewpoint not facts.
“American Enterprise Institute (an institute that, apparently, once offered to pay scientists to dispute the IPCC reports.”
Some might think that it is perfectly valid to fund scientists who have opposing views (not paying them TO have opposing views). At the moment the funding is very one sided and many see value in somebody redressing the balance. Personally I’d much prefer governments to specifically fund scepticism, to see where it leads. At the very least it might give your side ideas what needs to be better explained to the public.
“an article suggesting that those who accept mainstream science are cultists”
The one doesn’t preclude the other. People can become obsessive about all sorts of true or mainstream things. The cult like behaviour is more about actions than the basic tenets. From your point of view, the science is well advanced and the debates were held years ago. For the rest of us, it was presented as a finished product and we were supposed to act upon it immediately, like Moses and the 10 Commandments. Any and all questioning has been met with aggression and closed doors. Worse, people are labelled, insulted and ostracised. Real issues with the science have been strongly denied or ignored. I accept that some of what we see is a reaction against what scientists feel is an attack but did they expect to be able to effect the biggest changes in mankind’s progress without some blow back? Undoubtedly you have a leadership who say one thing and do another, accumulating money on the misery of others. I cannot emphasise enough how damaging that is. Every weather catastrophe and some non weather related disasters are immediately proof that the planet is reacting. Some even slide into the language of cultists ‘Gaia is angry’. People get excited at the prospect of getting the message to the young, because they’re tired of trying to reason with cynical adults. All the while ignoring that this and each subsequent generation of kids is more energy prolific than the last. That sounds a lot like a cult to me.
“Nonsense. Virtually noone credible is suggesting that the debate over policy is settled.”
So you don’t think that it’s settled that we should cut CO2? That is a pretty big policy issue and just about everywhere on the consensus side it’s taken as read that CO2 rises must stop and even reverse immediately.
“rather than continually “debating” the scientific evidence, which might not be settled, but is much more settled than many would have you believe.”
It might be almost settled for you (and you are only qualifying your words because sceptics have successfully kicked the ‘settled’ concept into the long grass) but for a great many of the rest of us, we haven’t seen any evidence that the science is even coming close. It matters a lot to us how much warming is in store. What you do about AGW changes a lot depending on how much effect CO2 has on the global temperature and climate. Everything we do at the moment is only shaving small amounts off a growing total. Just as you can’t understand why I don’t fully accept CAGW, I don’t understand why you can’t see that current actions on CO2 are destructive busy work that erodes public trust and depletes the coffers of cash for policies that might work.
“Well this just illustrates that Steven Hayward doesn’t understand the difference between scientific uncertainty (more properly called “confidence intervals”) and being uncertain.”
To you it matters, to others it looks pretty much the same thing. Remember we are in the age of the science press release. One week we hear something gives us cancer, the next that claim is trashed or even reversed. Countless studies are reported with a fanfare, despite the sample sizes being too small to be significant. Science just isn’t the bastion of integrity it used to be. Scepticism in science has become well deserved, so why should climate science be any different? I have yet to see a good explanation for how many of those climate change confidence intervals have been devised. Too often they seem to relate only to model runs and I think any trust in those has long since been eroded. Parity with reality might be just around the corner but then again it might not be. I’m not even hearing any predictions about when it might happen.
“he seems to think that uncertainty implies that we should wait to be more certain, rather than considering that this uncertainty could mean that things could be more severe than expected.”
Well, yes, that exactly what many of us think. Running around in a panic, only half understanding the hazard and failing to have a decent plan is worse than doing nothing at all. To extend a favourite analogy – it’s like taking out fire insurance only to discover that you were in danger of flooding or that you’ve paid money to a fake policy salesman.
And so on. The differences are not about politics but world view. Your side feels that it is fighting a battle to save the planet, my side feels that you’re like every other doomsayer, albeit with more evidence. Your side feels that CAGW trumps every other issue, my side doesn’t agree… yet. To stop acting like a cult you have to accept we really do see the same evidence in a different light. We have different values, trigger points, risk perception, etc. To resolve the differences you have to address our issues, not keep reiterating yours in stronger and stronger terms.
TinyCO2,
Many would argue that we already are. In science, “skepticism” doesn’t necessarily mean testing an alternative. It means testing – through collecting more and more evidence – our current understanding. Many – possibly all – mainstream scientists are skeptics. Just because they aren’t doing what you think they should do doesn’t mean that it isn’t the case. Plus, there is money going into alternatives. The CLOUD experiment at CERN is testing cosmic ray nucleation. I think you may find – if you looked hard enough – that we have funded studies into alternative ideas. The reason we don’t anymore is because most have proven to be wrong.
What is accepted is that much more than 2 degrees of future warming will likely have damaging consequences (for those who object to the 2 degree limit, it is also quite possible that there are risks associated with less than 2 degrees of future warming). If we want to avoid these risks, then we should avoid atmospheric CO2 levels rising to the point where this level of warming becomes possible/likely. The statement “to avoid dangerous levels of warming we should avoid atmospheric CO2 levels rising above some threshold” is not a policy statement. It is a statement that is supported by the scientific evidence. If we choose to do this and how we choose to do this is the policy issue. There are many possible pathways.
I don’t understand what you mean. Do you dispute that in science the term “uncertainty” typically refers to a confidence interval? If so, then you’d be wrong. Do you also dispute that uncertainty could work both ways? It could means things could be better than we might expect but could also means things could be worse. The point I was making was not that this means that we should panic, but that arguing that we should wait until we’re more certain is a rather simplistic viewpoint that ignores the risks associated with the uncertainties.
ATTP: If you are attracting commenters like TinyCO2 with this post, your website is definitely now on the radar screen of the Climate Denial Spin Machine. It will be interesting to see if TinyCO2 handles this assignment by him/herself or brings in reinforcements.
> To resolve the differences you have to address our issues, not keep reiterating yours in stronger and stronger terms.
Well, the “you” is a big tell, TinyCO2. As if what you call your “side” did not have to address “our” issues. Burdening the Otter with issues that are mainly yours does not help create an authoritative standpoint on religious studies.
Let’s aknowledge your efforts for not reiterating stronger and stronger terms.
The funding is very one sided. Obsessive. Cult like behavior. Moses and the 10 Commandments. Questioning met with aggression and closed doors. People are labelled (which is very different than pointing out cult like behavior, I surmise), insulted and ostracised. Real issues denied or ignored. A leadership who say one thing and do another, accumulating money on the misery of others. Language of cultists ‘Gaia is angry’.
And so on. Notice though the double bind:
> And you are only qualifying your words because sceptics have successfully kicked the ‘settled’ concept into the long grass.
So using stronger and stronger terms does not help, and using qualifiers only shows the opposition successfully kicked the concept into the long grass.
Here’s how thy Wiki describes a double bind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind
A double bind is a valuable ClimateBall ™ trick.
@Anders, re the last paragraph in your posting:
My question would be why those who reject any mitigation effort whatsoever can’t accept the science as is. Why can’t they just admit that they are selfish and all would be fine. I’d most certainly come along with such an attitude very well (cauze I appreciate honesty a lot). But no, rather than admitting the obvious, they double down on their selfishness in that they deny the problem in the first place exposing all sorts of conspiracy ideation. I counldn’t be less bothered to have any conversation with such ppl. Neither am I gonna read the type of rubbish spit out by the Steven Hayward’s of this world.
As far as someone who promotes such ridiculous junk is concerned, this person is either plain dumb or an ideologically infested [insert bad word]. Evidence suggests that it is literally certain that the latter is true in case of Curry. But then, I couldn’t be more happy to live in a world where everyone can express his opinion as much as everyone is entitled to refuse dialogue with those who play dirty (as long as they don’t listen to those who, undoubtedly, have the expertise).
@willard:
Adrian Chiles on ITV made the face palm reference last night as well 😉
Love the way TCO2 airily glosses over the blatant shilling by the AEI on behalf of the vested corporate interests that it represents. Anyway, at least (s)he has confirmed that yes, (s)he is an apologist for free market fundamentalists misrepresenting the science so that they can make even more money for themselves. Always good to be clear about the basics.
Willard: Out of curiosity, what other “tricks” do you have up your sleeve?
ATTP I agree that there is climate science that easily falls under the heading of sceptical, though I was thinking in terms of a counter IPCC report. I find sceptical climate papers no more convincing than consensus ones and I’ve reached a point where I’m happy to wait and see. What I’d really like to see is something more like an independent audit office whose job was to pick holes in the science from both sides.
I’ve never ruled out any future scenario, good or horrific. I just don’t know, but then I don’t think anyone else knows either. I certainly don’t think that any country will do enough to reduce CO2 by more than a fraction on current levels of belief. My actions are consistent with my viewpoint. Can you all say the same?
Now read the comments that have replied to/at mine. Are they the voices of people who can draw in the unconvinced? Why would anyone try to understand the mesage if it is peppered with snide comments? I’ll agree that there might be similar tones if I was a consensus supporter on a sceptic site but they don’t have to sway the world into doing something it doesn’t want to. In a cult, it doesn’t matter how many people you insult or alienate. Less people in the afterlife. But you need to change the minds of at least half the planet. Do you care enough to be the better side?
Hi Andy,
If you want a conservative take on the science, plus a conservative set of policy options, I can recommend the IPCC report;)
> Out of curiosity, what other “tricks” do you have up your sleeve?
I don’t know, John, as I make rules as I go along. But I know that there’s also the apophasis, like mentioning “tricks” after having said:
There’s also counterfactual thinking like ” If you are attracting commenters like X with this post, then you are targetted by Y […],” which accomplish very little against concerns such as TinyCO2.
There are lots of ClimateBall ™ tricks. Someday, I’ll try to list them. I need to finish my “contrarian matrix of arguments” first.
“What I’d really like to see is something more like an independent audit office whose job was to pick holes in the science from both sides.”
Your “side” has lots of hole-pickers but precious little science. What real “conversation” can be had?
> I just don’t know, but then I don’t think anyone else knows either.
Thus spake Socrates.
***
> Now read the comments that have replied to/at mine. Are they the voices of people who can draw in the unconvinced?
Thus spake Barry Woods.
***
In case I have not made myself clear, dear TinyCO2, my comment established that you used three tricks. First, you distanced your “side” from the problem. Second, you projected your concern (“we need to have a conversation”) into the other side. Third, you used a double bind.
Do you think using these tricks helps convince the undecided? See how easy it is to express concerns. Thank you so much for your concerns nevertheless. Always appreciated.
ClimateBall ™, had to look that up. Ah, Willard, you think this is a game? How weird! Why would any of you continue to play at something which is so clearly not your forte? You do know that CO2 is still rising and support for cutting CO2 static or falling? Hope that doesn’t come as a shock to you? No? I have clearly been too generous and assumed you really did care about emissions but apparently it isn’t on your agenda. Though writing that is probably another ‘trick’… and that… and that. Do you ever stop being clever and care about anything serious?
Yawn.
TinyCO2,
I don’t think people (myself included) are really trying to draw in the unconvinced. I think I’ve rather given up on that. It’s just a place where people can have moderately civil discussions.
And your first comment on this thread wasn’t snide?
Ahh, I don’t think you quite understand the ClimateballTM theme. It’s not a game that sensible people want to play. It’s a game that we are playing, whether we like it or not.
Enough GHGs = hyperthermal, eg PETM. This climate agosia is simply a cloak for denialism. You are denying the basics of physical climatology, which is daft. But then free market fundamentalism is daft, so QED.
Typo: that should of course be “agnosia”
I don’t think you’re ready to accept that there are two viewpoints.
That’s right, we’ve got both kinds, country and western!
Anybody arguing that there are two viewpoints really isn’t qualified to comment on any science, but ATTP is right, it’s a free world. Thus, I can look at all of the nuanced evidence I want.
Nuance apparently isn’t a conservative virtue.
Willard: I’ve seen TinyCO2 do his/her schtick on other websites. He/she can spread the climate denial poppycock with the best of them.
Willard: What does Climateball say about excessive repitition?
Tiny CO2, Eli is an old bunny and remembers a lot of those Team B exercises. Eli has a rule, Team B is always wrong because Team B was only formed when the politicians could not accept the analysis of Team A, the experts, and hired a bunch of flacks to muddy the waters
Peddle it to a bunch of fools if you must, but don’t pretend that you make any sense.
(I think I dropped a post … given 30 windows open, I hope this isn’t a duplicate.)
Twitter: hashtag #ClimateCultists
I guess Dr. Curry has gone all-in for Steven Hayward and AEI, so…
Hayward:
1) See The Climate Mafia Strikes Again: The Curious Case of Murry Salby”, an instant Powerline post about an employment dispute in Australia, wherein the complainant Murry Salby turned out to have a long history of deception and financial chicanery, mis-used university credit card to take explicitly-unauthorized trip to Europe, etc. For the comments engendered by this polemic, see pp.184-185 of PDF attached to Pseudoskeptics Exposed In The SalbyStorm. They start with following and go downhill from there:
“Surprise! Surprise! The ”Progressives” in acedemia act like fascist thugs. Free thought? Don’t be absurd? But calling them fascists will just roll off their backs. What they really act like is their cartoon of monopoly capitalists protecting their little money grubbing monopoly.”
or
“Enforcers for the Warming dogma have their most outspoken critics publicly
drawn and quartered. They mount their heads on pikes at the University gates,
then claim that their lack of outspoken critics proves the righteousness of their
dogma.”
2) See DeSmogBlog profile on Hayward, which includes note about the $10K offer to scientists, and fact that he is a Director of Donors Trust, the Koch+friends $$ anonymizer that was exposed in 2012, see Fakery 2
AEI
3) As per Fakery 2 above, pp.39-41, AEI is one of the think tanks that has been taking tobacco money for a long time, i.e., they help companies that only stay in business by addicting teenagers to something that will eventually kill many of them. They are still helping, see the AEI section of Familiar Think Tanks Fight For E-Cigarettes. Funny that: think tanks ignored e-cigs when done by startups, but when the majors got in, now e-cigs are good … to help people reduce the smoking that the think tanks had helped for so long.
It is certainly Judith Curry’s right to associate herself with such folks and it offers clarification.
There are certainly conservative scholars worthy of respect and I even know some and their arguments are about the best ways to handle the climate problem, not about the science, George Shultz (Hoover Institution) was a leader in the fight to save California’s AB32 law from a ballot proposition funded by Valero, Tesoro and the Kochs. George promotes electric vehicles often, says he loves his Leaf. See Hoover Institution Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy and look up the Members. I know some of them, and that’s a very different sort of group than AEI, with some people who actually are scholars or people looking for solutions to real problems.
