A Nature Communications paper came out yesterday called Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians. It generates a list of what they call climate change contrarians and a list of climate change scientists and shows that contrarians are given disproportionate representation in the media.
The result seems pretty self-evident. Those who hold contrarian views about climate change seem to have much more visibility in the media when compared to how visible these views are in the scientific literature. However, I do feel a bit uncomfortable about a paper that labels individuals; I certainly wouldn’t be too happy if it happened to me (okay, it might depend on the label 🙂 ).
The list of climate change contrarians was generated from the Heartland Institute, DeSmogblog’s database, and signatories of the NIPCC. This immediately created one issue, because some included, such as Scott Denning, are clearly not climate change contrarians. The list of climate change scientists was generated from the most highly cited in the Web of Science database. This is the bit that I found interesting. Some of those already included in the list of contrarians also ended up being the amongst the most highly cited. They were then removed from the list of climate change scientists, and the list was then topped with the next most highly cited researchers. They then ended up with a list of 386 climate change contrarians (their term) and a list of 386 climate change scientists.
However, their Supplementary Information suggests there were only 8 people who were in the list of climate change contrarians and also – initially – in the list of the most highly cited researchers; R. Bradley, J. Clark, J. Curry, C. Johnson, R. Pielke (Jr + Sr), J. Taylor, and R. Tol. At this stage, 8 out of the 386 most highly cited researchers are also listed as climate change contrarians (2.2%).
However, the R. Bradley in the climate change contrarian list is probably someone called Rob Bradley, while the highly cited R. Bradley is probably Ray Bradley (from Mann, Bradley & Hughes). So, at least one is probably mis-identified. I’m not familiar with all of the other names, but I am aware of the work of J. Curry, R. Pielke (Jr and Sr) and R. Tol. As far as I’m concerned, there is no way you could describe their research as contrarian; it’s pretty mainstream (this doesn’t necessarily mean that what they say in public would be regarded as mainstream, but their research doesn’t appear particularly contrarian). There are others in the list of climate change contrarians who publish papers disputing key aspects of mainstream climate science (W. Soon, N. Shaviv, H. Svensmark) but none of them make it into the list of highly cited researchers.
Whatever you think of the merits of the paper, it does seem to nicely illustrate that in a relatively long list of highly cited researchers, there are virtually none who publish papers that substantively dispute our basic understanding of climate change. There’s a pretty thin bench of climate change contrarians who would also be regarded as leading researchers. So, maybe it’s worth acknowledging what was being suggested (climate scientists should be more visible in the public discourse) even if one doesn’t particularly like the idea of publishing papers in which people are labelled in some way.
Update (16/08/2019):
It now seems that the C. Johnson mentioned above is Claes Johnson (see comments) who is highly cited in Mathematics, but not in climate (they appear to think there is no such thing as a planetary greenhouse effect). The J. Taylor is James Taylor (Heartland) but the highly cited J. Taylor is probably John Taylor from CISRO. The J. Clark is John Clark, but the highly cited J. Clark is probably Jorie Clark from Oregon. The highly cited R. Pielke is probably only Roger Pielke Sr. Hence, they seem to have mis-identified 4 of the 7 highly cited researchers who they claim are also in the climate change contrarian list. This means that maybe only 3 in the climate change contrarian list were also initially in the highly cited researcher list. Also – as I said in the post – I think many would regard their publications as pretty mainstream (well, in the sense of not substantially criticising our understanding of AGW).
...and Then There's Physics 
As usual, I’ll add a comment :-). One problem with papers like this, is that people end up arguing about whether or not it’s okay to carry out such an analysis (i.e., generate lists in which named individuals are labelled) and the key message (contrarians voices are more visible in the media than their scientific authority warrants) is then lost. Also, you end up with perfectly sensible people objecting to the paper, which can then basically mean that it’s backfired.
Re: “there are virtually none who publish papers that substantively dispute our basic understanding of climate change.”
Of course not. That’s never been what the climate debate is about. We know how GHG-driven warming works:
The debate is about its scale, and whether it is good or bad. According to most of the so-called contrarians (including me), the best evidence is that manmade climate change is modest and benign, and rising CO2 levels are beneficial.
Re: “There are others in the list of climate change contrarians who publish papers disputing key aspects of mainstream climate science (W. Soon, N. Shaviv, H. Svensmark) but none of them make it into the list of highly cited researchers.”
How do you know that? Their names don’t appear to be mentioned anywhere in the paper or supplemental information. The caption on Fig. 2 says, “we anonymized CCC names to foster privacy,” and they say here,
Did you get access to that information ahead of time?
Dave,
You’re clearly following a different debate to the one I’m following.
I managed to find a zip file on their website that included all the names. Maybe it’s now been taken down (that might explain why I couldn’t find the link again today – I had to fish the zip file out of my trash folder). However, someone else put them on another website. Here is the list of Climate Change Contrarians and here is the list of Climate Change Scientists.
“At this stage, 8 out of the 386 most highly cited researchers are also listed as climate change contrarians (2.2%).”
so the rest would be 97.something% ;o)
Interesting that Murry Salby isn’t on the list despite being a quite highly cited atmospheric scientists and being quite active in promulgating his theories (I gather he has at least tried to publish his theories in journals), but the much less well-known (not having been promoted by Prof. Curry) Robert Essenhigh is on the list.
Presumably Salby hasn’t spoken at a Heartland Conference and isn’t prominent enough to make it into the deSmogblog database.
Sounds pretty contrarian to me dave. Any (scientific) evidence to back that up?
To paraphrase my comment on a previous thread, a creationist who accepts the old Earth and microevolution, but denies the solid scientific evidence for macroevolution, is a contrarian. Contrarian in the sense of accepting only that science which doesn’t conflict with (or run contrary to) their worldview, and rejecting that science which conflicts with (runs contrary to) their worldview.
One might make exceptions for low-ECS professionals in the field like Lewis and Curry, because they at least are qualified to reach individual scientific conclusions which are at the extreme end of everyone else’s range. It might be reasonable to ask why, and why they think they’re right and everyone else is wrong. But that can be classed as bias or preconceived ideas and hubris rather than contrarianism. The rest of us lack that ability, so just picking the ones you like, on no other basis than that you like them (which, without a body of work in the field is what you have to do, however you dress it up), is indeed being contrarian. As is saying “but I trust those two”. Why? Because they tell you what you want to hear? Because you like the cut of their political jib? Because your political or religious leaders laud them?
ATTP surprisingly Salby isn’t in the deSmogblog database, despite them having several article about him on the blog.
“However, I do feel a bit uncomfortable about a paper that labels individuals;”
I guess the contrarians will have to make up their mind whether they want open science or not because scientists cannot be trusted.
As a compromise, the names could have been saved in a net-cdf file.
Victor, I wondered the same. How does one determine what scientific questions we can ask using publicly available data?
“I’m not familiar with all of the other names, but I am aware of the work of J. Curry, R. Pielke (Jr and Sr) and R. Tol. As far as I’m concerned, there is no way you could describe their research as contrarian;”
On the other hand, it seems fair to describe their behaviour on social media and in the mass media as contrarian.
For example, Pielke Sr. blocked me on Twitter after he had spread multiple times the myth that water vapour is decreasing and I had pointed out multiple times that the article explicitly wrote that the NVAP dataset he used is not suited for trend analysis. http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2012/12/no-trend-in-global-water-vapor-another.html
Also after being told that, he kept spreading the myth. He may know how to get published, but apparently does not use these scientific standards communicating with the public.