Is Hayward actually a conservative *scholar*?
Hayward is a director of Donors Trust? Well, well, well. Small world, eh?
As Eli has confirmed, TinyCo2 has been around for quite some time. He/she also currently posts on The Carbon Brief’s comment threads among others.
> [Y]ou think this is a game?
To what are you referring when you say “this”, dear TinyCO2? If you are referring to the concerns you are raising, I’d be inclined to say yes. See for instance how you just deflected (take note, John!) from your tricks to my concept of ClimateBall ™, and then on myself (“not your forte”). If that (deflection) does not belong to some kind of parlor game, then I fail to understand what it is.
Also note that I have no ontological commitment regarding what is ClimateBall ™. In other words, what I do model as ClimateBall ™ moves can refer to something else in reality. This indeterminacy has to do with the fact that we don’t really know what a game is. That said, I’m willing to see games behind many human activities, just like Huizinga did. Think of it this way: you say cult, I say game. I bet the concept of game is more fruitful.
***
Now, you were supposed to answer for your three tricks you did: the distanciation, the projection, and the double bind. To these we now can add, with your latest comment, deflection and personalization (“not your forte”). Please rest assured that trying to make it about me will not work, and more importantly, won’t help win the votes of the undecided. You know, all those who no doubt read these lines.
Thank you so much for your concerns!
w
BBD: yes, go back to p.66 of the PDF attached at the Feb 14, 2012 Fake science, fakexperts, funny finances, free of tax, where I wrote:
Donors Capital Board
Steven Hayward Director; F.K Weyerhaeuser Fellow, AEI,
Senior Fellow PRI,
grant advisor, Searle Freedom Trust.
Trustee Philadelphia Society, IER.
(Note: that is Donors Capital, but like others do, I often say Donors Trust to mean the whole thing, since it’s all entangled. I sometimes just write DONORS.)
Thanks John, yet again. You should charge.
😉
I think my favorite bit in the article was the assertion that various scientific efforts, including e.g. the new Joughin et al. and Rignot et al. Antarctic ice sheet papers, were timed to facilitate the EPA’s release of its new CO2 rules.
It’s frankly not possible for Hayward to believe this could be true. Anyone even vaguely following the process on this (which Hayward does, for a living) would know that the rule announcement was timed to come after publication of the new National Climate Assessment, which in turn had been in the works for years (as had the rules themselves, of course). Yet he said it anyway.
Does Judy believe it’s true? She says there’s just one error in the Hayward piece, and that arguable (referring to the cloud/WV feedback conflation). Well, to borrow her phrase, wow. Just wow.
One could generously limit her assertion to purely scientific issues, but even so there are a number of other obvious problems (obvious to me, an informed amateur, on a first read-through). It becomes difficult to find a generous characterization for her claim.
TinyCO2, “conservatives” like you got the Climateball rolling the moment they decided to try to refute the science with arguments about policy (see Oreskes/Conway for that history). I too thank you for your concerns. (And for your own information, you might google “Calvinball.”)
This Hayward chap is almost a caricature. Not only Donors Trust, but CFACT too! What can Judith possibly have been thinking of when she endorsed this man’s partisan, free marketeer trip? Seriously – WTF?
Affiliations
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow and Scholar.
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) — Member, Board of Advisors.
Donors Capital Fund (DCF) — Director and Treasurer
Pacific Research Institute — Senior Fellow, Environmental Studies.
Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) — Director.
Reason Magazine — Contributing Editor, 1990 – 2001.
Heritage Foundation — Bradley Fellow, 1997-98; Henry Salvatori Fellow, 1993-94.
In Judy’s Georgia milieu those affiliations read more like features than bugs, BBD.
See that stint on Reason Magazine? No, me neither, so I looked it up. Published by the Koch-funded Reason Foundation, “a self-described ‘libertarian’ think tank” that has been taking money from the tobacco industry:
And:
It’s hard not to get the picture, isn’t it?
Steve
Yes, I imagine that may be the case.
Meanwhile, back in the real world (and directly related to the physics of climate change)…
Apparent pause in global warming blamed on ‘lousy’ data:
European Space Agency scientist says annual sea level rises since 1993 indicate that warming has continued unabated
by Stuart Clark, The Guardian, June 13, 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/pause-global-warming-data-sea-level-rises
I see that ‘TinyCO2’ uses a pseudonym that will suggest to uninformed readers that “atmospheric CO2 is tiny and therefore does not matter”. To the scientifically-informed reader this means that either, 1) ‘TinyCO2’ is scientifically illiterate or 2) he/she understands the science but has decided, cynically, to perpetuate a myth—presumably for his/her own ideological reasons.
Either way TinyCo2 flags up right from the top of the comment that his/her assertions are biased and lack any credibility.
TinyCO2 writes:”You do know that CO2 is still rising and support for cutting CO2 static or falling?”
I’m not sure what data TinyCO2 is referring to, but the most recent polling on the new EPA rules surprised me. 69% believe global warming is a serious problem, 70% believe the government should regulate GHG emissions from existing power plants, and 63% would pay $20/month to effect these changes.
ABC-Washington Post Poll
johnrussell40: That’s cutting edge feelie emotions;
Last year I was designing CO2 measurement systems for oil refineries. Strength of absorption for CO2 is very well known and accurately measured.
Who’s the cultist anyways? Every time I’ve asked for some evidence that Climate Change isn’t real, I’ve been greeted with silence, and something to the effect they the denial community doesn’t need evidence. How silly is that? Who following evidence, and who’s following the cult here?
Can anyone explain why the opinions about science of an anonymous peudoskeptic would carry any weight in the real world? Or even in blogs?
Fair point John, but silence isn’t really an option. To paraphrase what may be misattributed to Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of nonsense is that other commenters say nothing.
EB also said:
Which sounds like the Serengeti strategy to me.
Speaking of climate cults, EB also noted that:
So there’s a bit of a spread of endorsed options there.
When it’s not a cult, it’s a crush:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/5/21/the-yeomens-report.html
Ah. Collateral love triangle.
BBD: You state
Fair point John (Mashey), but silence isn’t really an option.
On the other hand, if a tree falls in forest and no one is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?
The laws of physics require that it does 🙂
Some may argue that unless there’s a planum temporale nearby, a falling tree makes no sound at all:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070919121602.htm
Steven Hayward is part of the Powerline blog team. I have tracked the Powerline lawyers for years in a John Mashey-like attempt to get at the bottom of their agenda. First of all, they are cornucopians in terms of editorial content, never mentioning oil depletion concerns until the rather wimpy results from Bakken started coming in and suggesting that would save us somehow.
The Powerline law firm of Faegre-Benson represents Koch Industries, which owns refineries in the state next door to the Bakken and also owns land in the Bakken.
Koch is also involved in the shady Weather Derivatives market and hired the Powerliners law firm to defend themselves in their partnership with Enron.
This has relevance because the weather derivatives were dealing with betting outcomes of climate events such as El Nino.
Who are the cultists now, eh?
Hayward’s post was of course utter garbage. That Curry can’t recognize that is unfortunately no longer a surprise. She also claimed,
We don’t even use the word ‘denier’ at The Guardian, though obviously it’s simply a term to describe those who are in denial, whereas there is no ‘climate cult’. I also don’t know what ‘daily op-eds’ she’s talking about. Curry’s spewing out some great false equivalence there.
I have to say it irritates me that someone who clearly can’t differentiate between valid criticism and ignorant nonsense is still considered a credible expert.
I’ve deleted quite a few comments from the end of this thread because they were off-topic and tedious. If anyone is unhappy about this they can submit feedback here: https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/contact/. Please don’t complain about it on the thread.
It’s interesting that BBD uses quotes from Edmund Burke above. I’ve recently made it a minor project to work out what conservative politics really stands for these days -and figures like Burke seem to have receded well into the past. It is tough to really define conservatism these days -one of my colleagues thinks the term “right wing” is actually a better fit for the people who self-identify as conservative in mass media.
I came across Steven Hayward’s ‘Conservatism and Climate Change’ a couple of weeks ago, and it had what seem to me the only two common features of the self-described conservatives these days. One feature is a positive -what conservatives stand for- and the other a negative -defining themselves by what they are against.
The positive seems to be ‘freedom’; individual freedom. The individual, who owes nothing to anybody, is radically iconoclastic and self-reliant, stands against all of those who would tell him what to do. The self-described conservative is most concerned with ‘freedom to’ -whether it is to carry guns, to have free speech even if it offends others, freedom to home-school, freedom to keep our money and not have to contribute to someone else’s abstract idea of community..
…and definitely freedom to think what I like without someone telling me I need to conform to their facts.
And that leads to the most prominent negative feature of so-called conservatism -a fixation on the idea that the conservative is surrounded by forces who want to tell him what to do, control him, tax him (except, of course, people who just want to marry someone of the same sex…but nobody said ideologies had to be consistent). This notion of control naturally leads to a resentment of authority, and easy slip into associating every statement of knowledge with a statement of interests. From Hayward in ‘Conservatism and Climate Change”:
“Conservative skepticism is less about science per se than its claims to usefulness in the policy realm. This skepticism combines with the older liberal view—that is, the view that values individual freedoms above all else—that the concentration of discretionary political power required for nearly all schemes of comprehensive social or economic management are a priori suspect…Put more simply or directly, the conservative distrust of authority based on claims of superior scientific knowledge reflects a distrust of the motives of those who make such claims, and thus a mistrust of the validity of the claims themselves.
If one starts from this position, there is no friction in choosing one’s experts based on the consequences of what the experts are saying. Reading Hayward’s second article closely, we can forensically zero in on how he chooses experts -he chooses them politically.
This is why I fundamentally do not get how Judith Curry’s project could advance our understanding of climate change. She too draws supporters around her based on a negative belief in the projected political conspiracy they are all against; even her ‘stadium wave’ hypothesis is a negative ontology, in that it does not offer a causal mechanism, but points out into the darkness of uncertainty, as if to say “whatever is the opposite of the IPCC’s explanation, it’s somewhere out there.”
She too advocates a one-sided notion of freedom -that everyone with an opinion is a constructive contributor to climate science, just because it is in some sense their democratic right to do so, if only the ‘gatekeepers’ would let them in. But what is this without a conspiracy theory about mainstream climate science? How does it make sense to say the people we need to not listen to are the very people who have studied the subject the most?
How can this politicised ‘citizen science’ advance our understanding of climate change? When people start from the conclusion, they have lower odds of stumbling on the truth than sheer chance.
It’s as though I filled a box with 1440 broken clocks and said I’d just invented a device that has the correct time each minute of the day…somewhere in there.
Mark,
I noticed that line in Hayward’s other article and it’s starting to strike me that there are many who see no problem in arguing against the scientific evidence because of some perception of the policy implications. It seems completely flawed to me and worrying that many don’t seem to see the issue with this type of framing.
ATTP “I don’t think people (myself included) are really trying to draw in the unconvinced. I think I’ve rather given up on that. It’s just a place where people can have moderately civil discussions.”
And that comes across, both here and more significantly on the comment sections of newspapers that are seen by a wider audience. As several have pointed out, I have been around for a long time, I’ve been looking for a site that seems to genuinely care about cutting CO2 and I’ve yet to find it. Lots of sites grumbling about Judith Curry, WUWT and Republicans or their think tanks but nobody seems to give a toss about emissions. At best there’s a defence of the science, which is a dog fight over a mouldy bone if cutting CO2 isn’t the ultimate goal.
The monika TinyCO2 is a poke at the percentage that CO2 makes up of the atmosphere though not it’s effect, but it also refers to my own CO2 footprint. I don’t waste things. I do many of the actions that people who care about AGW should be discussing but don’t. I worked in a company that was obsessed with reducing waste but eventually moved abroad, not because waste would be less but because energy was too expensive here. For you guys, cutting CO2 is something somebody else should do. It comes across loud and clear. You’re right, you are not like a cult because cultists are passionate about what they believe, for you it’s just become a habit.
Steven Hayward’s article isn’t important, nor is Judith’s republishing of it. What is important is that the public have stopped listening or worse, just harvest the bits they want to support their disinterest. Kevin O’Neill writes that 63% the public would be prepared to pay an extra $20 a month towards reducing CO2. Is he aware that the difference between UK and US petrol prices is more than $40 for a single tank full? That puts the public commitment into perspective. It also demonstrates Kevin’s awareness of what it takes to reduce CO2.
You wrote a few days ago “It’s certainly my view that [the quality of climate debate] would benefit from being more civil and less adversarial.” Why? Why when there’s no real reason behind your defence of climate science other than a desire to beat the likes of Anthony Watts? If all this site is about is a chat room for grumpy consensus supporters you might as well be as bitchy as you like. Play it like a game because the results don’t matter and like me you are happy to wait and see what the climate does in response to CO2.
I will move on, in my fruitless search for a consensus site that genuinely cares about cutting CO2. I won’t hold my breath.
TinyCO2,
I don’t really want to get into a lengthy debate about the motivation of this site. It’s my site and I get to run it however I like. I don’t claim to have any particular greater goal.
I’ll defend the science unapologetically. I fail to see how the debate can really move onto how best to proceed if we still have prominent people suggesting that the scientific evidence is still unclear and implying that we should be waiting until we’re more certain.
Any chance you make a constructive comment before moving on, or are you simply one of those people who feels that your role is to place yourself on some kind of pedestal where you can criticise everyone else without recognising your own biases and that your contribution may be significantly less positive than you seem to think.
yes ATTP, it is a logical fallacy –argumentatum ad consequentium -argument from the consequences. It is common in all walks of life, but I really think the only exception is academic research communities -because there is a cultural expectation that community members behave objectively. It is particularly striking when somebody like Hayward, who presents himself as philosophically inclined, advances such a weak argument for conservatism.
In terms of the wider political issue, I find myself leaning more and more to Daniel Kahan’s view that the science communication environment is polluted. There is no doubt that many people in our community choose their reasons after they have chosen their conclusions -and the truth is that in many circumstances it is not irrational to do so.
I take some small consolation in the fact that the majority of people are not so strongly motivated by partisan viewpoints to be unable to use reason. But the trouble is, those people are also only casually engaged with the topic of climate change -which immediately makes them more open to simpler stories than complex ones, if only because the former demands less effort.
The political work that needs doing out in the broader community is not like the work done on blogs like this one. That is why I don’t see the usefulness in TinyCO2’s criticisms -they actually seem to be premised on misunderstanding what kind of thing a blog is after all. On sites like this I guess we can test ideas some, refine our understanding of certain issues, but always within a pretty narrow context.
For my part, I think all the time about how science is communicated in the wider community -but it’s a complicated problem, so I check in on sites where I think I’ll learn something. If I wasn’t learning about the physics, I wouldn’t be able to even recognise political arguments from scientific ones.
By the way -notice that Hayward (like many other self-defined conservatives) uses a version of the social constructionist argument that was discussed at length here in the post about science and STS?
Anders –
I want to commend you on your engagement with tinyCO2 in this thread. I haven’t read through it all carefully, but from a quick reading you stuck with it, in a civil manner. You treated his comments thoroughly, w/o descending into an accusatory tone. You didn’t fall for the bait by personalizing or engaging in identity-protective or identity-aggressive same ol’ same ol’.
Bravo.
Maybe this starts to become too much off topic, but Mark, could one summarise what you see as traits of conservative politics (including the exceptions) as: conservatives want to conserve the current social hierarchy. That fits to most of what they say and especially explains the consequences of what they actually do.
Victor: “…conservatives want to conserve the current social hierarchy.”
Yes, I agree. I think the increasing shrillness of far-right politics comes mostly from the relative stagnation of the US as a global and economic power, combined with the absence of the cold war as a unifying force in US politics. I also think that, with the decline of trade union influence in the English-speaking societies, some on the political right have gotten a bit ahead of themselves and imagined they could start to remake their societies as Randian utopias; they misunderstood how deeply liberal social values are rooted in their communities.
This is a key background to the hostility of self-described conservatives to climate science. They saw pretty early on that the political left interpreted the scientific evidence for global warming as a condemnation of modern industry. Of course, the idea that there are somehow left-over Red fifth columnists all throughout the worlds EPAs and the UN is really just paranoia looking for a focus, but Green has become the new Red for a lot of the left as well as for the conservatives.
That must be why there is such a strong backlash response to any notion of regulation, or of international agreements. There are a lot of folks out there who interpret these things as direct attacks on their sense of individual freedom, but to return to Victor’s point, don’t you also find that many people treat the issue of carbon emissions emotionally, as though if it were true, then our whole way of life is somehow to blame?
One of the things I actually like about this blog is that it doesn’t have people moralising about the evil of modern life. But we have to be careful -when someone suggests that Exxon, the Koch brothers etc are funding denial of climate science, it implies that only the oil producers are the beneficiaries of carbon emissions. That narrative is convenient, but it’s not accurate and pricks even the moderate conservative’s nerves, because it dovetails with a more radical view that rejects all of capitalist society. The truth is, of course, that none of us would be conversing without oil. It’s a simple enough argument that fossil fuels have been of immeasurable benefit to modern civilisation, but we are reaching a tipping point where we need to move on.
> I’ve recently made it a minor project to work out what conservative politics really stands for these days -and figures like Burke seem to have receded well into the past.
For what it’s worth, I had an exchange with GaryM about that the other day at Judy’s:
What I get from this is that it’s complicated.
ATTP: “Here’s what I’d be interested in reading : an article that can make a Conservative climate policy argument without mis-representing/undermining the current scientific evidence.”
How about: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/a-conservatives-approach-to-combating-climate-change/257827/
Mark
I agree with your wider point here, but facts are facts. There is a great deal of denial concerning the construction and covert funding of the organised denial machine (mainly in the US; mainly libertarian ‘think tanks’ and the ‘scholars’ therein). It is nevertheless a matter of fact, so it must be entertained.
I should have added that the fact that some facts irritate right wing commenters is neither here nor there. While they might wish to frame those facts as symptoms of an anti-capitalist world-view, they are simply facts. One shouldn’t be too accommodating of the prickliness of the right or we’d never get a word in edgeways 😉
David Young reports some concerns about this thread:
By chance there’s Judy’s to increase subtle understanding and self reflection.
Layzej,
That’s pretty good. You’ve convinced me that it is indeed possible.
Willard,
We should probably just thank DY for his concerns.
Mark,
That’s a very good point. I have in the past argued that if we were – in the future – to blame anyone it would be our own policy makers and – since we mostly live in democracies – ourselves. The evidence exists and is quite clearly presented in documents like the IPCC WGI reports. If our policy makers don’t understand it, don’t know who to trust when wanting advice about the evidence, or have been influenced by those with vested interests, it’s really our own fault for allowing our democracies to evolve in the ways that they have.
Mark and Willard, modern conservatism needs to be understood as “movement conservatism” (a term more functional than philosophical, but IMO reference to 18th century philosophical differences doesn’t tell us much about what’s going on). I also think “purity” rather than “honor” is the underlying organizing principle, noting that conservative are frequently happy to support some pretty dishonorable people and activities. I don’t like all of Kahan’s stuff, but his work on hierarchical individualists is quite useful here.
Mark: “I think the increasing shrillness of far-right politics comes mostly from the relative stagnation of the US as a global and economic power, combined with the absence of the cold war as a unifying force in US politics.” That’s a hard case to make, although of course the shrillness will tend to increase with economic stress. If you want shrill, check out the rhetoric with which noted cold warrior and imperialist JFK was greeted by the denizens of Dallas in November ’63. Also, I would distinguish between the effects of increasing inequality (=> oligarchy) and any such stagnation.
“They saw pretty early on that the political left interpreted the scientific evidence for global warming as a condemnation of modern industry.” That’s a little broad-brush, but more fundamentally I think what went on was an effort by industry to convince conservatives that a right to pollute the commons was a key conservative value. That paradigm was successfully established years before global warming came on the scene.
Re GaryM, Willard, it was going to end up seeming complicated (more so than it really is, anyway) as you were debating with someone who in the end could only define his own conservatism in a manner akin to the famous judicial definition of pornography (“I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it”)
Victor: “conservatives want to conserve the current social hierarchy” Sort of. IMO it’s more accurate to say that they’re working toward a different (much more oligarchical) system, regarding which process I think the ideas about purity and hierarchical individualism inform.
> We should probably
justthank DY for his concerns.Done:
Volokh, ATTP? What about the parts “mis-representing/undermining the current scientific evidence”? I point to the endorsement of Michaels/Balling as an acceptable baseline for the science. He does specifically address the “right to pollute” issue I raise above, but note the lack of any apparent progress in getting that idea accepted by conservatives (or even by many self-identified libertarians).
Batten down the hatches becasue the Koch brothers and their ilk are about to launch a “bigger and better” propaganda attack on climate science, climate scientists, environmentalists, progressives, etc. As documented in the following article, the groundwork for this attack has already been laid.
Koch Brothers Unveil New Strategy at Big Donor Retreat by Peter Stone, The Daily Beast, June 14, 2014
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/13/koch-brothers-make-climate-activists-new-target.html
Steve,
I was generous in that section about Michaels/Balling as he finished it with
I also thought he did quite a good job of pointing out that even if warming is on the low end we have a moral obligation to avoid our actions influencing those who are unlikely to be able to adapt to even moderate amounts of change. Overall, I thought he presented a reasonable argument that wasn’t based on a distortion of the evidence – which is what I was looking for. I wasn’t specifically looking for something that I would necessarily agree with.
Is David Young asserting that the word, “denier” is embedded with negative connotations and the word “cultist” is not?
BTW, Who is David Young and why should we give a Tinker’s damn about what he posts on Curry’s website?
The best democracy that money can buy…
John H,
FWIW, David Young probably falls into the category of people that I’ve managed to annoy in the last year or so and who will now spend their time finding ways to criticise what I write. Some might call it obsessive. Not me, though.
Hayward apparently belongs to the Cloud Cult (not to be confused with the popular Minnesota band).
John Hartz sez:
David Young is a PhD from Boeing who specializes in computational fluid dynamics for flight analysis and testing.
He obviously is a smart guy but he has a stick up his butt concerning imagined inaccuracies in the GCM models. This has mainly to do with the possibility of errors propagating from the improper construction of models based on the Navier-Stokes equation.
IMO, [Mod: inflammatory] most of his perceived inaccuracies are completely subverted by the rather strong boundary conditions imposed on the climate context.
For example, in the case of ENSO, the rather erratic oscillations are actually a result of a stronger cyclic forcing perturbation acting to synchronize the behavior.
http://contextearth.com/2014/05/27/the-soim-differential-equation/
The synchronization will wipe away any of the inaccuracies of an undelying GCM. In other words, the simple governing physics guides the deeper numerical analysis.
There’s Numerical Computational, and Then There’s Physics (where have I heard that before?)
Young doesn’t have an answer to this so he always clams up when I argue this point to him. So perhaps you are right and we shouldn’t give a Timker’s damn what he says
The Tea Party is doing exactly what it designed for by the Kochs+Big Tobacco, whose history was detailed in a meticulously-done peer-reviewed paper. See TEA Party: Tobacco Everywhere Always for introduction and link to the (free) paper, a classic case of serendipitous notice of something minor, followed by a much detective work following threads. (This is like the way Donors Trust/Capital got exposed: I was looking for funders of Heartland, and ran across a one-sentence mention of Donors in a blog, had never heard of it, but looked in the voluminous list of recipients … and the big recipients emerged amongst the Boy Scouts, churches, etc.)
ATTP
DY isn’t very keen on me, either 😉
DY posted a few comments on SkS last fall but wasn’t very convincing.
I vaguely recall crossing swords with him a few years ago on MSM websites but I could be wrong.
ATTP: Do you believe it is helpful or hurtful to civil discourse on this thread for Willard to cut & paste comments by DY that he has posted on Curry’s website?
Personally, I find this particular tactic to be a bit annoying because it appears that Willard’s primary obective is nothing more than to keep the pot boiling.
Some might call it obsessive. Not me, though.
Is fixation, the word you are looking for? 🙂
John Hartz
Can’t speak for ATTP, of course, but the first DY quote from Judy’s that got posted here was by WHT and was about me. I don’t read the blither at JC’s so I would have missed it, and I was entertained to see that DY retains such fond memories of our few brief previous encounters. So it was a net positive, at least for me.
John H,
I don’t really mind. Willard’s objective is not always clear, but I’ve learned that there is a method in his madness 🙂
Victor,
That’s certainly an alternative but – of course – I would never say make such a suggestion 🙂
Leaving aside the bad language used in discussing it here, some of the references for this discussion of fluid dynamics and its relevance to climate models are in some old threads at James’ Empty Blog. There are a few simple points that are recently becoming well documented in the literature.
1. Subgrid models for turbulence are not nearly as good or reliable as the CFD literature gives the impression they are. This is documented in the The Aeronautical Journal, July 2002, Leschziner and Drikakis by acknowledged experts. he problem here is that the users of these models while not actively hiding these issues, never highlight them and often present a small number of cherry picked results that agree with the data a lot better than an ensemble of results would. The real experts know better. The atmosphere is very turbulent and the Reynolds number is sufficiently high that resolution of the turbulence is hopeless so sub grid models are required. And then there are clouds.
2. The actual uncertainty in numerical simulations of Navier-Stokes in all its forms is higher than generally acknowledged. There is a new paper in AIAA Journal on this by some of us which also shows the pitfalls of continuing to resolve “more physics.” There is another one in review that is perhaps more shocking because instead of using geometries selected by engineers because the “strong boundary conditions” would make them stable and well behaved (well at least for some conditions), we designed some geometries using optimization and found rather huge (up to 30%) uncertainties not in the numerics, but the problem itself is ill-posed / singular. This is not new for inviscid flow but it is new for Navier-Stokes simulations I think.
3. AIAA Journal, accepted pre-publication papers has one on non unique solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations that is very interesting. This paper is just the tip of the iceberg but is important because CFD had for a long time accepted the idea that turbulence models converted an initial value problem into a boundary value problem that was if not well posed at least better posed. That comforting assumption is not very useful it seems. Isaac Held has some interesting similar calculations for simple convection showing extreme sensitivity to the size of the computational domain.
Web’s point about strong boundary conditions is not sufficiently rigorous or fact based to require a detailed response expect to note that the problems addressed in all these publications also have what were thought to be “strong” boundary conditions.
This is highly technical and not well suited to blog discussions, especially if poorly moderated. But for the record, I repeat it here. Something big is happening in this field and in science generally with regard to the integrity of the scientific process and the reliability of the literature and this area is just one instance of it.
And then there’s paleoclimate.
David,
I was trying to remember if I’d put you into my moderation queue. Seems not 🙂
Tell you what, as the planet continues to warm you’re welcome to continue pointing out that climate models don’t strictly satisfy all possible numerical conditions. It’s not going to change reality one little bit, though.
> Personally, I find this particular tactic to be a bit annoying because it appears that Willard’s primary obective is nothing more than to keep the pot boiling.
Thank you for your concerns, John. Always appreciated.
To answer the rhetorical question you asked earlier, I could not care less if you care or not. That’s your own problem. I’m not your monkey.
DY:
“Web’s point about strong boundary conditions is not sufficiently rigorous or fact based to require a detailed response”
Right, of course not …
I would characterize it a bit differently. Its far more than just “satisfying all numerical conditions” which is of course impossible. The level of uncertainty in viscous compressible fluid simulations is far larger than previously believed, especially as believed by the users of these simulations. Some of it is not due to numerics, but some of it is. That’s an important finding I would say and one with implications for climate science. I personally believe that simple models well constrained by data offer the best way forward. I acknowledge that this is an expert opinion however and not as well documented yet;
David,
Personally, I think we should consider all available evidence, but maybe that’s just me.
Interesting, so it’s just your expert opinion. I suspect that you have little time for the expert opinions of others.
To be honest, it’s a Sunday night, I’m watching the football, and I have little time for discussions with someone who can say (without irony)
Hyperthermals.
I understand, ATTP, that I am not on the top of your favorites list. My only point in coming here was to correct the record and try to interject some relevant science that is a rather big thing I think in its implications.
Paleoclimate.
> [S]ome of the references for this discussion of fluid dynamics and its relevance to climate models are in some old threads at James’ Empty Blog.
See for yourself:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-sensitive-matter.html?showComment=1360202549174#c6288281841622177174
***
Compare and contrast:
***
That move (another deflection) was played after David Young got caught whining about the D-word and using himself the word “McCarthyism”.
Look out! A fluid squirrel!
I think David *still* believes his knowledge of industrial CFD is completely (or mostly) applicable to CFD used in GCMs. Gavin pointed out many of the fallacies in David’s priors in this thread at RealClimate.
This inline response to David from Gavin pretty much sums it up:
While that thread is nearly three years old it doesn’t appear David has assimilated the information that Gavin provided.
Thanks, Kevin!
There’s this gem:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/greenland-meltdown/comment-page-2/#comment-215883
David Young’s sudden lack of concern for tone brightens my Dad’s day.