“As a compromise, the names could have been saved in a net-cdf file.”
;o)
The paper suggests that contrarians get more media attention than scientists. But the contrarian list is made up largely of media personalities like James Delingpole. It’s not surprising that media personalities get more visibility than scientists. A list of climate crisis activists like Bill Nye or Greta Thunberg would likely also get more media than scientists.
The fact that contrarians largely misrepresent the science yet may get more coverage than folks largely representing the science is a problem, but they didn’t really show that this is the case.
lerpo, yes, one of the criticisms is that it’s not a like for like comparison. However, 224 of those in the CCC list have published a paper, so they may have illustrated that CCC researchers are over represented in the media relative to CCS researchers (I’ll have to think about this a bit more, though).
lerpo the question is then why are there not a proportionate number of mainstream media personalities so that the media approximately represents the scientific balance. The reason of course is that the media (and by extension) the general public are not interested in balance, but in controversy. The contrarians focus on the media because they know that they will be appreciated and not taken to task as effectively.
I wonder if C. Johnson is Claes Johnson, who is a highly cited mathematician but a crackpot when it comes to climate science. I think he was one of the lead authors for the Sky Dragon argument
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=40UhzoMAAAAJ&hl=en
You have to peal away many citations to get at the problematic ones.
lerpo said:
In the paper, they made a special category for “Richard Lindzen” all by himself. If you search on Twitter, you will find a new tweet that cites Lindzen on average every few minutes. There is something fundamental about picking a single authority, such as Lindzen for climate science or Feynman for science in general, when trying to establish a contrarian position.
Hi Dikranmarsupial,
The contrarians have a very compelling narrative including conspiracies, Galileos, fraudsters, and tricksters. The climate crisis activists have a somewhat less compelling story of doom and gloom unless we sacrifice. The scientists have only incremental improvements in understanding to report.
“New study finds largely the same result as previous study” just doesn’t make headlines.
It speaks poorly of the media that they may prefer salacious lies over an uncomfortable or boring reality, but I really don’t think that the paper shows this to be the case. All it shows is that the contrarians who get media attention are largely not among the best and brightest scientists. That may also be true of climate crisis activists.
The paper makes a basic mistake.
It compares the publication and citation record, in climate research, of two samples.
Sample 1 is selected on their publication and citation record in climate research.
Sample 2 is selected on different criteria.
The paper concludes that Sample 1 has a better publication and citation record in climate research than Sample 2 (and then draws inference about Sample 2 that is unsupported by the data).
This is like comparing cloudiness between cloudy days and Wednesdays (and concluding that Fridays I’m in love).
Wotts highlights another peculiarity. The samples initially overlap, with the overlap removed. The pre-analysis plan was not published, and may not even exist. I would be curious to see the justification of adjusting the sample after having seen the data.
The contrarians who get media attention, by and large, are not scientists and some wouldn’t claim to be (e.g. James “Interpreter of interpretations” Dellingpole). The paper is really more about the media than it is about climate contrarians. They will happily jump on other contrarian science stories without checking them out first (which is how I came to write a paper about dinosaurs – nobody was interested in finding out that they actually probably weren’t half the body mass the scientific community thought after all – childhood ambition achieved for me though ;o).
> As far as I’m concerned, there is no way you could describe their research as contrarian […]
I would never describe research as contrarian. I would certainly describe Junior, Senior, Judy, and Richie as contrarians. Having one’s concerns approvably quoted and cited over and over again by contrarian outlets is good enough for me. Being a regular author would seal the deal.
That being said, including Denning indicates that the authors are ClimateBall rookies. Search filters are not meant to replace intelligence. But there is no way to buid a contrarian-proof process: curating selection leads to accusation of cherry-picking, blind selection gives contrarian lulz based false positives.
[Mod: Tom, not really quite sure what you’re getting at with this comment, so am not going to post it.]
If they’re not sporting one of Professor Curry’s white hats, or the author of a potential game changer, they ain’t nothun.
Thanks, Wotts, for publishing a key passage from the now retracted supplementary information.
RT,
Has the list of names of those who made it, initially, into both lists been deleted?
The entire supp info has been pulled, including the names that appeared in both samples.
RT Perhaps they should have put the SI into an un-anotated spreadsheet instead (that only had the result of the calculation in question, with no indication of how it was calculated)? ;o)
dikran wrote,
> The reason of course is that the media (and by extension) the general public are not interested in balance, but in controversy.
And lerpo wrote,
> It speaks poorly of the media that they may prefer salacious lies over an uncomfortable or boring reality
==========
I think that the public is, in general, seeking to reinforce their polarized identities and so of course, the media in seeking to sell a product to consumers will give the public material that serves that purpose.
Not sure if anyone was suggesting the reverse direction of causality, but I don’t really think (at least at this point) it’s as much a matter of the media supplying polarized information that polarized the public. Of course, I’d say that the mechanism runs in both directions.
BTW –
Often bore people by talking about participatory democracy, but here’s some evidence that at least I’m not the only who’s so boring.
https://qz.com/1553567/a-democratic-experiment-in-ireland-could-become-the-model-for-fighting-climate-change/
RT,
I think this is pretty straightforward. They presumably wanted two lists that had no common members. Since one was defined as being from Heartland, deSmogblog and NIPCC, they would then remove any on that list who also ended up in the highly cited list.
Anders –
> The result seems pretty self-evident.
Indeed. I’d say it is quite evident that “skeptics” get disproportionate amounts of media coverage relative to their prevalence in the scientific literature in climate change. In fact, I think that even most “skeptics” would agree on that, even if they’d argue either (1) that prevalence in the scientific literature is a biased metric (a tautology of bias) which doesn’t calm their concern that they’re woefully neglected victims of a biased mainstream media) or, (2) completely irrelevant (except when they want to leverage the scientific literature to support their advocacy).
As such, I wonder what the purpose of this exercise is. Trying to quantify the imbalance will inevitably run into definitional problems, as there is no real agreement on the structure of a taxonomy for organizing views on climate change. I get that there’s a point in an academic study of the polarization over climate change, but I’d say the first step in a serious attempt to do so must be to create a robust definitional framework.
Joshua how does the body mass of dinosaurs (the example I used to make my point) help the public to “reinforce their polarized identities”?
Joshua,
I don’t actually know. I suspect it’s partly that sometimes people like to try to quantify these things and partly it might provide some study that one can use to convince people that it’s the case. I’m not sure that it’s really all that effective, though.
RT “I would be curious to see the justification of adjusting the sample after having seen the data.”
It is generally a good idea to re-label obviously mislabeled data.
In the statistics literature this is often called “label noise” or “learning from an unreliable teacher/oracle”. If the oracle is available and doesn’t mind re-labelling the data, then that is always going to be the best approach. The next best would be to include a “label noise” model in the analysis. The problem here is that the oracle didn’t do enough re-labelling (e.g. Denning).
As to the sampling procedure, can Richard suggest a better methodology? Complaining is easy (especially if you are not too bothered if your criticisms are valid), constructive criticism is a bit more work.
dikran –
I guess I misunderstood something.
Joshua “As such, I wonder what the purpose of this exercise is.”
A paper in Nature SomethingOrOther is often purpose enough.