Kevin, Three years ago what I said was not backed up by real publications. There are now papers beginning to appear on these issues. I was also wrong I now think on that thread about adaptive methods, which might improve models marginally but are not a cure all. There is a new paper coming up in January on this too.
As to Gavin’s comment, I understood it at the time perfectly well because its something I hear virtually every day. Many CFD code persons says “I don’t know what you are talking about, every time I run MY (note the possessive pronoun) code, the results are good and I don’t see these issues.” They are usually honest and eventually change their mind if presented with evidence. Well now there is scientific documentation and it is indeed worse than the CFD literature gives the impression it is.
On and yes, real modeling experts suspected it all along (The aeronautical journal, 2002) “Eddy viscosity models are fundamentally flawed and do not perform consistently across a wide range of conditions”. They go on to explain the “every time I run the code I get a good results that matches data” by chalking it up effectively to selection bias. Basically, people tend to run well known cases that have been used to tune the models or for which viscous effects are simply unimportant.
Kevin, This view about eddy viscosity models is the consensus view among turbulence modelers themselves. At a recent NASA symposium on the future of fluid dynamics, one of the experts said “Turbulence models are postdictive and not predictive.” That’s OK, but as I said is not so well known in the code running or even the code building community. It just means there is a lot of work to do and real world testing is a necessity.
#yesbutpaleoclimate
Just to be clear, nothing I said here is to say that climate modelers are dishonest. They are outstanding citizens for the most part, just as CFD code runners and developers are. But there are easy biases that can characterize science in the current climate as I think many are coming to realize.
Who are coming to realise?
Paleoclimate behaviour is determined by physics. There’s ample evidence that the climate system is moderately sensitive to radiative perturbation, eg. Rohling et al. (2013):
Concerns about models do not address known paleoclimate variability.
Sorry, that should be Rohling et al. (2012).
David has on several occasions used the ‘fundamentally flawed’ quote. It’s difficult to track it down because the words do not appear exactly as quoted in any Google search — except in comments by David.
What I believe he is referring to is Turbulence modelling and turbulent-flow computation in aeronautics, by M.A.Leschziner and D. Drikakis.
The article is expressly written about turbulence modelling within the spectrum of topics constituting aerodynamics for aeronautical engineering. Here is the full paragraph from the ‘Concluding Remarks’ that contains the quoted words:
The paper does not mention climate models, nor is the applicability to climate models always apparent.
I believe Kevin that the high Reynolds number compressible viscous fluid dynamics equations and the common methods used are very similar for a broad range of fields, at least that was the clear consensus when I was in graduate school. At NCAR, their models do in fact use these methods and you can find it easily in the documentation.
Perhaps it’s better that I post this comment here, since it’s held in moderation. This is in response to David Young’s handwaving at judy’s:
Then do locate them and report. Or ask your monkeys. This is your schtick, and you can’t even cite the author names of the 2002 paper. Kevin believes it’s Leschziner & Drikakis, 2002 [1]. The Aeronautical Journal does not have its 2002 archives online [2].
Also notice that we’re talking about 2002, David Young, more than 12 years ago, and a bunch of articles to be published. What happened in between? That smells fishy, even to me. When was the Drela & Fairman report, where’s Krakos & Darmofal 2010 [3]?
Or perhaps you sit on a gold mine? Then you need to share. Go ahead, write a post. Submit it to Judy. Tell the world about your findings. Start a blog. Be praised. Be famous. Go play “stand aside, I’m a scientist” with otters like you.
Anything is better for you than to whine (again) about poisoning the well after your ClimateBall ™ performance today, which again you refuse to own.
***
In return, perhaps you’d like to contribute to what I call the Contrarian Matrix [4], a project I recently started. If you’d like to add anything of substance, I’d be much obliged. For instance, I have no idea where your actual line of argument would fit, what slogan would represent it, nor what citation to give it. Any ideas?
***
[1] http://agarbaruk.professorjournal.ru/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=209298&folderId=231814&name=DLFE-6845.pdf
[2] http://aerosociety.com/News/Publications/Aero-Journal/Online
[3] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/greenland-meltdown/comment-page-2/
[4] http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/07/open-thread-13/#comment-588890
Kevin found the correct paper without any trouble and found the money conclusion. If you have a substantive point, I’d be happy to entertain it. It often does take several years to get significant paper written and published. I don’t think it serves any purpose to try to diminish the refereed literature by snide inferences.
David Young:
Out of curiosity have you ever atempted to discuss your concerns directly with climate modlers?
Me too.
> I don’t think it serves any purpose to try to diminish the refereed literature by snide inferences.
Why would I diminish a refereed literature I have not even seen, David Young? I’m merely pointing out that you’re burdening others with your own homework. You asked for comments. I’m asking you for references, and see how you react. And that’s notwithstanding that you are actually deflecting from very the topic of our exchange.
Here’s a little test for you:
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/if-youre-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-whos-the-jerk/
Ever thankful for your concerns,
w
John, I tried 3 years ago and got some interest but not very much. in fairness, my understanding was incomplete at the time and what I suggested would no doubt improve things, but we now know the problem is a lot bigger than numerical methods.
I actually do believe that in the end science will arrive at the right conclusion and I’m not concerned if I am wrong on something. The process is the important thing. In other words, this is not about me, its about improving science. Sometimes its also fun but that’s just me. Medicine has improved dramatically in the last 15 years with heated controversy and a lot of self criticism and a robust literature with a broad range of opinions.
Good night, David.
David,
My working assumption is that very few climate modelers will ever visit Judith Curry’s website. Therefore, how does posting comments on her blog accomplish your stated deire to improve climate models?
Well, John, there is indeed a problem with Judith’s blog. Andy Lacis goes there but he is a physics guy and not a fluid dynamics guy. I am hoping that publishing good papers will eventually be more effective, but who knows. What I have found is that climate blogs are a good learning tool but not a very good science communicating tool. I think that’s partly caused by the rather disrespectful atmosphere that I have complained about a lot at Curry’s and gotten some relief from her. This will all be settled eventually, but perhaps in a different forum. Judith’s philosophy is to have a pretty wide open forum and that’s good for some things and not good for others.
So DY says
When DY states that this is “not well suited to blog discussions” you are witnessing classic concern troll behavior. He is trying to lecture us on what is possible and what is not, because he is “concerned” about the “integrity of the scientific process”.
That is just so much BS that it makes my head explode.
In contrast to the impossible constraints that DY imposes, I really think that the fluid dynamics behavior of a phenomenon like ENSO is not that difficult to solve. The boundary conditions are likely periodic forcing, which when combined with the nonlinear sloshing dynamics leads to the erratic ENSO oscillations observed:
http://contextearth.com/2014/05/27/the-soim-differential-equation/
And this scares DY because it gives us a way to quantify natural variations, which is lethal to the FUD that the denier community is trying to spread.
David, since GCMs are not static models, but constantly under revision, if you sincerely believe they are making mistakes why not contact the authors of the many recent papers written on the subject?
One of the common problems with cross-disciplinary ‘advice’ is that the person offering the advice is well-acquainted with the literature in their field, but is usually and unfortunately unacquainted with the literature in the field they think is doing something wrong.
I’d suggest a simple Google search, say “Evaluating Parameterizations in General Circulation Models” and working forward from there. You may find that some of these concerns have been addressed, are already known problems, or are not relevant.
DY had a wide open opportunity to make his case to James Annan and Julia Hargreaves, who are perhaps best described as climate model evaluators and are not unwilling to buck the consensus, making them perhaps the ideal parties to make his pitch to. He struck out, and from his comments above it seems as if he’s trying to imply that they’re unqualified to understand his updated argument. Nor is Gavin Schmidt, apparently. So who is? Or is the idea that aircraft engineers who know nothing about the climate are going to come in and tell the climate modelers how to do it right? It does begin to seem rather hubristic.
DY’s almost comical refusal to acknowledge #yesbutpaleoclimate tells us all we need to know about his intellectual integrity.
It also tells us that DY knows perfectly well that his argument is nothing more than denialist rhetoric.
> Judith’s philosophy is to have a pretty wide open forum and that’s good for some things and not good for others.
I agree. Judy’s not good for everything or good for nothing. Judy’s perfect for mano a mano showdown that ends up like this:
David Young’ challenge contained interesting moves. It burdened me with something irrelevant with what we’re discussing, for which I have no commitment, and that he had no reason for me to fulfill.
This challenge also helps him dismiss my criticisms without having to address them. It minimizes them all by assuming that only scientific contributions would not be “noise” or “small potatoes”. It plays the identity card by playing the “you’re not a scientist” card.
There’s no need to be a scientist to find these moves problematic. I see two main problems. The first is that David Young does not seem to realize that his mano a mano challenge is a ClimateBall ™ move. It’s perhaps the move that has the most machismo. A very aggressive move, one that takes the exchange at a personal level.
***
This move leads David Young in some kind of pickle. He acknowledges that blogs like Judy’s is not a good “science communication tool,” while refusing to scratch his own itch:
In other words, David Young refuses to show me how I should meet his challenge. Not only that, but he refuses the burden to provide a scientific commentary. That’s not the scientist’s job to provide scientific commentaries. Imagine that.
***
David Young does not seem to have an understanding of ClimateBall ™ subtle enough to self reflect on the fact that he himself played many ClimateBall ™ moves, including his mano a mano move.
David Young: Have you visited the website of NOA’s Geophysical Fluids Dynamic Laboratory?
Willard, What would you call that? A Gish Gallop Nit Pick?
Kevin O’Neill:
“The paper does not mention climate models, nor is the applicability to climate models always apparent.”
Well, this:
“This review has provided evidence that eddy-viscosity models are fundamentally flawed and often perform poorly in flows featuring separation, strong shock–boundary-layer interaction and 3D vortical structures.”
Flow separation mostly happens when fluids interact with solid surfaces, I believe, and this is very important regarding airfoils and the like, but climate modeling? Hard to see …
Shock-boundary layer interactions are common in supersonic flows. Given that GCM time steps are set to capture events within a “pizza box” that propagate no more quickly than the speed of sound, I would assume that shock-boundary layer interactions aren’t a concern in GCMs.
3D vortical structures? Maybe important, but AFAIK the grid size of most models is larger than any typical atmospheric vortex and indeed such effects are, I think, probably among those that are parameterized regarding convection, cloud formation, and other subscale phenomena.
I may be wrong about each of the above, but at least I’m *trying* to evaluate the quoted paper in the context of a GCM.
David Young has simply waved his hands and cried “failure, failure, failure” without making any such effort.
Why?
Also it is clear that the paper is primarily focused in regard to CFD and phenomena at the scale seen in aerodynamics, and regarding interactions with solid surfaces, unless I’m totally misunderstanding what was quoted.
Scale and physical configuration of the earth’s atmosphere doesn’t bear much similarity to that which concerns airplane, car and boat folk.
dhogaza,
What you say is consistent with my understanding. I suspect the the global circularization that climates models represent very well (see Eli’s comment in the next post) is technically vortical (although very large scale). As you say, though, anything subscale is parametrized and, AFAICT, most of DY’s concerns relate to such processes that climate models are not trying to evolve self-consistently.
“I suspect the the global circularization that climates models represent very well (see Eli’s comment in the next post) is technically vortical (although very large scale).”
Hmm, yeah, I can see that …
ATTP: You state:
“…AFAICT, most of DY’s concerns relate to such processes that climate models are not trying to evolve self-consistently.”
I say, “Huh”?
John H.,
What I mean is that evolving something like convection self-consistently in a numerical simulation is extremely difficult. You need high resolution and you need to be able to control the code’s artificial viscosity so that it doesn’t simply damp out any turbulent motions. However, you can still include the influence of convection by parametrizing this process (see for example). Similarly, there are other processes that are parametrized, rather than evolved self-consistently. This doesn’t mean, though, that these processes can simply be tuned to produce a preferred result as these parametrization are constrained by known physics.
ATTP: You are obviously very fluent in “model-speak”. Have you been directly inevolved in the development and/or refinement of a GCM?
Dhogaza is asking the right questions. Shock boundary layer interaction is not an issue in he atmosphere. However vortical flows are a very important feature of the atmosphere and also convection which is not discussed by M.A.Leschziner and D. Drikakis at all. Both of these are ill-posed problems for high Reynolds’ numbers. Isaac Held has some nice work on modeling convection and shows some startling sensitivity to the size of the computational domain. These problems must be regularized by various dissipation mechanisms that are much larger than the real viscosity.
In fairness it must be said that most wall bounded flows like airplane flows are actually a lot easier than the atmosphere because they are often dominated by thin shear layers. However, the wake vortex evolution behind an aircraft is the same type of dynamics as weather or climate and its extremely difficult to predict. The problem here is that turbulence models are based on “physics” of thin shear layers and their associated test data. There are no parameters left to use to tune them for free vorticity dominated flows. Vortex dynamics is not fundamentally different at different length scales, its the same physics, unless you get down to very small scales which simply cannot be modeled anyway.
You should be aware that the planetary boundary layer is modeled in the NCAR climate model using these very same eddy viscosity turbulence models. This indicates to me that “wall bounded flows” are relevant to climate, but it may be a relatively small effect.
As far as ATTP goes, he is mostly right. However, its misleading to suggest that there is some separation of resolved scales and sub grid scales, the latter being “modeled using physics.” All scales influence all other scales. The subgrid models make a huge difference in most real flows and they are based in the case of turbulence models on thin shear layer correlations, a small subclass of flows. Further, there is no “accurate” simulation of even a moderate Reynolds’ number vortex street for example. It’s an ill-posed problem.
I think the real question here is what skill do GCM’s bring that cannot be derived from simpler models where more global parameters are constrained by data. Annan and Hargreaves for example in their paleo work said they often use simpler models.
My guess is that the reason why GCM’s cannot predict regional climate is that they are too dissipative. This is confirmed by Gerry Browning who worked at NCAR for 35 years on these very models. Gerry had some interesting posts at Climate Audit on this subject.
BTW, The problem with Eli’s evidence for “getting the dynamics right” is just colorful fluid dynamics, its qualitative and not very meaningful. I can show the same kind of thing for aircraft wake vortex dynamics. It’s sometimes badly wrong but looks “cool.” The FAA knows this stuff is garbage and fortunately for the traveling public pays it no heed, requiring actual testing instead. There is a wealth of literature that deals with quantitative measures to which I would direct the rabbit.
DY,
I didn’t really say this, though, did I?
And sometimes it’s essentially right.
I was taught to always start with first-order physics and go from there. If like DY you start with scientific word-salad then it is all downhill from there.
Really, all we have to ask DY is to explain the basic mechanism of ENSO. As far as I can tell, I have developed a very credible simple explanation, and if he can’t place his knowledge into that context he loses the argument. I did say that we can hold a scientific discussion on a blog but it has to be held at a level that is simplifiying, not complexifying. Like AT said, even though is is simple ” sometimes it’s essentially right”.
If this is not the right place, my WordPress blog http://ContextEarth.com is available for as deep a discussion as it takes.
ATTP, “Essentially right” is just hand waving and a qualitative characterization, like the Rabbit’s “evidence.” There is real quantative evidence on these issues and its not as convincing. Usually in science quanitative evidence is vastly preferable unless one is looking for evidence to suit a predetermined conclusion.
Vortex dynamics is the same at all scales above the turbulent scales and that means this quantative evidence is applicable to climate models.
David Young,
Your pontification about how right you are and how wrong everyone else is, is remarkably tiresome. I have no doubt that you are a remarkably intelligent person who knows an awful lot about numerical modelling. That, however, does not mean that you’re absolutely right and everyone else is absolutely wrong. The day you realise that is the day that actual discussion will become possible. Until such time, you’re simply asserting things and failing to recognise that the people who do climate modelling may understand this as well as you do.
Yes, “essentially right” was me just saying something qualitative on a blog. Let’s take this further. Global climate models are able to reproduce the global circularization patterns that are not only consistent with satellite observations, but exist at a scale much greater than the scale of the simulation (i.e., they are well resolved). An experienced professor of computer science (Steve Easterbrook) has used these as an example of how well climate models can do to reproduce some features of the climate system. What do I conclude? I conclude that climate models are getting this “right”. I used the term “essentially right” because a model is probably never completely right.
Happy now? Of course not. That would be too out of character.
DY,
I suspect that the global circularization patterns are more driven by the Coriolis force than by some inherent turbulent vorticity, so not quite sure how relevant what you’ve just said actually is.
DY
You have correctly noted that we do not need GCMs to inform policy as there is consilience of many other lines of evidence. So perhaps the real question is:
“Given that the basic physics, observational and paleoclimate evidence together already inform us strongly of the risks of future climate change, why do we not take action based on that evidence?”
On one of Browning’s thread, there was this “very revealing” quote by James:
Now, you’re supposed to be flabbergasted or something.
***
I appreciated your 1:37 comment, David. I’m sure it could form be the basis of a post, or even a series of post at Judy’s. If you could say a word on the complexity of these issue, say by mentioning how it’s related to the Hilbert prize for understanding Navier Stokes equations, that would be nice.
Also, please bear in mind that your “mostly right” looks a lot like AT’s “essentially right”. More generally, adverbs used as qualifiers can oftentimes provide big tells:
And passim.
Apologies for the late comment, but I discovered this fellow, Lord Deben, only today. He might be just what you ordered ATTP: a conservative who does not try and undermine climate science.
He was a minister for the Thatcher government -so certainly a conservative. in the talk linked.below, he argues that global warming threatens upheavals of established society, and that is one of the reasons why conservatives have a duty to avoid or reduce it.
http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/public-lecture-john-gummer-lord-deben-climate-change-action-and-conservative-politics
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate-change-action-is-the-right-thing/story-fn59niix-1226025037060
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/67fa339e-9f0b-11e3-8663-00144feab7de.html#axzz34tlxJqjb
Mark,
Thanks. I’ve exchanged a few tweets with Lord Deben, but hadn’t appreciated that he was a conservative. I guess it illustrates that if someone says things that appear sensible, it’s hard to determine their political leanings 🙂
DY said:
I believe this is an “own goal” on your part. I have taken advantage of using the same fluid dynamic physics that occurs on a small scale — that of liquid sloshing in excited tanks[1] — and applied it the to the standing wave sloshing that describes the ENSO in the Pacific Ocean. The basis is the nonlinear Mathieu equation, which when excited by a nearly periodic forcing function (related to what drives the QBO), creates the erratic oscillations of ENSO. The model agreement to experimental evidence going back 130+ years is stunning:
http://contextearth.com/2014/05/27/the-soim-differential-equation/
And it will only get better as the system is characterized more carefully. Nonlinear equations are a pain, but they can be cracked and what is seeming chaotic turbulence is actually merely a perturbation on steady state physics. So the physics scaling that we can apply to the fluid in an oil tanker crossing the Pacific, can be applied to the ocean itself.
Thank you DY, for the “own goal”. I will feature your quote prominently when we write this up in a formal paper.
[1]J. B. Frandsen, “Sloshing motions in excited tanks,” Journal of Computational Physics, vol. 196, no. 1, pp. 53–87, 2004.
Do you not remember the hamburger thing? Though I feel it’s churlish to have brought it up – he deserves to be remembered for his honesty on the environment.
OPatrick,
Yes, I do remember that, but had not remembered who it was.
I definitely feel bad for mentioning it now.
A caution for the Brits here…
In Canada a lot of old school conservatives are evacuating the party. Either they are being driven out, or they won’t toe the party line any more. The Canadian Conservative Party is an amalgamation of Progressive Conservative, and the Reform Party. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right) The Reform Party was far right in Tea Party land, and its Harper’s Party. Harper’s approach to democracy is essentially authoritarian.
Another thing is that Right and Left have essentially swapped sides. Liberal in Canada used to represent Libertarian views, while Conservative used to represent the people. Liberal are center left, PCs are far far right, and we actually have a socialist party, the NDP, far Left.
Oil money is currently driving much of the politics in Canada.
ATTP, I said earlier on this thread that I had been wrong in 2011 about the value of adaptive methods for climate, albeit there was still significant value in what I said. Was that “pontification?” Most importantly, this is not about me or you or the Rabbett. Perhaps it is really about climate science and its communication as well as selection bias in the CFD literature, which is a big problem. I am sorry if I seem to be picking on the Rabbett and you. I like your blog in some ways.
More importantly, these issues are the subject of real debate in fluid dynamics in its literature and a constant struggle to improve simulations and increase their skill. There is a wide variation in literature quality in fluid dynamics however and a lot of selection bias and colorful fluid dynamics. I am just reporting commonly accepted facts, however unpleasant they may be. Perhaps blogs really are the wrong forum for this kind of discussion. The participants here have mostly been around for a long time and are mostly low grade noise in the science debate, being mostly apologists for climate science and its literature. And then there’s Willard, bless his heart. That is probably true of my contributions too. It may be just noise in the broad scheme of things. Some are continually hopeful however.
NDP far left? You may want to take your spectrum into the shop for a diagnostic. 🙂
FWIW, the Ontario NDP wasn’t so far left that they were above triggering an election so they could make a play for PC voters. That’s a little strange since I would think PC voters if anything would be more likely to go Liberal than NDP, although the Libs being seen as the traditional enemy by those voters may have been key to the strategy.
Also, note that the Ontario PCs went pretty far right in this last election despite having not had (IIRC) a direct inheritance from the RP (IIRC mainly a prairie party), although that may have been an opportunistic attempt to benefit from being seen to be in synch with the national party.
In any case the NDP strategy didn’t work, at least not enough to gain them seats, so it seems that the national party won’t try something similar next year. OTOH they are the official opposition nationally, so they can appeal directly to voters on that basis, although the Libs will now use the Ontario results to argue that the NDP just can’t win.
To sum all that up, vote Green. 🙂
Just to add, I was personally very disappointed when they dropped Conservative-Reform Alliance Party in favor of just plain Conservative Party. 🙂
Steve, I thought you were in California? Weren’t you supposed to email me?
Provincial politics are different from Federal. BC Liberals are Center Right, with a Carbon Tax? California Republicans are relatively environmentally friendly.
Canada had a lot of political upset from the Liberal sponsorship scandal. The Conservatives came to power because folks out east stopped voting for them.
Actually I did vote Green. They have a relatively conservative business approach. In Alberta, that’s a protest vote. But then, since PCs aren’t allowed to speak in public, the current conservative was swapped for a potted plant for public discussions. So arguably 78% of the votes went to a potted plant. Currently, that potted plant is a cabinet minister.
Steve, honestly, every time I look up something Harper has done, I come back with my head shaking. I mean WTF.
If he had an ounce of intellect he would have just quietly altered the environmental regulations to give cabinet approval, rather than gut them wholesale + give cabinet approval. Then he runs around saying he’s good for the environment. He must believe that millions of people have fallen off the turnip truck. He’s certainly walking and talking like it. Its certainly paid off handsomely in preventing he Keystone from going through. 🙂
DY,
That’s where I think you’re wrong. In any serious, good faith discussion, the participants matter.
DY
A point on self awareness (I recall you feel this is important?) – you do realise that this description applies perfectly to you and your concerns, until such time as you can point to actual scientific literature that backs up your assertions of fundamental problems with the application of CFD to GCMs?
It’s interesting also that your characterisation of others as “low grade noise” rather conflicts with your concern at Judy’s that ” some have a knack of cheapening every dialogue by name calling and smearing others.”
VTG: The Salient fact is that he came here to say that. Why? If we’re ‘low grade noise’ why come here? Why not go hang out at WUWT? Why not preach to his faithful at Judith Curry?
> And then there’s Willard, bless his heart.
Thank you, David. As a modest ninja, I try to do my best.
Please reconsider your refusal to write a series of blog posts at Judy’s or elsewhere (perhaps Climate Dialogue with Koutsoyannis [1]) about fluid dynamics. That’s what you do best, and that’s what would reduce noice the fastest. Since you already have articles that are forthcoming, I’m sure you have enough for a literature review. If you consider writing something for Judy’s, you just have to insert a few “chaotic” here and there to appease Chief Hydrologist.
Thank you again for your concerns. Without them, I would have little to do.
[1] http://climateaudit.org/2006/01/05/demetris-koutsoyannis/
AoM,
an excellent question. I had focussed on the consistency, but content is also important of course. Let’s look forward to his response.
AOM:
“Steve, honestly, every time I look up something Harper has done, I come back with my head shaking. I mean WTF.”
Check out what Abbott is doing in Australia, then at least you won’t feel so lonely 🙂
VTG:
“A point on self awareness (I recall you feel this is important?) – you do realise that this description applies perfectly to you and your concerns, until such time as you can point to actual scientific literature that backs up your assertions of fundamental problems with the application of CFD to GCMs?”
In David Young’s defense (I may live to regret this 🙂 ) he did follow that with:
“That is probably true of my contributions too. It may be just noise in the broad scheme of things.”
Give his inability to convince Gavin Schmidt, his rambling most likely are just noise in the broad scheme of things.
Meanwhile, 2014 is shaping up to be a fairly warm year, isn’t it?
> Why not preach to his faithful at Judith Curry?
That’s what he did, Oily One. Only after I mentioned him here that he came to defend his claims. That was the honorable thing to do, if you ask me.
Too bad it turned into a mano a mano “I’m a scientist, what about you?” showdown. That does not mean it needs to end like that.
The audit never ends anyway.
Willard: Why do you link to McIntyre? That guy thinks trees don’t need water, and published it. I mean, this defies all known logic, fact, common sense, not to mention thousands of years of agriculture. That’s not a controversy… that’s just plain wrong. Who in their right mind would listen to someone like that? Oh… cultists would.
In McIntyre’s eyes, trees grow just as well in the Amazon Rainforest as they do in a desert, as long as they receive the same sun.
Dhogaza,
“Meanwhile, 2014 is shaping up to be a fairly warm year, isn’t it?”
Indeed. Observations.
Which, plus basic physics and paleoclimate already tell us enough to guide necessary action.
Willard: Every now and then, David Young will post what I call “I’m rolling over like a puppy so please scratch my belly” comment. Since this is not the first time I have observed climate deniers use this tactic, I would like to know if you have identified it in Climateball?
> “I’m rolling over like a puppy so please scratch my belly” comment
Not specifically, John. In transactional analysis, it may be considered as some kind of request for a positive stroke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Transactions_and_strokes
There’s nothing wrong with seeking strokes. That’s just how humans play. For instance, AT may be the worst “belly scratching” seeker in the whole universe of ClimateBall ™. It also favours his smarmy style.
Strokes can help why ClimateBallers play the moves they play. Trolling would be a way to attract negative strokes. Playing the ref would be a way to get more positive strokes in the future. Raising concerns is in general a way to seek positive strokes by giving what looks to be a positive stroke on surface, but what is a negative stroke if you reflect on how it makes you feel when you receive it.
Seeing under that light, ClimateBall ™ could be a way to model our daily exchange of negative strokes as the circus that I think it is.
For an interesting take on the evolution of the Republican Party in the U.S., check out:
Ugly, Paranoid, Divisive Politics: The GOP Are All Know-Nothings Nowby Paul Reosenberg, Salon/AlerNet, June 14, 2014
The tratrectory described by Rosenberg does not bode well for the future of science and scientists in the U.S.
John Hartz says: “It will be interesting to see if TinyCO2 handles this assignment by him/herself or brings in reinforcements.”
He speaks many of my thoughts. He’s probably here on ATTP for the same reason I am, some commentary is informative and useful, it provides balance. Anyone that clings only to one side or the other, fearful to even read something on the other side, probably is a cultist.
M2
And anyone that believes TinyCO2 brings balance has never heard of the Overton window.
It is interesting to note that shortly after TinyCO2 left this scene, Michael 2 showed up. Could they be a tag team?
Michael 2 –
==> “Anyone that clings only to one side or the other, fearful to even read something on the other side, probably is a cultist.”
You seem to think you have evidence of people being “fearful to even read something on the other side.”
Can you share?
Willard: Thank you for the enlightening post about transactional analysis. Your taking the time to do so gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling about you.
willard (@nevaudit) “In transactional analysis, it may be considered as some kind of request for a positive stroke”
Throw in some Myers-Briggs MBTI for extra richness. Maybe a bit of NPD here and there for spice.
So pointing to the convergent evidence from paleoclimate behaviour, observations and modelling as providing the necessary basis for policy response makes one a cultist? Really?
Pointing out that the rhetoric, misrepresentations and nonsense (climate as a bouncing ball, remember?) spouted by ill-informed ideologues makes one a cultist?
Dear oh dear oh dearie me.
John Hartz: He still won’t touch your belly.
“It is interesting to note that shortly after TinyCO2 left this scene, Michael 2 showed up. Could they be a tag team?”
I’ve often wondered about such stuff, but for lack of any evidence I’d leave it alone. I have noticed seemingly synchronized behavior before. At Desmog they were either all there dog piling, or all gone. I have seen the words “We think” in talking about me, but that hardly proves anything. It could indicate an alternate venue in which we are discussed, kind of like Willard bringing his war stories here. I have not been able to locate such a venue for them.