The point I was making is that the public likes controversy, even if they don’t identify with one side or the other. I suspect we have an evolutionary pressure for it (c.f. gossip/soap operas etc.) In the case of climate change, then for some audiences there may be a degree of polarization-reinforcement as well, but I don’t think there is such good evidence of that being universal (at least on this topic).
dikran –
I’m skeptical of reverse-engineering evolution based on manifest social behaviors…but that aside… how would you know whether there’s an innate tendency to like controversy versus an innate tendency to use information to justify group identity (and the identity of “others”)? Or maybe they’re the same thing?
Joshua, as I pointed out, there are examples (such as the body mass of dinosaurs) where the controversy was of some media interest despite a complete lack of any obvious group identity issues.
“how would you know whether there’s an innate tendency to like controversy versus an innate tendency to use information to justify group identity (and the identity of “others”)? Or maybe they’re the same thing?”
As I also pointed out, there are cases, such as climate change, where there are likely both of those tendencies in action.
dikran –
That the sometimes media likes to create a frame of controversy around issues it reports isn’t something that I doubt.
What I doubt is whether (broadly speaking) media framing as a controversy has a large role in creating polarization around climate change (as well as other issues which become polarized on a wide scale), or whether (because the media makes money by delivering a product that the public is attracted to) the media framing climate change as a controversy reflects polarization in the public w/r/t climate change which is better explained by other factors (broadly under the umbrella of tribalism).
Not sure if it’s the argument that you’re making – but I’m skeptical of an argument that it’s the media wot dunnit.
Seems to me I’ve been repeating myself, so again I guess I’m missing something.
dikran –
Just as an aside, I find the phrasing of “as I pointed out,” particularly when it is italicized, not particularly conducive for good faith exchange of views. It makes me feel rather defensive. If I misunderstood something you’ve said, or overlooked it, or maybe just don’t interpret the implications of something in the way you intended, it isn’t because of some kind of bad faith on my part – as such, I’m not sure why pointing out what you’ve already pointed out is particularly relevant.
> I’m skeptical of reverse-engineering evolution based on manifest social behaviors
What’s the alternative?
Joshua, it isn’t about framing. The media merely respond to what the public find interesting. The public like controversy/conflict* (that is obvious from what we regard as media entertainment), even when there isn’t a group identity aspect to it, as I have pointed out (with an example). The media don’t need to frame it as controversy, it is implicit whenever there is a disagreement.
There is more to human nature than group identity.
* would we need theory of mind if we were all naturally honest? I suspect that our interest in controversy is training our sense of mind so that we can detect dishonesty in social interactions, likewise humour.
“What’s the alternative?”
time travel and a relaxed ethics committee?
dikran –
I should add that when I say “It makes me feel rather defensive.” that wasn’t mean to imply that you’re (necessarily) responsible for my feeling defensive.
It would be possible for you to point out to me what you’ve already pointed out without feeling defensive in response. But it often seems to me that when someone does that in a conversation, there’s a less than supportive reason for why they’re pointing out that they’ve already pointed something out.
So, just for future reference, I often tend to respond defensively in such a situation. So to the extent that might be a consideration of yours, you might think of that going forward.
> What’s the alternative?
I’m not suggesting there need be an alternative. But I”m skeptical when I run across it. What’s the alternative to that?
dikran –
> There is more to human nature than group identity.
I didn’t mean to suggest that there isn’t.
> The public like controversy/conflict* (that is obvious from what we regard as media entertainment), even when there isn’t a group identity aspect to it,
I”m offering an observation and viewpoint on causality. I”m not questioning that the media sometimes likes to frame issues as a controversy, or that the public tends to be interested by controversy. At this point, I’m quite confused as to what we’re discussing.
Joshua “Just as an aside, I find the phrasing of “as I pointed out,” particularly when it is italicized, not particularly conducive for good faith exchange of views. ”
I don’t find ignoring examples particularly conducive either, especially if you then go on to ask a question that was directly answered by the example in question:
The reason that I italicized it is that I was a little exasperated that my intelligent and articulate interlocutor wasn’t paying attention to what I had written.
dikran –
> As I also pointed out, there are cases, such as climate change, where there are likely both of those tendencies in action.
Now I’m really confused, as it seems were in agreement – except, perhaps, about the degree to which each of the tendencies, respectively, is more explanatory for the interaction between media presenting material as controversies and public polarization about climate change.
dikran –
>I don’t find ignoring examples particularly conducive either, especially if you then go on to ask a question that was directly answered by the example in question:
So this is what I was referring to. “Ignoring” implies bad faith on my part. I wasn’t “ignoring” anything. As such, what I’d suggest is that when you think I’m engaging in poor faith, you just state that directly and then I’ll decide whether it’s worth it for me to continue exchanging views with you when you feel I’m doing so in bad faith.
“But I”m skeptical when I run across it. What’s the alternative to that?”
apportioning belief to the strength of the argument and the available evidence?
I think I’ll leave the discussion there. I can assure you that it was in good faith discussion on both “sides” as far as I am concerned, that was never in question.
“So this is what I was referring to. “Ignoring” implies bad faith on my part.”
sorry, that is ridiculous. Inattention is not bad faith, it is a human failing (if an exasperating one – we are all only human, both of us, and I apologize for my exasperation).
dirkan –
Ah. I generally interpret “ignore” as requiring volition. You also said I wasn’t “paying attention,” which also wasn’t true.
> sorry, that is ridiculous.
Also, I tend to find calling something I’ve said to be “ridiculous” as generally not conducive to good faith exchange.
I suspect it’s worth drawing this discussion to a close.
At any rate, I think we’re well past the point of diminishing returns here (even assuming it didn’t start out that way). And it’s time for me to tend to the garden and take a walk anyway.
Anders –
We crossed.
> What’s the alternative to that?
Keeping away from good faith speech, for it’s the same process.
If you can reproduce the conclusions given the methodology (or even better, you have the code to just do it), couldn’t anyone get the names for themselves quite easily?
So I don’t quite follow Tol’s objection. Should data from published scientific papers be easy to access, or not? Make up your mind!
> couldn’t anyone get the names for themselves quite easily?
Random hit:
Source: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak09.pdf
Probably not as controversial but maybe more insightful is a new research paper from
E. Porter, T. J. Wood and B. Bahador.
“Can presidential misinformation on climate change be corrected? Evidence from Internet and phone experiments”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168019864784
Key finding:
“An increase in climate-related factual accuracy does not sway climate-related attitudes. Fact-checks can limit the effects of presidential misinformation, but have no impact on the president’s capacity to shape policy preferences.Yet an increase in climate-related factual accuracy does not sway climate-related attitudes. Fact-checks can limit the effects of presidential misinformation, but have no impact on the president’s capacity to shape policy preferences.”
This matches my personal experience in dealing with every Trump supporter I have met since 2015.
Since you all keep asking what the purpose of this exercise is, allow me to be blunt. The purpose of the exercise is to deligitimize the authors’ opponents on the issues in question. That is all.
While a list of the people on each ‘side’ is interesting, to some extent, the crucial issue is why one group does get more media attention than their scientific quality or numerical quantity would seem to warrant.
How these polarized groups arise and are supported, radicalized is of rather more importance than a list of who is in which group.
When Climate change first became a political issue rather than just a matter of scientific interest (like dinosaur mass), it was raised by conservative and ‘left’ politicians alike. Anyone remember Margaret Thatcher at the UN ? Then things changed…
One interesting asymmetry of the lists is that while the science side may be predominately ‘liberal’ in its politics, it is FAR more diverse than the ‘contrarians’ for whom a ‘neoliberal’ position is almost a defining feature that overrides any scientific qualification.
@-Joshua
“What I doubt is whether (broadly speaking) media framing as a controversy has a large role in creating polarization around climate change”
At the risk of re-opening a sensitive subject,…
people are not born polarised, and it does not arise without a social input to trigger it.
As the song from South Pacific puts it;
“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”
izen –
What do you think is the triggering social input?
“What do you think is the triggering social input?”
Take that list and place a pin corresponding to the home base of every person named. That may indicate some correlation to culture. You can try to predict the one I am thinking about.
@-Joshua
“What do you think is the triggering social input?”
The prevailing economic and political dogmas within the society in which you are raised.
The media does not determine this, but they certainly reflect and establish it.
The obvious indication of this is the different levels of contrarian opposition to climate change within different societies.
There is a close correlation between the strength of ‘neoliberal’ and ‘free market’ capitalism as the dominant ideology and the currency that CCC versus CCS has within that society.
Compare and contrast Australia and Scandinavia.
Or the US and China.
Tom,
I have to disagree. I think the point is to illustrate something real; contrarians are disproportionately represented in the media relative to their contribution to science. Why do those who object to this object so strongly; probably because they don’t want people to realise that contrarians are disproportionately represented in the media.
” I think the point is to illustrate something real; contrarians are disproportionately represented in the media relative to their contribution to science.”
that is probably something that will always be trivially true. you’ prolly find the same thing
on autism and vaccines. Hardly a novel finding required by Nature. Next if you are going to publish something that is utterly obvious, YOU OUGHT TO COUNT CORRECTLY. They fucked up the most basic data tasks.
For jesus fucking sake, I just finished a classification of temperature stations.. 27,000
It doesnt take a lot of effort to manually review all 27000. Sure it takes a little time.
It took me 5 seconds to find scott denning. FFS. And they counted Willis’ mentions incorrctly,
Mcintyres too. Here a clue, scientists ought to do better counting than moron journalists
And if a scientist cant fucking count correctly she has no business telling journalists they should
watch out for false balance.
They threw text at an algorithm and it appears they did minimal checking. DOH!
In any scientific controversy where the vast vast majority of scientists believe X,
you will ALWAYS find that the minority of scientists and cranks who disagree with X get a disproportionate degree of coverage.
Same way bad cops get covered more than good cops.
Same way serial killers get more coverage than deaths by automobile.
That’s why you dont get your science from MSM. different goals.
izen said:
Bingo, that’s the one I was thinking about. Although it’s not readily obvious, Australians contribute far more to the skeptical discussion than their population (<25 million) would suggest. I never understood why Lewandowsky & Cook didn't do a study on this considering they were right in the middle of it. Unless they were scared they would be skinned alive down under.
thomaswfuller2 says: “The purpose of the exercise is to deligitimize the authors’ opponents on the issues in question. That is all.”
The CCC delegitimized themselves by being part of Heartland Institute and the NIPCC or saying sufficiently stupid stuff to be listed by DeSmogBlog. There is no need to make a study for that.
You delegitimize yourself with tribal comments, in this case stupidly claiming to know what is in your opponent’s heads.
Steven Mosher: “For jesus fucking sake, I just finished a classification of temperature stations.. 27,000”
That is the wrong number. Geez can’t you get anything right. 😉
This kind of nit picking and complaining about a few people would not change the results.
I would say the study design is pretty bad (especially how the people were selected). That is the real problem, but the tribalists have to defend the people in their tribe.
Mosher said:
So they messed up an ostensibly quantitative study that everyone knew was qualitatively true. How many times have skeptics proudly proclaimed winning Bloggie awards for best science blog? The Alexa rankings do support how much attention they attract. As VV said, there is no need to make a study for that.
> Since you all keep asking what the purpose of this exercise is
You Make Me Do What I Always Do.
> hey counted Willis’ mentions incorrctly, [the Auditor] too.
Since when they’re not contrarians?
Now look who can’t count properly.
@wotts, dikran
I know one of you is a statistician.
Re. adjusting samples after observation:
Suppose I’d like to know the impact of elevated CO2 on the growth of Calceolaria integrifolia. I randomly select 200 plants, put half in a greenhouse with 400 ppmv and half in a greenhouse with 800 ppm. After 180 days, I find that most plants with elevated CO2 have grown faster than plants with normal CO2, but not all. Can I remove the plants that did not respond to CO2 from my sample?
This is a rhetorical question. I could collect additional data to double-check that temperature and nutrient availability are indeed homogeneous, but a purist would throw the paper out.
RT,
No, but in this case you know in advance that your two samples are unique (well, unless you think some of the plants could have quantum tunnelled from one greenhouse to the other – IIRC, one of your criticisms of Cook et al. involved you suggesting that an abstract could exist in a quantum state of both endorsing and rejecting the consensus at the same time). In the case here, they could not – in advance – know if their samples would be unique so they had to have some process for dealing with individuals who ended up in both samples. This is not to suggest that their choice was the correct one; it’s simply pointing out that your objection seems silly (this, of course, will not stop you from repeating it).
izen –
> The prevailing economic and political dogmas within the society in which you are raised.
The media does not determine this, but they certainly reflect and establish it.
===================
I’m not quite sure I understand how you are using “determine” and “establish” there. They seem fairly close in meaning to me in this context.
> The obvious indication of this is the different levels of contrarian opposition to climate change within different societies.
Sure. But I don’t think that media coverage is (to a significant extent) either a moderator or a mediator in the relationship between dogmas and “skepticism” (or polarization).
=======================
> There is a close correlation between the strength of ‘neoliberal’ and ‘free market’ capitalism as the dominant ideology and the currency that CCC versus CCS has within that society.
Yes, but I suspect that strength of identity orientation specific to the issue of climate change, is an important mediator (or perhaps even mediator) variable that influences the strength of that correlation. IOW, IMO, it isn’t so much the strength of the “neoliberal” identity or the “free-market” identity, but the strength by which those identities are affixed to the issue of climate change.
BTW, I stumbled across this….
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A9ca5b61e-3279-4b39-9a9b-158c55a429a1
when I was discussing this issue on this thread:
Richard that is obviously not analogous AFAICS. The contrarians were not taken out of the mainstream category because they were well published but because they were contrarians. That is not to say the methodology was good, just that the complaint you appear to be making is, at best, footling.
A better analogy would be an experiment to determine if elevated CO2 favoured Calceolaria integrifolia more than Calceolaria uniflora, so they planted some of each in identical conditions. However, they then found some C. uniflora seeds had accidentally been mixed in with the C. integrifolia, so they were put in the correct category before making the comparison. It would be rather silly not to relabel the plants and potentially bias the results. If one species was naturally taller than the other, a few mislabeled examples could cause a substantial error.
“This is a rhetorical question. I could collect additional data to double-check that temperature and nutrient availability are indeed homogeneous, but a purist would throw the paper out.”
A purist would throw out any paper that was based a statistical analysis based on an obviously incorrect assumption. Or a paper analysing a dataset with an obvious outlier on which the conclusion (quite literally) hinged, especially if the data-point in question was one of the authors previous works. Sound familiar?