Pretending to be interested in models as a screen for raising faux concerns about models isn’t a search for knowledge. Especially as, during the process, you revealed that you can’t tell the difference between an ocean simulator and an AOGCM. And then refused to acknowledge the howler.
Presenting yourself as a reasonable and intellectually curious human being while running a denialist agenda is a particularly distasteful form of intellectual dishonesty.
Anyone that clings only to one side or the other, fearful to even read something on the other side, probably is a cultist.
Anyone who claims there are only two sides of any issue is probably uninformed and/or ignorant.
AnOilMan says: “…Libertarian views, while Conservative used to represent the people.”
Ah, so you believe Libertarians are not people. At least not “the people”.
Libertarians are libertarians.
I know everyone had strong views, but let’s not dogpile too much. Also, I’m quite keen to see Michael address the point about “recovering from the LIA”. Implying or saying that, doesn’t really make sense, so would be good if Michael could explain this, acknowledge that it doesn’t make sense, or – maybe – ask why.
Why, M2, but cultism of course.
> At least not “the people”.
I thought this was a fantasy for libertarians and they they only believed in individuals and invisible hands.
Michael 2: “Ah, so you believe Libertarians are not people. At least not “the people”.”
That isn’t what I said. I like and identify with libertarianism. Minimum government suits me just fine. It is the key reason why I support Hansen’s Carbon Tax.
Conservatives used to represent the opposite values in Canada. That is why I say they used to represent ‘the people’.
Joshua says: “You seem to think you have evidence of people being ‘fearful to even read something on the other side.'”
This post and its comments for starters. A blog about an article that wasn’t read, followed by readers assuring the world that they, too, did not read it.
But I was speaking of cults rather than any specific person HERE. A hallmark of a cult is suppression of the very idea of entertaining other ideas and that suppression is usually by ridicule or shunning.
The cult could even be correct. Truth is irrelevant in determining “cult”. Behavior is relevant.
Michael,
Really? Care to read the post again?
If there’s an “energy is conserved” cult, then I guess I’m a member. I’d just always thought of that as basic physics, though.
Why shouldn’t nonsense be ridiculed and shunned? You seem to propose that we embrace it, which is absurd.
Once again, we seem to be getting this argument from confused, nonsense-spouting ideologues that we have to become more like them or some dreadful unfairness is being perpetrated.
That is ridiculous, risible folly.
willard (@nevaudit) says: (re: At least not “the people”.) “I thought this was a fantasy for libertarians and they they only believed in individuals and invisible hands.”
That is correct. You have come closest to admitting that the phrase “the people” does not mean all of the people.
The word “Inuit” for instance means “the people” but it certainly doesn’t mean ALL the people.
What may alarm you is the knowledge that you and I are both members of the 100 percent.
> What may alarm you is the knowledge that you and I are both members of the 100 percent.
The people does not exist, but all of the people or the 100 percent does, M2?
Michael 2 –
==> “This post and its comments for starters.”
Fine. Let’s start with that.
What is your evidence of “fear,” and the decisions, of people here, to read or not read something on the basis of that “fear.” (I think that your reference to generalities is irrelevant and largely meaningless give the context of your original statement.)
Please be specific. How have you determined what other people are afraid of? How have you determined which of their actions are cause by “fear.”
Here’s my take. I think that you don’t actually know any of that. I think that it is a projection on your part – one of convenience.
I would be willing to wager that none of those (unspecified people) would agree with your assessment. I think that they are better positioned to interpret their own emotions and the causality of their actions better than you. If they were to weigh in, they might lie, of course. Or they might be people who are out of touch with their own emotions and the reasons for their actions. But all of that is speculation on my part.
So the bottom line is what is your evidence? When I asked you for evidence, your answer was, IMO, non-response. It was certainly sub-optimal. You didn’t provide evidence. You merely pointed and made an argument by assertion.
Please do better. I’m counting on you.
And M2, our host would like you to address the long-evaded matter of your nonsensical but emphatic statement that modern warming is a recovery from the LIA.
You can ignore my comments with a degree of impunity, but deliberately ignoring ATTP is risky. Not to mention uncivil of you.
Michael 2 –
Please address my questions, if you choose to do so, after you’ve addressed Anders’
For ATTP: I too seem to be a member of several cults. I leave that judgment to others. By happily wearing the label its stigma would be deprived and it would become just another way of describing nearly anyone.
Be patient with me please — I do get around to tying this up into the topic.
For Willard and AnOilMan: I believe “the people” are those that self-identify in conversation using the word “we”, the group most likely to create, and then benefit from, socialism. You see, in socialism there can be only one group, one “ism”, thus no need to define who is “we”. Conversely, Libertarians do not assume the existence of a “we” and don’t use the word in conversation and do not speak for others unless specifically appointed to do so.
Example:
“The very fact that we debate global warming endlessly while ignoring this ongoing process of decline shows that we, as a species, are in denial about our effects on our natural world.”
http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/global_warming/
Who is this “we”? Why does the writer imagine he is spokesperson for ME? How did he arrogate to himself to speak for “we as a species”? The answer seems to be he cannot imagine it any other way — he is brainwashed — hence the word “cult” by people not similarly minded.
Of course it is impossible to immediately distinguish between a person that has rationally arrived at that conclusion versus one that was brainwashed to it. That requires some dialog, some conversation.
Paul Krugman on healthcare and ‘zombie’ lies: “I think it’s important, however, to be explicit about something Carroll obviously knows but doesn’t emphasize: the reason for the prevalence of zombies in this field. Some of it is chauvinism. But the main reason for the zombies is unwillingness to accept facts that conflict with ideology. ”
Herein lies the rub: are denizens of WUWT or Goddard’s RealScience, or Bishop Hil’s unaware of the science? In most cases they are acutely aware – but cannot accept it. It conflicts with their ideology and ideology will not let a few facts get in the way.
Cook et al came up with an unsurprising result – 97% of climate scientists ….. blah blah blah. Big deal, there have been previous studies that already told us that. Different methodology, same result, yawn. EXCEPT that the deniers cannot abide that result. They cannot accept it. The same with the ‘hockey stick’ or disappearing arctic ice — these are not controversial facts to those that study the science.
You’ll find zombie equivalents in healthcare and economics. Bad ideas, disproven by evidence, that just keep being repeated over and over again.
The difference between those with an open mind willing to examine the facts and base decisions on those facts is in clear contrast to those who want to wish facts away and/or ignore them because it conflicts with their ideology. Off the top of my head I can’t come up with an equivalent zombie lie that the ‘alarmists’ have fallen for – an idea that just keeps being repeated even though it has been disproven over and over again.
willard writes “The people does not exist, but all of the people or the 100 percent does, M2?”
Dare you deny the existence of the 100 percent? I will answer for you. The 100 percent exist, and you are in it and so am I. Whoever “the people” are, they also are in the 100 percent, but not the other way round. One is a subset, the other the set.
Joshua, I’d love to answer you in detail but I’m already on the edges of topic acceptance. Believe it or deny it as you please.
BBD says “You can ignore my comments with a degree of impunity, but deliberately ignoring ATTP is risky. Not to mention uncivil of you.”
Agreed to both. If the host asks me then I also have permission to give reply. This is going to be a masterpiece, a magnum opus of commentary. I’m a bit tired and punchy so I’m not trying to be rude or crude or anything but I do intend to be illustrative and maybe entertaining.
For this I put on my John Q. Public hat where I imagine, as do many readers here, that I am a representative sample of a significant portion of humanity.
I do my best to imagine John Q. Public based on various news sources, polls, office scuttlebutt, family and friends and 20 years in the US Navy.
John Q. Public is told that throughout human history global temperatures were perfectly flat until 1970 and then went skyward like the handle and blade of a hockey stick. At first he believes it.
Then he discovers that the governments of the world want to tax sheep at $30 per head, per year, because they fart (New Zealand); and sheep farts will turn the Earth into Venus, or cause floods, or drought, or both at the same time, or something like that. Of course the sheep will still fart so it won’t really do anything for the climate but it will add to taxes.
He learns in National Geographic that that termites also emit methane. Decaying vegetation in the Amazon jungle contributes. After a while he thinks maybe his automobile isn’t the end of the world after all.
Then he sees some emails and realizes that the consensus is about as solid as swiss cheese, too much good-buddy mutual back-scratching behind closed doors, hiding declines and threatening to delete data rather than let anyone see it. Well, that’s as good as not having it (duh).
John Q. Public has a grandmother born at the end of 1800’s, lived to be over 96 and told many stories of the heat wave and dust bowl of the 1930s, lived through both world wars and the Great Depression, he himself is a Vietnam War era veteran and knows that nothing about the current decade is “unprecedented”.
John Q. Public has been dealing with used car salesmen, multilevel vitamin sellers and magnetic water all his life and the one thing in common to all of them is a sense of urgency, ACT NOW. If you call in the next ten minutes you’ll get a second (gizmo) absolutely free!
John Q. Public doesn’t want to seem stupid, so he looks in a few places and discovers the MWP and the LIA. Temperature goes up some centuries, down in others. Up and down. It is what it does. It is what it is still doing and will do for millions of years to come.
Still, adding CO2 *must* have some effect, maybe the MWP would have been warmer still, maybe even dangerous, with 350 ppm instead of whatever it was at the time. But there’s no PROOF and for 100 billion dollars y’all better have some proof.
It’s easy to believe in aliens at Roswell, or astrology (*), so long as nobody is asking for Big Money.
So, what about that LIA?
* Astrology: My mother was seriously into this for all of her life. I made the mistake of trying to be scientific about it with the result that the last 20 or so years of her life she had nothing to do with me.
It is impossible for me to believe that everything I have ever done, and ever will do, depends on where the planets were the moment I was born. I credit it zero, zilch, absolutely nothing there.
But disproving it is basically impossible for the Believer because of self-fulfilling prophecies.
I sense a similarity in climate beliefs. When the Earth warms, the warmist is vindicated. When the Earth cools, the warmist is still vindicated because global warming produces polar vortexes which is likely actually the case I’ll admit and increases total energy radiation into space by taking heat into colder areas — which necessarily displaces cold into formerly hot areas.
Consider the leading blogs on the topic. Each has really good arguments for its side. How can that be? Facets of the truth; each facet is true but not the whole picture. Some facets are warmer than others.
So here I am collecting some facets. I could go straight to RealClimate or Skeptical Science but they are just so RUDE. No one here comes close, thankfully, I almost feel welcome.
And Then There’s Physics says: “if Michael could explain this, acknowledge that it doesn’t make sense, or – maybe – ask why.”
Ah, okay, I tend to read from bottom up. I answered this mostly for BBD but as it should be obvious that I project myself into John Q. Public for devil’s advocate, I would not do so if I didn’t actually have somewhat the same beliefs.
My background: (skip if you don’t care)
I’ve read every issue of National Geographic since I was old enough to hold one and that was back in the 1950’s or 60’s I don’t even remember but by the time I was ten we had a library of them. Since then I bought the CD collection going back to the first and have read most of it. My science library at home has nearly 500 books on a wide variety of sciences. Among my friends are practicing chemists, geologists and computer scientists. No social sciences thank you very much but 20 years in the Navy has taught me quite a bit about John Q. Public, albeit a subset that is not perhaps representative.
So. About that LIA. The principle claim of the original hockey stick was that it was FLAT until bad human beings damaged Gaia by driving suv’s and burning coal and by sending 100 billion dollars a year to Nigeria it would return to be wonderfully good and flat, and you’d better do it in the next ten minutes or the offer of a second Gaia at no additional charge is revoked. (a bit of snark for illustration)
I believed it and so did everyone else until the MWP and LIA were asserted. But you see, when you falsify a claim the whole thing comes tumbling down and that’s unfortunate. That is what the public saw. Did everyone see ALL of Keith Briffa’s tree rings data? Good heavens, no, in fact it seems to have been deliberately hidden and when one sees what is claimed to be a sampling, they are all over the place. Not a very good proxy in other words.
So it’s back to SQUARE ONE. Plenty of good science exists and more is needed.
So what about that LIA?
When science can explain how and why LIA existed, and the MWP, THEN, and only then, will it be able to assert how much of the current warming is human caused vs how much is natural and would have happened anyway.
Simple, no? I think we (I hate that word) are almost there. Since the hockey stick has come ENSO, and Maunder Minimum, Kelvin Waves, cosmic rays, and probably some other factors that I don’t know about. The uncertainty is *less* but *less* isn’t quite good enough to convince me to pay $30 per sheep to solve a flatulence problem — which it doesn’t, it just makes sheep more expensive and disrupts large economies where sheep are the only thing that can reasonably be grazed in an area.
Just one more clarification and I’ll leave. I absolutely do not think what we are doing and publishing is just noise. It is in my opinion high quality work that could have a big impact. What I should have said is that coming here and trying to talk science may end up being just noise because this blog is a poor place to discuss science. It’s mostly about apologetics, and that’s not science.
Judith’s blog has taught me far more because of its range and scope. You do yourself a disservice to not give her the benefit of the doubt.
I should add — sheep being a metaphor for a vast complex economy whose disruption is already underway quite apart from climate change avoidance or mitigation.
In other words, the problem will solve itself when fuel runs out. What governments might be able to do is avert horrible riots and wars when Malthusian scarcity really kicks in which is already in the beginning stages (re: the number of people on assistance in the United States).
Michael 2 needs to get out more and not learn all of his science from denialist sites rather than, say, scientists.
Your claims about Mann’s work are nonsense, for starters.
Head-banging nonsense that isn’t even worth addressing, because if you were actually interesting in *learning* the science, there are plenty of honest resources on the web that explain the science much better and in much deeper detail than possible here.
Though I suppose some will try.
Oh, BTW, the claim “I believed it and so did everyone else until the MWP and LIA were asserted” is *really* dumb, because the denialist claim is that the MWP was known back in the 1960s, and Mann attempted to “make it disappear”, not that the MWP was asserted after Mann’s work was published.
If you can’t even accurately parrot the denialist sources that apparently you depend on for science, there’s really *no* hope for you at all.
I’m disappointed, I was really hoping for something better from you. Like at least understanding the denialist arguments you parrot.
I take this as even more evidence that your interest is solely driven by ideology.
Michael 2
===> ” Conversely, Libertarians do not assume the existence of a “we” and don’t use the word in conversation and do not speak for others unless specifically appointed to do so.”
Are speaking for libertarians there? If so, by what authority were you appointed to do so?