Ken, it has been quite a while since I posted my answer to the question that Dave_Geologist asked me. Are you ever going to “approve” it?
He asked me, “Any (scientific) evidence to back that up?” So I answered with the scientific evidence that he requested, including links/papers/articles from Nature, Science, GRL, NASA, AMS, USDA, CSIRO, Scientific American, National Geographic, and other sources. Is that not the right thing to do, here at ATTP?
Dave_Geologist, if Ken doesn’t “approve” the answer that I posted to your question, you may email me, and I’ll send it to you directly. (Click my handle to find my contact info.)
Dave,
I can’t see any comments in pending, or in the trash or spam folders.
“Next if you are going to publish something that is utterly obvious, YOU OUGHT TO COUNT CORRECTLY. They fucked up the most basic data tasks.”
And every time they eff up the most basic data tasks, it miraculously produces the result alarmists expect and want. Every. Single. Time. But, hey, trust science, yah?
The contrarians you hate the most would be considered consensus members under the definition of the term. You call them contrarians because 1 they notice the eff ups 2. b. they noticed the most alarmed either have no interest in actual emissions reductions or tacitly endorse policies that would increase emissions and 3. they noticed sensitivity is significantly lower than what alarmists claim and no eff up in the world can change that.
izen –
Oy.
In case it wasn’t obvious, that should have been moderator variable vs. mediator variable…, not mediator variable vs. mediator variable…(re: strengths of identity orientation specific to climate change).
Jeff –
2. b. they noticed the most alarmed either have no interest in actual emissions reductions or tacitly endorse policies that would increase emissions
Just curious, how did you develop your expertise in mind-reading?
Note to the statistically challenged:
1. You decide on a sample design.
2. You sample.
3. You analyze the data.
4. Do not go back to 1.
Absent a pre-analysis plan that justifies a sample adjustment based on the observations, the Petersen data is contaminated and cannot be used for analysis.
It may of course be that they have a pre-analysis plan but “forgot” to publish it. In that case, their analysis is flawed because it does not take into account the censoring that took place.
RT,
I realise that pointing this out to you again is probably pointless, but if your intent is to generate two independent samples, then you really do need to do something if – for some reason – you end up with elements in both samples. The key thing is to be open about your strategy, not to simply design a strategy and stick to it at all costs (there may be occasions when the latter is appropriate, but it doesn’t have to *always* be the case).
“Just curious, how did you develop your expertise in mind-reading?”
I don’t read minds, I read news. Take Germany, for example, because there are no “contrarians” or Republicans. They are about to turn off zero CO2 emissions nuclear power plants and replace them with natural gas.
Then let’s look at the international agreements on climate- the ones that explicitly allowed a massive, rapid growth in CO2 emissions in China. In fact it didn’t just allow it, they encouraged western nations to move their stinky, icky manufacturing to China.
So massive was this growth that the world now faces the obvious fact that even if Europe and the US went to zero emissions, the world fries (under your sensitivity assumptions). But you think RCP8.5 will frighten the US and Europe to do this anyway, threads like this show us you think only a handful of “contrarians” miraculously stop you, and yet any cursory glance at global news shows that nobody, anywhere, is adopting the policies you want for the simple reason that they are patently ridiculous.
@Wotts
I look forward to reading the pre-analysis plan that describes exactly that, and the appendix that shows that correcting for selection and censoring does not affect the results.
Ask a stupid question…
RT,
Clearly modifying the sample affects the results. The key point is to be honest about what was done. The point I’m making (and I think this is self-evident) is that not all analyses have to follow precisely the pattern that you describe. For example, we’ve just submitted a paper where we removed one data point. The reason we did so was that it was clearly discrepant relative to the other data points. We didn’t really know why, but it was an observation made in a different mode and there are indications that the data reduction software produces a slightly different offset for data observed in different modes. Should we have simply left it in because it was a valid observations, or should we have removed it because it seemed obviously discrepant and we at least had some reason why it *might* have been different? Could have done either, but whatever you do, you have to at least make it clear. Not all research has to be undetaken using the method mandated by Richard Tol (as much as you might like that to be the case).
For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not defending the paper we’re discussing in this thread (there do indeed seem to be methodological issues) I’m simply suggesting that RT’s objection seems to be silly.
“Absent a pre-analysis plan that justifies a sample adjustment based on the observations, the Petersen data is contaminated and cannot be used for analysis.”
It isn’t sample adjustment though, as I have already pointed out, it is mislabeling. I’m not surprised that Prof. Tol is ignoring my answers to his objections (even though he explicitly included me in the discussion “@wotts, dikran I know one of you is a statistician.”), it is what he does every time we discuss technical matters.
Now if Prof. Tol can explain a sampling scheme to which he would not object, that would be more constructive.
“Clearly modifying the sample affects the results. ” in this case in favour of the contrarians AFAICS (i.e. against the research hypothesis).
Prof. Tol wrote ” look forward to reading the pre-analysis plan that describes exactly that, and the appendix that shows that correcting for selection and censoring does not affect the results.”
Rather ironic from the author of a paper with a statistical analysis that is obviously sensitive to a single outlier data point, that apparently wasn’t investigated. This statistical rigor cuts both ways.
@dikran
Look, a squirrel!
@wotts
This is not a caveat that you should be honest about. This is a fatal flaw.
(This is a re-post of this comment, which somehow got lost.)
Dave_Geologist quoted me saying, “…rising CO2 levels are beneficial…” and replied, “Sounds pretty contrarian to me dave. Any (scientific) evidence to back that up?”
Certainly, Dave!
Rising CO2 levels are “greening” the Earth. This is a slide from a presentation by Boston U.’s Ranga B. Myneni, showing satellite-measured vegetation trends. Red is areas with reduced vegetation, green is areas with increased vegetation, white is no vegetation or barren, and grey is where the data does not show a statistically significant greening or browning:
Here’s NASA video about it:
Here’re some papers about it:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6338/635
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
Even CSIRO noticed:
https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2013/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2
In an article entitled, Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?, National Geographic reported about the dramatic improvement in conditions in the Sahel (the southern edge of the Sahara). Excerpts:
Rising CO2 levels are making agriculture more productive. There’s a very strong consensus, confirmed by thousands of peer-reviewed agricultural studies, that elevated CO2 levels (eCO2) greatly benefit agriculture.
That fact has been known to science for more than a century. Arrhenius predicted the benefits of CO2 fertilization, global warming, and Arctic amplification, in his 1908 book; here’s a short excerpt:
In a 1920 article, Scientific American called anthropogenic CO2 the “precious air fertilizer.” From this photo, which accompanied the article, you can certainly see why:
The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a 501(c)(3) educational charity, which maintains a huge and extremely useful plant growth database, which catalogs scientific studies of the effects of varying CO2 levels on hundreds of plants. On average, very roughly, about a 20% improvement in agricultural yields, so far, can be attributed to rising CO2 levels. If we didn’t have the benefit of that improvement, we could approximately make up for the loss by converting all the world’s rain forests to agriculture.
eCO2 also makes plants more drought-tolerant and water-efficient, by improving stomatal conductance relative to transpiration, which is especially helpful in arid regions. When air passes through plant stomata (pores), two things happen: the plant absorbs CO2, and the plant loses water through transpiration. When CO2 levels are higher, the ratio of CO2 absorbed to water lost improves, which improves both plant growth and drought resistance. The plants also commonly respond to elevated CO2 by reducing the density of the stomata in their leaves, which reduces water loss. Recent research has found that: “Land plants are absorbing 17% more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere now than 30 years ago… [yet] the vegetation is hardly using any extra water to do it, suggesting that global change is causing the world’s plants to grow in a more water-efficient way.”
“There have been many studies on the interaction of CO2 and water on plant growth. Under elevated CO2, less water is used to produce each unit of dry matter by reducing stomatal conductance.” Chun, et al, 2010
As CO2 levels rise, so do the agricultural benefits, as you can see in this graph:
But you can also see from that graph that eCO2 is most beneficial for C3 & CAM plants. That includes all vegetables, fruits, legumes & trees, plus many grains, including wheat, rice, oats, barley & rye. However, it used to be thought that C4 crops benefit only slightly, except under drought conditions. But recent studies find even the two most important C4 crops, corn & sugarcane, both benefit greatly from eCO2:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00103624.2018.1448413
https://pubag.nal.usda.gov/pubag/downloadPDF.xhtml?content=PDF&id=32236
Increased agricultural productivity due to rising CO2 level is one of the reasons that famines are becoming increasingly rare, for the first time in human history.
That’s a Very Big Deal. Famine used to be a scourge comparable to war and epidemic, the “third horseman of the Apocalypse.” For comparison, WWII killed 2.7% of the world’s population, and the catastrophic 1918 flu pandemic killed about 2% of the world’s population. But the global drought and famine of 1876-78 killed about 3.7% of the worlds population.
Recent research indicates that eCO2 also helps salt marshes resist encroachment by rising sea-level, because the extra CO2 helps the vegetation grow faster.
A 2012 paper in the journal Tree Physiology reports that higher CO2 levels even helps to improve the ability of pine trees to resist damage from pine bark beetles:
https://academic.oup.com/treephys/article/32/6/752/1663608
That’s just hitting the high spots. I could keep going, but this is probably sufficient to explain why we so-called “contrarians” conclude that the net effects of rising CO2 levels are positive.
RT,
Are you referring to the example I provided? If so, that’s a somewhat bizarre response.
@-Joshua
“I’m not quite sure I understand how you are using “determine” and “establish” there. They seem fairly close in meaning to me in this context.”
The prevailing economic and political dogmas within a society are determined by the historical path and prevailing power elites.
The media, often by ‘virtue’ of its ownership or dependence on the dominant economic authorities within a society then establish those dogmas by framing all problems and solutions within the constraints of those dogmas.
@-“but I suspect that strength of identity orientation specific to the issue of climate change, is an important moderator variable (or perhaps even mediator) variable that influences the strength of that correlation.”
I doubt they are independent, a strong identification with a neoliberal dogma would not be associated with a weak position of CCC at the individual level.
Certainly at the media level that establishes the prevailing dogma, a ‘free market’, minimal governance position is unlikely to advocate for mitigation, or even admit the need for it.
@- “I stumbled across this….
…Perhaps unexpectedly, citizens on the right report greater personal willingness to pay to fight climate change than do citizens on the left in former Communist countries.”
Interesting.
I would speculate that the increase in polarization in Europe post the 2008 crash was a consequence of the economic polarization of neoliberal austerity versus Keynesian solutions. (Hayek won)
The apparent reversal of attitudes in former communist countries might be because the right in those nations embraced the cult of individual responsibility over communal action and the moral superiority of ‘free markets’.
With all the well established consequences of much of the means of wealth production ending up in the hands of a few individual oligarchs.
@-daveburton
“but this is probably sufficient to explain why we so-called “contrarians” conclude that the net effects of rising CO2 levels are positive.”
I think you are overplaying your hand.
The advantages in CO2 greening are trumped by the advantages of fossil fuel use to provide fertiliser, farm machinery and food transport. That along with a shift from labour intensive small farms to industrial scale agri-business and plant breeding has had a FAR greater influence on increasing crop yields and avoiding starvation than the impact of raised CO2.
The claim that higher CO2 levels make crops more resilient in the face of drought or heatwaves may be true, but then raised CO2 has increased the chances of drought and heatwaves. Are you really willing to bet the net effect is significantly positive.?
Of course the raised CO2 that aids some plants manage water shortage better (but reduces protein yield) does nothing to help plants cope with flooding.
But then contrarians can always reject that a climate on steroids is going to exhibit greater extremes and attribute it instead to… reasons?
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/volumes-of-flood-delayed-crops-picking-up-in-midwest
“The USDA anticipates some effects on agricultural production in marketing year (MY) 2019/20 as a result of the flooding and planting issues, particularly for corn. According to the latest (June) World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, USDA forecasts U.S. farmers will produce 13.68 billion bushels (bbu) of corn in MY2019/20, down 1.35 bbu (9 percent) from its previous projection in May. If realized, this would be the lowest volume of corn production since MY2015/16, down 7 percent from the three-year average.”
izen –
> The prevailing economic and political dogmas within a society are determined by the historical path and prevailing power elites.
The media, often by ‘virtue’ of its ownership or dependence on the dominant economic authorities within a society then establish those dogmas by framing all problems and solutions within the constraints of those dogmas.
I think that “the media” largely reflect corporate interests…but nonetheless, I question what I interpret as the chain of causality in what you wrote. I think that (at least to some extent) the more direct link is from historical path and prevailing power elites to the identification of media consumers, and then the media gives consumers what they they like to consume (i.e., media that reflects existing dogma).
> Certainly at the media level that establishes the prevailing dogma, a ‘free market’, minimal governance position is unlikely to advocate for mitigation, or even admit the need for it.
Except we see a fair amount of corporate media that is actually pretty oriented toward mitigation in balance – even if not as strongly as some would like.
And I don’t see why the historical path/prevailing power elites ===>> media ==>> public chain of causality would result in notably different levels of polarization cross-nationally. My sense of it is that it goes more like historical path/prevailing power elites ===> affect identity in the public orientation in a rather context specific way ===>> consumers want media that reflect their ideological preferences.
Has Fox News gained so much prominence amidst the right wing because it created an audience where it didn’t exist previously, or has it gained so much influence because for the first time the rightwing found media that reinforced what they want to believe? I would think that there is a lot of bidirectional flow and many different feedback loops.
Just one comment as Victor Venena made a false statement about water vapor trends that he claimed I made. I never said it was decreasing. Probably did not know I would read Ken Rice’s post on the defamatory article in Nature Communication, which is the subject he should have been talking about not a manufactured issue with me. He was blocked on my twitter due to his rudeness.
Victor Venena’s comment is a good example of trashing someone behind their back. He should have alerted me to his critical claim and given me a chance to respond. But this backstabbing is apparently now “normal” in the climate science and policy issue, unfortunately.
@-Joshua
“or has it gained so much influence because for the first time the rightwing found media that reinforced what they want to believe?”
I am not rejecting the role of bi-directional feedbacks.
But I do have a problem with the idea that people have some innate desire to become more polarized or extreme in their beliefs that is only reinforced, not created, by media manipulation.
It could be shorter, but as a means of embedding a political process in a personal story it is quite effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad
> Take Germany, for example, because there are no “contrarians” or Republicans.
Every road leads to nukes, JeffN. Drive-by done.
***
> I look forward to reading the pre-analysis
I look forward to the 300 papers promised in 2015, Richie.