==> “What governments might be able to do is avert horrible riots and wars when Malthusian scarcity really kicks in which is already in the beginning stages (re: the number of people on assistance in the United States).”
Is your argument that scarcity has “kicked in” in the United States relative to earlier history?
And while I’m at it:
==> ” sheep being a metaphor for a vast complex economy whose disruption is already underway quite apart from climate change avoidance or mitigation.”
Could you explain what you’re referring to as the economic disruption already underway?
David Young: I can only speak for myself, but whenever I see something that Judith Curry has said or written, I have doubts, very grave doubts indeed. .
David Young:
“It’s mostly about apologetics, and that’s not science.”
Are you joking? As I suggested might happen when I posted my very limited defense of you above, I have come to regret it.
Intentional offensiveness mixed with hubris and ignorance noted.
“Judith’s blog has taught me far more because of its range and scope. You do yourself a disservice to not give her the benefit of the doubt.”
We’ve all been there. It is populated by people of [Mod: I think it’s best if we don’t pass judgement on the intellectual capacity of commenters at Judith Curry’s blog. Perhaps you could instead say, it is populated by people who are misinformed and/or ideologically motivated]
(my first comment hit the moderation queue, so I’m trying a slightly different wording)
Michael writes: “The principle claim of the original hockey stick was that it was FLAT until bad human beings damaged Gaia …”
No, that was not the claim. From the abstract to MBH 1999: “Though expanded uncertainties prevent decisive conclusions for the period prior to AD 1400, our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the
warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of con dence. The 20th century warming counters a millennial-scale cooling trend which is consistent with long-term astronomical forcing.”
Your snark is wasted, we actually read the scientific papers.
What the deniers claimed (and you apparently have bought the same argument) is that Lamb 1965 showed a much more pronounced temperature increase in the MWP and that MBH ‘disappeared’ the MWP What they forget is that MBH 1999 is a global reconstruction, whereas Lamb was merely central England. And that the MWP is still there in MBH 1999, just not as pronounced as the CET because of the additional global proxies.
We’ve seen numerous temperature reconstructions in the intervening years and they all support MBH 1999 versus Lamb 1965 — though the comparison is unfair to Lamb, since his was ONLY a central England record and should never have been used as a critique of a global record.
In my previous post I addressed ‘zombie lies’ – and here you are just a few posts later repeating one of them. Very strange when a central England temperature record can be used to ‘disprove’ a global temperature record. Apparently staring at photos of naked indigenous peoples in those National Geographics wasn’t the proper training for examining climate reconstructions.
Sorry – in the above please substitute NH for ‘global’ – duh, I shouldn’t post after midnight 🙂
Really?
On CE, one loses brain cells if you read any comments by the character named The Chief Hydrologist (or his dozens of sockpuppet identities). Gullibility and naivete has no place on those kinds of comment forums. One learns by reading between the li(n)es, and trying to find out what the skeptics and deniers are trying to hide or marginalize. The key fallacious argumentation techniques there are (1) to project your technical inadequacy onto your opponent, and (2) invoke the Rovian strategy of attacking your opponents strengths. Many skeptics have the skills of political operatives and have memorized all the talking points.
Michael,
You’re rather missing/ignoring my point about the LIA. I’m trying to get you to consider why saying “recovery from the LIA” doesn’t make physical sense. In a sense, you could argue that “recovery from” doesn’t really make physical sense for our climate at all (there are times when maybe one could use it, but it does need qualification). All you’ve done is mention various conspiracy-like idea about MWP, LIA, hockey sticks, etc. Think physics.
Michael, you may want to look up the word “cult” and its sociological meaning.
Hmm…this appears to be a recurring theme, us telling Michael to read up on something…
Michael 2
Climate is not a bouncing ball, nor is it a memory foam cushion. It does not “recover” to a previous state – it doesn’t have a memory. It is reactive, not self-propelling. Energy balance determines GAT, not fairy dust and magical thinking. Physics is at the root of climatology.
Global average temperature changes in response to a change in forcing. So a global cooling (not that there ever was a global and synchronous cooling event corresponding to the “LIA”, but never mind that for now) can only occur in response to a change (reduction) in net forcings. The converse is true of a global warming event, not that there was any global and synchronous warming event corresponding to the MCA (MWP is an obsolete misnomer).
The spatially and temporally heterogeneous coolings lumped together as “the LIA” were over by ~1850. Warming thereafter can only have been the result of a further change in forcing.
We need a physical mechanism (see ATTP, above), not fairy dust, mystery and hand-waving. And there *is* a physical mechanism that accounts for the overall trend of C20th warming, and that is the increase in GHG forcing.
That is why it is nonsense to talk about a “recovery” from the LIA as the driver for C20th warming. And anyone who does so is ignorant of the basics of physical climatology and in no way capable of arguing that there are issues with climate science.
This means *you*.
M2
When science can explain how and why LIA existed, and the MWP, THEN, and only then, will it be able to assert how much of the current warming is human caused vs how much is natural and would have happened anyway.
No, that doesn’t logically follow. It will always be dificult to come up with a complete explanation for the MWP and LIA because we don’t have a time machine to be able to go back and see exactly what factors were in play which might have been influencing the climate at the time, we have to rely on imperfect proxy and historical records. And of course, especially in the case of the MWP, the extent to which it actually existed at all is uncertain.
None of that implies that we don’t have enough information to be able to explain changes to the climate which have taken place over the last few decades, given that we have much better measurements of the various factors which affect our climate, including the increasing level of GHGs in the atmosphere.
WHT – There is a recurring theme..
Skeptic vs. Scientist, Politician vs Scientist, Lawyer vs Expert, Manager vs. Engineer..
It is always easier to make a plausible, confident, certain-sounding argument if you only have the most superficial grasp of the material, for almost any complicated topic. A list of talking points, no way to know if they are correct or not, and a complete lack of self awareness or shame.. and you will sound far more convincing than an expert in a complicated subject, who will by definition be thinking ‘Am I right?’ or ‘This is the simple version, it’s really more complicated..’.
Andrew Dodds,
Yes, I think that’s a good point. Maybe David Young could take note. If he is genuinely interested in being taken seriously and genuinely interested in being constructive and aiding those who do climate modelling, he’d have more success if he didn’t sound so certain.
Regarding the LIA it is also worth pointing out that prior to the 20C warming we had seen a cooling trend for several thousand years so in that context both the MWP and LIA look less anomalous and there is no reason to particularly expect a dramatic “rebound” from the LIA.
Michael 2 seems asks us to wait until scientists can explain the existence of unicorns. They must exist; they are depicted.
“There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, ”
From the PAGES 2K Consortium’s article in April 2013’s Nature Geoscience. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/full/ngeo1797.html
> Libertarians do not assume the existence of a “we” and don’t use the word in conversation and do not speak for others unless specifically appointed to do so.
Have you been appointed to speak for Libertarians, M2?
Oh, right, it was just an observation. “Libertarians do not assume” is so different from “we libertarians”.
You should write John Stossel to raise your concerns for his socialist tentencies:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/libertarians-versus-conservatives.html
Way better to assume that invisible hands will.
I will point at this:
> A hallmark of a cult is suppression of the very idea of entertaining other ideas and that suppression is usually by ridicule or shunning.
and this:
> Throw in some Myers-Briggs MBTI for extra richness. Maybe a bit of NPD here and there for spice.
Perhaps M2 might need to revisit his conception of a cult.
Feynman to the rescue?
> Judith’s blog has taught me far more because of its range and scope.
Me too. See for instance:
It’s a pity David Young won’t enlarge Judy’s scope by contributing to it with his expertise on fluid dynamics.
Variables that has not been checked comprise the size of both blogs and the “est.” dates.
A mish-mash of half-truths that taken as a whole is rather less than half true.
Seeing Alley’s name mentioned reminds me that the battle is between Climate Zombies (Alley’s description of pseudo-skeptics) and Climate Cultists (the scientists that are passionate about their career). At least one side has a brain.
Here is Alley’s presentation where he describes the zombies:
willard asks: “Have you been appointed to speak for Libertarians, M2?”
Yes. I have appointed myself. All Libertarians are free to do likewise of course. That is why I mention that Libertarian isn’t by itself an ideology; it is more of a behavior – “Acting, and not being acted upon.”
But that Acting may well include trying to impose upon other people and that is why the difference between liberty and anarchy is largely education and self-restraint. Where a nation does not have self-restraint and education there also cannot be liberty; the choices collapse to enforced order (totalitarianism) or anarchy; predator and prey.
I’m finding M2 posts blathering, long, and pointless. He still hasn’t said or pointed to anything of value.
Nit Gallop?
Micahel 2: Given the prominent role that National Geographic magazine has played in educating you about science, I cannot help but wonder if you have ever visited the “Global Warming” section of National Geographic’s website? If you have done so, have you carefully read the materials posted there and do you track and read the new postings?
Micheal 2: As a die-hard Liberterian, do you believe in the “Common Good”?
AOM
What concerns me is that he hasn’t admitted that his assertion about the LIA was nonsense that demonstrated his lack of understanding of the basics of physical climatology. Seekers after truth do not behave like this at all. Seekers after truth learn through their mistakes, but that requires acknowledging them.
Someone who has lied about being a seeker after truth is clearly acting in bad faith. When that behaviour persists over a large swathe of commentary, it’s known as [self-snip].
“Acting, and not being acted upon.”
Libertarianism is the cult of freedom without responsibility. Discuss.
🙂
andrew adams says: “It will always be dificult to come up with a complete explanation for the MWP and LIA”
Likely so, but as no one can say what is “complete” it just needs to be something more substantial than “there wasn’t one”.
A fellow I see regularly, a geologist, looked at my photos of canyon country and at a glance told me the direction of the prevailing winds many millions of years ago. Say what? That’s amazing! Seems that the bedding planes and slip faces of the sand dunes were fossilized. Now, I can do the same — go to Zion National Park, look at these huge petrified sand dunes, and “see” the winds blowing millions of years ago.
Give people the tools to “see” and they will see for themselves. Not all, but some or many, enough to make a difference. Your mileage may vary; it may be that polar bears falling from the sky are persuasive but not to me.
BBD… Its not like talking to a brick wall. Its like he has no idea what he’s saying. No memory. No capability. No curiosity.
No integrity.
> I have appointed myself. All Libertarians are free to do likewise of course.
Is this a right that comes with declaring oneself a Libertarian? I see no reason why only individuals who share a disbelief in collective entities would be able to speak on the name of their collectives. Individualism can also lead to a cult.
Besides, refusing wordings like “we, the people” sounds quite like anti-constitutionalism.
willard: Perhaps, ‘Me the People’ would be clearer?
I suppose it’s Climateball, but it’s not interesting Climateball.
willard says: “Is this a right that comes with declaring oneself a Libertarian?”
Yes, No, or not limited thereto. All rights flow from life itself as individuals — you do what you need to do to sustain your own life, and slightly below that, reproduction. Your concept of “rights” have evolved parallel to society and just as societies differ substantially, so it is likely your concept of rights will differ from mine, with neither inherently being “right” but either being more appropriate for a given circumstance.
Many people believe rights flow from a sovereign, that if you have not been told to do something, you are forbidden. T.H. White in “Once and Future King” wrote about it: “Everything not forbidden is compulsory”.
The opposite view is that rights flow from individuals and are delegated to a sovereign, who by necessity isn’t therefore exactly a sovereign but more a servant of the people.
Mildly interesting commentary on cultural differences in this regard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbidden_is_allowed
Willard, sorry, I didn’t fully answer your question… “I see no reason why only individuals who share a disbelief in collective entities would be able to speak on the name of their collectives.”
I suspect we (you and I) are wresting nuances of meaning here.
If by collective you mean something like a political party where people have subscribed to its charter, it makes no sense to disbelieve such things exist nor have I heard it argued that such things exist.
However if by collective you mean all members of a set, but the set itself exists only in your mind and the members have not subscribed to any charter or chosen any allegiance, there’s nothing to disbelieve because there’s nothing there. It doesn’t have physical existence.
Closely related is “correlation is not causation”. Happening to share some characteristic with my neighbor creates no obligation, no rights, no duties, nothing. A social group exists when its members deliberately make it exist, and its influence will be limited to the terms of the charter.
In this climate cultist discussion, persons that have conducted their own studies and made their own decisions are not part of any physical group EVEN IF they arrive at the exact same conclusion as that of the “cult”, members of which are compelled to a decision in return for the benefits of group membership. No thinking is required and it is better to avoid thinking.
So you see, “where you are” has nothing to do with cult, but “how you got there” matters and “why you stay” matters and “what happens if you leave or try to leave” matters.
Consider a certain organization founded by L. Ron Hubbard. Leaving it is difficult and carries substantial consequences. But as I am subscribed to no belief group in climate science, I can believe what I want and change them daily if I wish.
> A social group exists when its members deliberately make it exist […]
Are you suggesting you are deliberately making your country exist, M2? That’s a radical theory of social contract you have there.
However interesting that may be, it is irrelevant to the point that started it all: you have been accusing someone of speaking in the name of a collective while using the same mode of speech yourself. There is nothing special in Libertarian beliefs that entitles their proponents that mode of speech while forbidding others, say (gasp!) socialists. The diagnosis that followed from your analysis of that mode of speech falters on very basic due diligence.
And that’s notwithstanding your dismissiveness of Eric Berne’s theory while identifying members of a cult as people who were dismissive of ideas they did not like.
BBD says: “Libertarianism is the cult of freedom without responsibility. Discuss.”
There can be no such thing as a cult of freedom, for its members cannot be free if they are in a cult. However, I suppose it is possible to define “freedom” very narrowly, such that to achieve one freedom its members give up other freedoms — California’s communes come to mind.
To me, the most responsible people of all will be the libertarians, who do not burden others and are not burdened thereby; thus becoming necessarily responsible for all consequences of their own actions.
Sometimes the opposite illustrates a point. In a totalitarian society, everyone but the dictator is “just obeying orders” and is thereby excused even from serious accusations, war crimes in particular. But who can hold the dictator accountable? Nobody. So the whole concept of responsibility sort of vanishes entirely in a dictatorship.
Therefore whatever is opposite must have the most actual responsibility. As a sailor in the US Navy I was obligated to obey lawful orders — creating a grave responsibility to know what is and what is not lawful, and bearing the consequences of bad judgment on top of it all. The higher my rank in the Navy the greater my liberty to exercise judgment, but also the greater my responsibility to do so wisely and correctly — and more “libertarian”!