***
> Victor Venena […] should have alerted me
I point at this:
That is all.
Senior should take issue with VeeV’s post elsewhere.
izen –
> But I do have a problem with the idea that people have some innate desire to become more polarized or extreme in their beliefs that is only reinforced, not created, by media manipulation.
How about the possibility that the media is a vehicle easily used by polarization merchants, (e.g, Donald Trump) seeking to exploit the public’s proclivity toward polarization – for their own political and financial gain, more than a cohesive entity seeking to polarize. I think that the media comprise too many individuals who have no particular intent to polarize (or even manipulate) for it to function as some collective entity seeking to achieve such a goal.
“This kind of nit picking and complaining about a few people would not change the results.”
Really? The media counts for marc Moreno come largely FROM HIS OWN BLOG
Richard Betts counts include 83 mentions in the laguna beach times.. None of them correct.
There is no evidence they got ANY of the counts correct.
This is simple. What they purport to show is neither novel, suprising, or interesting.
If fact it is SO trivially true that you can fuck up everything , labelling, Design of experiment, basic counting and STILL get a generally true result.
ATTP
You do in part seem to be approving of this paper as per your para beiginning “Whatever you think of the merits of the paper, it does seem to nicely illustrate that …”.
That you took those two inferences shows the importance of carefully thinking through the experimental design. They aren’t illustrated by this study.
The way the samples are drawn simply shows that the highly cited researchers aren’t particularly represented in the sources for the “contrarians” (and we know nothing from this study about whether either group “substantively dispute our basic understanding of climate change” – we already have a number of the “contrarians” asserting otherwise), and there is nothing unique about “contrarians” and the thin bench. It probably cuts both ways – there is a limited number of vocal climate emergency advocates “who would also be regarded as leading researchers”, but the study didn’t sample the former so we are none the wiser.
You could find it a useful exercise to think through what the experiment would look like to illustrate (or otherwise) your points. I don’t think it would look anything like this, and would pose some useful methodological issues.
> It probably cuts both ways
You could find it a useful exercise to think through an experiment and show this, HAS.
Morano is the most mentioned skeptic with 4000+ mentions
80% of those come from HIS OWN FRICKING BLOG.
Ask yourself how this supports what we all know is true. That the media mentions him more than
is justified by his non existent science publications..
FFS they should at least cull out self mentions.
Willard
Simple to design hard to operationalise. First you need a clear staement of hypothesis – perhaps something like in XYZ database of media reports, the proportion of those that exaggerate the impacts of climate change that are also highly cited in XYZ database in the domain they comment on is significantly lower than the corresponding proportion that minimise the impacts.
Of course you immediately see the difficult bits e.g. “exaggerate”, “minimise” etc. But it skill in doing that stuff that warrents publication in high impact journals rather than running fancy statistical analyses on a bunch of poorly specified, dare I say it, garbage to get a result that sits happily within the current milleau.
But I suppose Nature Communications is a journal, and what was done could be acceptable as low rent journalism.
dikranmarsupial wrote, “Interesting that Murry Salby isn’t on the list…”
Salby isn’t a conventional climate skeptic / lukewarmer. He would call himself a skeptic, but I wouldn’t.
Salby is one of a handful of people, along with Ed Berry, Hermann Harde & a couple of others, who argue that human emissions of CO2 are not the reason that CO2 levels have risen. They claim, instead, that warming temperatures caused CO2 levels to rise.
That’s complete nonsense. Salby would have you believe that the anthropogenic CO2 just vanishes from the atmosphere, and that CO2 level is increasing by more than 2 ppmv each year simply because global mean temperatures are now about 1°C warmer than they were during the Little Ice Age.
I posted a critique of one of Salby’s lectures, in the comments on the youtube video, in two parts: here, and here.
@-Joshua
“I think that the media comprise too many individuals who have no particular intent to polarize (or even manipulate) for it to function as some collective entity seeking to achieve such a goal.”
I plead guilty to using ‘the media’ as a collective term for a disparate, and in some societies, a diverse system of public discourse. However even the most diverse and uncommitted media operate within the constraints of the social zeitgeist of the dominant dogmas.
@-“the media is a vehicle easily used by polarization merchants, (e.g, Donald Trump) seeking to exploit the public’s proclivity toward polarization – for their own political and financial gain”
I would still dispute that individuals have a proclivity for polarization.
Near were I live a dead and partially dismembered cat was found in a front garden. Someone called the police, and an animal ‘welfare’ group based 50 miles away has distributed flyers in the area warning that there may be a person or group performing ritual mutilation of pets in the area. It asks for any sightings of suspicious people or behaviour and recommends that people keep their pets indoors. The police had a vet examine the cat, and the conclusion was that it was the result of animal predation after a car collision. the welfare group claimed the police were lying and concealing the ‘Truth’…
Perhaps better is that people have a preference at least, for simple conspiracy narratives that position them as the ‘good guys’ heroically opposing the bad and evil forces. This can be seen in the attachment to religious faith.
The polarization then arises because the worse your opponents, the better and higher the moral ground you occupy.
The application of this to both sides in the Climateball(tm) wars should be obvious.
Richard Tol wrote “@dikran
Look, a squirrel!”
No Richard, I explained why your analogy was not analogous. You obviously have no better response to what I wrote than silly blog-rhetoric. I’m surprised an eminent professor of economics can’t do better.
izen wrote, “The advantages in CO2 greening are trumped by the advantages of fossil fuel use to provide fertiliser, farm machinery and food transport. That along with a shift from labour intensive small farms to industrial scale agri-business and plant breeding has had a FAR greater influence on increasing crop yields and avoiding starvation than the impact of raised CO2.”
Agreed, though “complemented” would be a better word than “trumped.” Along with better pesticides, GMO crops, etc. Many things have contributed to improved agricultural yields, eCO2 (elevated CO2) is just one of them.
izen wrote, “The claim that higher CO2 levels make crops more resilient in the face of drought or heatwaves may be true, but then raised CO2 has increased the chances of drought and heatwaves.”
I didn’t say “or heatwaves.” It is drought which has the potential to devastate crops, not heatwaves.
Rising CO2 levels do raise temperatures (slightly), but they do not worsen droughts. Refs:
1. Global: https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata20141
2. United States: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/uspa/wet-dry/0
izen wrote, “Of course the raised CO2 that aids some plants manage water shortage better (but reduces protein yield)…”
You’ve got that backward, on both counts.
1. eCO2 doesn’t help just some plants withstand water shortage, it helps nearly all plants withstand water shortages.
For example, wheat:
Fitzgerald, G. J. et al (2016), Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi‐arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Glob Change Biol, 22: 2269-2284. doi:10.1111/gcb.13263
2. Under contrived conditions, in soil with a shortage of fixed nitrogen, the higher productivity due to eCO2 can result in lower protein levels in crops (because proteins contain nitrogen, and carbohydrates don’t), but not lower total “protein yields.”
This concern doesn’t apply when agricultural best practices are followed.
This concern also does not apply to legumes (beans, peas, peanuts, alfalfa, clover, etc.), which are the crops most commonly grown for their high protein content, since legumes fix their own nitrogen, via symbiotic bacteria. (Note: legumes benefit tremendously from eCO2.)