A Navy chief, especially “COB”, Chief of the Boat of a submarine, has enormous liberty (the realm of possible and appropriate choices is expanded) — but with it goes greater responsibility. Liberty and responsibility co-exist and one cannot exist without the other.
BBD — it should be obvious but I’ll add a thought.
How can I think “Libertarian” despite, or because of, a 20 year navy career? Was I not less free than most citizens? Yes, I was, many rules and regulations! But I *chose* that life, more or less (a bit less — the alternative was a soldier in the Vietnam War).
As the science fiction writer Poul Anderson puts it, “Freedom is having a cage larger than one wants to fly in.”
There is always a cage. Sometimes chosen, sometimes just larger than you want to fly in, and sometimes imposed upon you with physical or emotional chains (the cult).
Diversionary waffle.
You fool nobody. And frankly, it’s time you moved on. As Steve says, you have been boring for some time now.
Michael 2: You wrote:
Liberty and responsibility co-exist and one cannot exist without the other.
Do you believe that current generations have a responsibility to bequeath a habitable planet to future generations.
BBD: I would like to engage Michael 2 in a frank (non-emitonal) discussion about whether or not a die-hard libertian like he and I have any common ground with respect to core values. That is why I have posed the questions that I have.
willard says “Are you suggesting you are deliberately making your country exist, M2?”
Yes. In fact, I gave 20 years of my life to making it exist. I still make it exist through public service related to citizenship and of course I am also still in the inactive reserve of the military
“you have been accusing someone of speaking in the name of a collective while using the same mode of speech yourself.”
The important difference, sort of an irony, is that nobody can speak for libertarians but you CAN speak for Democrats because there’s a “platform”, or Catholics because there’s a “dogma” but the word “libertarian” is merely descriptive, like having red hair. Can anyone speak for all persons that have red hair and be believed?
However, “Libertarian” with a capital L might mean a member of the Libertarian Party and this can create confusion since I suspect many Libertarians are not libertarian.
You asked about “we the people” of the United States of America — exactly who do you suppose that included? At the moment of its writing, just the signatories. I have held in my hand, in Pennsylvania, books of citizenship oaths. Until and unless one took an oath, you were still a citizen of England or Germany. Thus, “we the people” had specific meaning and meant specific persons that had subscribed to it.
This is boring. Who cares. Would you like some syrup with your waffle?
> In fact, I gave 20 years of my life to making it exist. I still make it exist through public service related to citizenship and of course I am also still in the inactive reserve of the military.
Come on, M2. If you stopped doing all these things, I assure you that the United States would still exist.
***
> Can anyone speak for all persons that have red hair and be believed?
Why the hell not? “As a red hair person, I declare that we the redheads hate it when we’re mocked and then reminded that it was worse in ancient times.” There are no general rules to determine credibility.
But that’s irrelevant to the fact that speaking in the name of an abstract collective is supposed to indicate some kind of socialistic cultism, M2. This can’t work. In the end, realism wins and nominalists lost.
***
> “Libertarian” with a capital L might mean a member of the Libertarian Party and this can create confusion since I suspect many Libertarians are not libertarian.
Some might even say that one can’t even be a libertarian, for libertarianism rests on a mistake. Others might argue that it’s not impossible to try to uphold incoherent beliefs: cults are like that. Many theories.
But again, I think this lead us astray to where we come from. Thank you for making me realize that libertarianism may have a Rousseauist lineage.
Michael2 writes (in reference to the MWP and LIA): “Likely so, but as no one can say what is “complete” it just needs to be something more substantial than “there wasn’t one”.
Why? If the best evidence we have today is that there wasn’t one, then should we promulgate their existence because it makes those with an agenda/ideology happy? Where is the temperature reconstruction that shows this global MWP or LIA? Oh, yeah, they don’t exist. But that absence of evidence is proof they *did* exist??? Come on, do you really believe that Mann and all the others that followed are in on some vast conspiracy to do away with the MWP? Just how many researchers from how many different countries covering how many decades have been in on this conspiracy?
BTW, the Democratic Party has a platform: do all Democrats agree with that platform? No one can claim to speak for all Democrats (small ‘d’ or large ‘D’ ). Your logic fails on so many levels in so many areas it’s impossible to keep track of all the contradictions. For instance, libertarians are against force – but the whole notion of ownership falls apart without force (or becomes based on the arbitrary decisions of government). I.e., should all the land in the Americas be returned to the native peoples who were living here before Europeans arrived and took it from them by force?
John Hartz asked “As a die-hard Liberterian, do you believe in the Common Good?”
Irrelevant to libertarian but yes (with caveats). This is why I say education is crucial to liberty. I can choose socially responsible behavior but only if I have been taught good behavior and the consequences of bad behavior. The two other choices are to have bad behavior or to be compelled to what you believe is good behavior.
Rather a lot of economic theory is not obvious. But it starts with something that *is* sort of obvious, sheep grazing on a commons (or fish in the sea). Some commons are rival (sheep on a meadow), some commons are not rival (GPS receivers, that you have one does not diminish mine).
So what you mean by “Common Good” versus “common good” can be sinister or benevolent. I like the benevolent parts.
Willard says: “Thank you for making me realize that libertarianism may have a Rousseauist lineage.”
Likely so. I sometimes cite Rosseau but usually in a religious context — the ultimate sovereign. There must always be one or society cannot exist. The best anchor for the social contract is transcendental and therefore immutable, believable, obeyable. The worst anchor for society is self-appointed sovereigns.
Doubtless I am confusing you but I have never suggest “Libertarianism” is best for the United States. It is a descriptive word, not proscriptive. It has no properties suitable for nation building. In fact, it has no properties at all beyond “you choose for you and I’ll choose for me.”
So Libertarian ideals (French, really) have been *blended* with Roman governance and a bunch of other ideas to arrive at the three branches of government and bi-cameral legislature which worked fine until direct elections of the Senate wiped out the distinction.
How happy is M2 to have tied up so many smart people for so long over so much drivel.
John Hartz: “whether or not a die-hard libertian like he and I have any common ground with respect to core values.”
Our core values, save only one, could conceivably be identical. Being a libertarian is not really informative about a person except for one trait or value that can overlay on any and all other traits, and that particular trait has been honed by 20 years in the navy defending and defining “LIBERTY”.
I did not fully grasp how much has been lost in the United States until I came back from Iceland; which despite being socialist, has a lot more “liberty” — that freedom to go where you want to go, unmolested and unchallenged.
How this relates to global warming is in the acceptability of mitigation proposals. It is easy enough to convince an intelligent libertarian, the hard part is swallowing the pill that you propose. Serious proposals have been made to suspend democracy and liberty, more so in Germany where they actually have experience with that sort of thing, but the slow-frog-boiling thing is being hoist upon citizens of the United States.
Steve Bloom: Why did the “smart people” empower him to do so?
As they say, “It takes two to Tango,”
You think that ties me up, Steve?
Here you go:
You’re welcome.
***
OTOH, please consider that now you know a bit more about the libertarian flavor M2 prefers, and that I enjoy philosophical arguments. Mileage varies, I am sure.
Both are the opposite of nothing, if you ask me.
JH: Indeed!
John Hartz “Do you believe that current generations have a responsibility to bequeath a habitable planet to future generations.”
Boy that’s a tough one — not hard to answer but invokes several levels of response.
My immediate reaction is that I am wired to do exactly that. It doesn’t require thought and this is probably the first time I face this question squarely. the libertarian in me questions who assigned the responsibility versus me just feeling that it is wise and necessary.
What I have not introduced much here is my religion — it does influence my beliefs and actions and I consider my life, and that of my community and nation, to be better for it. I don’t lie, cheat and steal even when no one is looking, because I know that I am “responsible”, I must respond, be accountable, someday, in this life or the next, and that includes my stewardship of the planet and ALL LIFE on it.
Atheists will say they also don’t lie, cheat and steal; but why not? What is the force that prevents them from suddenly changing their values? Nothing at all.
William mentioned Rosseau. Yes, absolutely, there cannot be society without an anchor, a transcendental set of rules that does not change and cannot change. You would be amazed at how stubborn I am at changing fundamentals — yet I whittle away at those fundamentals every day just to make sure they really are fundamental.
John Hartz asks: “I cannot help but wonder if you have ever visited the ‘Global Warming’ section of National Geographic’s website? If you have done so, have you carefully read the materials posted there and do you track and read the new postings?”
Yes and no. I have visited, and I would visit more often if I had more time. I read every issue cover to cover but even that is sometimes a rush job. I have little doubt that I am lagging on awareness of important new discoveries.
I am subscribed to email notifications from Science News, a source I consider mostly nonpolitical and hence reliable and interesting. It is also a source of more recent news than the lengthy publishing cycle of National Geographic. Scientific American, on the other hand, seems to have discovered that the Earth really does have an edge and fell off on the left side if you take my meaning. But that’s the website. The magazine itself still seems pretty good.
Ah, now Tom Lehrer also knows rather a lot about tying things up, to say nothing of the value of nothing and its opposite.
BTW, I’ll believe M2 is worth listening to about libertarianism the moment he renounces his government pension. As things stand, the flavor seems to be more like opportunism.
It’s quite likely that this thread has reached its shelf life.
I’d at least like some blueberries on this diversionary waffle. Please, someone kill this thread before I fall sleep at my keyboard. Zzzzzzz
I don’t know where to start. But I do know that it’s very unlikely to be productive to do so. Michael can I ask that you stop and reflect on this?
“No thinking is required and it is better to avoid thinking.”
Pretty stunning claim about those in the “climate cult” by someone who, by his own statement of beliefs, has obviously spent far less time thinking and learning about the issue than most of those he denigrates.
Here’s a tip, M2: Next time someone asks you to explain your understanding of the issues, it’s probably better to stay quiet. Unless you suddenly find enough time in between all your commenting to actually learn a little about the subject first.
Oh, and if you find that people are ridiculing your beliefs about the topic, you might consider that it’s not because everyone has joined a “cult”, but rather because your beliefs warrant it. To put it into a context you might understand, it would be like me trying to explain to you that boats floated thanks to magical fairies and calling you a cult member who refuses to entertain other ideas when you start ridiculing me.
As for what John Q. Public really thinks, apparently you didn’t understand this when I explained it earlier, but in the US, at least, 2/3 of the population are either alarmed, concerned, or cautious about global warming, and only 28% are dismissive or doubtful. (Link)
And guess who they most trust as a source of information about global warming?
Turns out that John Q. Public is not quite as stupid as you portrayed.
[Mod: I think it should be up to the moderators to decide when someone is no longer welcome]
Trans:
“Climate science is communist lies that don’t fool no God-fearing libertarian”.
Does anyone at this point seriously care what else this commenter has to say?
BBD
I think one could reasonably argue that this is a rhetorical oxymoron in that it’s very existence disproves the point being made. Willard will probably correct my diagnosis though.
Similarly the existence of the MWP (ref Kevin O’Neill above); it’s global existence would falsify the postulated negative feedbacks which are necessary to justify low sensitivity required by sceptics, yet sceptics are simultaneously convinced of a conspiracy to remove it from the record.
Then we have dear Michael2 who has threadjacked magnificently albeit in a manner more akin to Gansgta Granny than Al Qaeda. I personally loved the fantastically self contradictory
All of which is really just a long winded way of agreeing with John Hartz
VTG
🙂
VTG –
Yes, you’d be surprised how hard it is to get some people to understand that IF the MWP and LIA were significant, global temperature excursions, then that would be strong evidence for a highly sensitive climate,
From which I conclude that M2 really believes that climate sensitivity is very high (4K? 5K?) and that GCMs are failing to reflect this. Perhaps he is correct, and we will find that by the time all long term feedbacks are included sensitivity will turn out that high, but for now M2 is being a little alarmist.
Micahel 2: Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions. As long as you view the overwhelming body of scientiifc evidence about manamde climate change through the prism of your policical ideology, there is no point in continuing our discourse.
Agreed. I also am finished with this dialog, but I will leave you with a final thought.
John Hartz: “through the prism of your policical ideology, there is no point in continuing our discourse.”
But I wonder in what way you differ? You equate intelligence with agreement and consensus and cast out those who do not agree. That is cultish behavior, the very topic of this thread. It would have been easier for all just to ignore me, but you don’t. Why is that?
I suggest it is because of cognitive dissonance; the conflict felt on seeing the impossible — an intelligent person that doesn’t think the same, that reaches a different conclusion or in my case no conclusion. There must be a conclusion, there must be consensus!
Most here have given me much to think about. Perhaps I have returned the favor.
Well I thought I was finished but I’ll answer this question:
willard “The people does not exist, but all of the people or the 100 percent does, M2?”
Yes, exactly. “The people” is undefined, an abstraction that means whatever you want it to mean, but only for you, whereas for me it may mean something else entirely or nothing at all until defined (ie, no “default” value).
The 100 percent, on the other hand, is the Universe of a Venn Diagram. There is no escaping its tentacles. You and I are assimiliated into the 100 percent.
Michael 2: Given what you stated upstream, you are also free to change your response to Willard in the above comment at a whim. Why therefore should we give any weight to anything that you have posted?
PS – You have taken the concept of Plastic Man into the dimension of cognative-thinking. I prefer to leave him in the fantasy world of comic books.
Michael 2: Given your love affair with National Geographic, you will want to check out the following:
Three penguin species tolerated a warming climate quite well about 15,000 years ago, but it’s a very different story for two of them now.
Penguins That Weathered Past Climate Change Suffer This Time by Jane J Lee, National Geographic, June 12, 2014
From George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication:
“We are pleased to announce a newly published article: “The genesis of climate change activism: from key beliefs to political action” by Connie Roser-Renouf, Edward W. Maibach, Anthony Leiserowitz and Xiaoquan Zhao. The article is available for free download here: http://bit.ly/1kYTLUb
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John Hartz says “Given your love affair with National Geographic, you will want to check out the following: Three penguin species tolerated a warming climate quite well about 15,000 years ago, but it’s a very different story for two of them now.” Penguins That Weathered Past Climate Change Suffer This Time by Jane J Lee, National Geographic, June 12, 2014
This is not in the June printed issue of National Geographic but rather their online website.
You chose a sentence to copy and paste, I will return the favor:
“Three of those species—the Adélie, chinstrap, and gentoo—were also able to tolerate, if not flourish under, a warming event that came as ice sheets began to shrink, says a new study.”
I am amazed that anyone knows what penguin life was like 15,000 years ago.
I’ve never claimed to *believe* everything that appears in National Geographic, just that it is very *good*. I am less persuaded by blogs as very little investment exists in a blog. Cute clipart photo of a penguin, make some words, done!