The faster crops grow, the more nutrients they need. Competent farmers know that, and fertilize accordingly (or, for nitrogen, they may plant legumes). If you fail to follow best agricultural practices, and don’t fertilize according to the needs of your crops, then the result may be substantial reductions in protein and/or micronutrient levels in the resulting crops. The cause of those reductions is not higher CO2 levels, it’s poor agricultural practices. Adequate fertilization alleviates most or all of the reduction.
The most prominent proponent of the “nutritional scare” is mathematician Irakli Loladze. He and I had an informal “debate” on that topic, in the comments on my answer to a Quora question about an article about him and his theories. (If you’re not a registered Quora member, I don’t think you can see the comments, but I saved a copy here.) Our dialogue there is closest thing to a substantive debate about this issue that I’m aware of, anywhere.
The tl;dr version is that, while it is possible to contrive circumstances under which certain nutrient levels are reduced in some crops (though not total nutrient content), when grown with eCO2, in the real world it’s a pretty much negligible effect. Dr. Loladze conceded to me that with adequate fertilization there’s little or no negative impact on the food quality when eCO2 is used to increase productivity:
Human activities (mostly fossil fuel use) have raised outdoor CO2 levels by about 130 ppmv, from about 280 ppmv to about 410 ppmv. By comparison, commercial greenhouses typically use CO2 generators to keep daytime CO2 levels at 1200 to 1500 ppmv, which is an increase 6 to 9 times as great.
If the modest increase in outdoor CO2 levels were making crops significantly less nutritious, then crops grown in greenhouses at dramatically higher CO2 levels would presumably be dramatically less nutritious than crops grown outdoors.
But they aren’t, of course. Food grown in greenhouses with eCO2 has about the same nutritional value as food grown in open fields at ambient CO2 levels.
izen wrote, “…does nothing to help plants cope with flooding….
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/volumes-of-flood-delayed-crops-picking-up-in-midwest
“The USDA anticipates some effects on agricultural production in marketing year (MY) 2019/20 as a result of the flooding and planting issues, particularly for corn. According to the latest (June) World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, USDA forecasts U.S. farmers will produce 13.68 billion bushels (bbu) of corn in MY2019/20, down 1.35 bbu (9 percent) from its previous projection in May. If realized, this would be the lowest volume of corn production since MY2015/16, down 7 percent from the three-year average.”
That’s true. Of course, floods and droughts still happen.
Corn is apparently the crop that is being hurt the most by this year’s midwest floods. The harvest is supposed to be terrrrible.
But terrible relative to what? Here’s an article, from Monday:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/corn-futures-fall-after-usda-forecasts-bigger-than-expected-us-crop.html
Excerpt:
So, U.S. corn yields this year are projected to be the worst they’ve been in the last four years…
OR the fifth-best in history.
In fact, it’s actually BOTH! Really!
That’s right: those statements are just two different spins on the same news.
The real story is that rising CO2 levels and manmade climate change are “greening” the Earth, helping to cause agricultural yields to soar, and helping make famines rarer than they have ever been. But you’ll never hear that good news from… {my usual rant about biased news media omitted, for brevity}.
Here’s an article about last year’s corn yields:
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/corn-and-soybean-yields-are-yuuuge
Corn yields per acre in 2018 were the 2nd-highest in history. That’s six times what they were back when atmospheric CO2 was at 300 ppmv, circa 1920. (Average CO2 level last year was about 408 ppmv.)
Here’s a graph of U.S. corn yields:
That graph doesn’t show 2017 or 2018, but 2017 set an all-time record with average yields of 178.4 bu/acre, and 2018 was close behind at around 176.4 bu/acre
Both 2017 & 2018 exceeded 2016’s record-setting yield of 174.6.bu/acre, 2015’s 168.4 bu/acre, and 2014’s 171 bu/acre.
Note the resemblance of the corn yield graph to a graph of CO2 levels:
https://sealevel.info/co2.html
That resemblance is partially coincidental. Rising CO2 levels helped corn yields, but most of the improvement in corn yields was not due to CO2. Corn is a “C4” plant, and C4 plants benefit less from rising CO2 than most crops (which are “C3” plants). So higher CO2 levels were probably responsible for less than 20% of the improvement.
Richard Tol wrote “This is not a caveat that you should be honest about. This is a fatal flaw.”
A bit like using the marginal assumption in your consensus paper comment, which is very obviously incorrect, or coming to the conclusion that the literature supports modest benefits for warming when only one paper in the survey (which happens to be your own) actually predicts a non-negligible benefit.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQB7FXpVm5EfOhi2ozn_ZHH4b9bKJknACWbT_cAeVaZvsf8Wx0-
It isn’t a fatal flaw. I have already explained why, and you have not engaged with the explanation at all.
Sorry, the picture in the previous post should have been this one (should have checked the file extension)
daveburton – they are climate skeptics they are arguing that the warming is not anthropogenic, but picking the strongest link in the physics to attack and fail miserably.
Roger,
Well, to be fair, you have had a chance to respond.
Prof. Pielke Sr wrote:
For an example of trashing someone behind their back, how about:
https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/1013780727022796800
Note Prof Pielke could have tagged in John Cook or @skepticalscience, but did not do so. I responded by politely pointing out, with the evidence that his own interaction there had actually been rather poor. The result, he blocked me (the block has since been lifted).
It is hypocrisy to suggest that other should alert you when you are criticised if you do not also offer that courtesy to those that you criticise.
Oops, I meant to include my tweet providing evidence of Prof Pielke Sr’s behaviour as well, try again:
Dave,
I’m going to post your comment, but I do have a limit.
For example:
I think you’re confusing “has not yet” with “does not”. Also, there are regions where we have had droughts that have been linked to anthropogenic influences.
There are some things that I think are now pretty self-evident and I’m not really all that interested in having discussions with people who are likely to parrot nonsense. For example, increasing CO2 clearly leads to warming and, in fact, most of the observed warming to date is anthropogenic. This warming will intensify the hydrological cycle which will mean enhanced evaporation in some regions, and enhanced precipitation in others. This may not be easy to directly link to droughts and floods, but the idea that it will have no impact is bizarre. Yes, greening has happened but one cannot definitively claim that this will be a positive under all possible future emission scenarios. Even people who work on this, object to this characterisation.
@wotts
Sorry for being unclear.
Reducing the sample based on observations of the variable-of-interest is a fatal flaw. It’s not a caveat.
Not correcting your analysis for selection bias (should a third party have done so) would also sink any paper in a statistically sophisticated journal.
RT,
Hmm, interesting. When you say things like this about topics you clearly don’t understand, I can never quite tell if you’re being serious, or just can’t be bothered actually having a genuine discussion. In this context, I don’t think selection bias is really an issue. We are talking about observation of a single system (a star) and we’re talking about observations that can be turned into something (radial velocity) that can then be used to infer something about the system (how massive is the companion planet?). If we were confident that all the observations were accurate, then dropping some would typically produce a less precise result. However, if we have a reason to think that some observations are discrepant (observed in a different mode and hence have a different offset) then keeping them produces a less precise, and possibly less accurate, result. If you have enough of these discrepant data points, you could keep them all and simply allow them to have a different offset to the other data points (this is what we do if you combine data from different instruments). If you only have one, you can’t do this.
If you are serious, then I think what your comment mostly illustrates is that probably simplistic to argue that climate scientists need to work more with professional statisticians.
“Reducing the sample based on observations of the variable-of-interest is a fatal flaw.”
How many times does it need to be said that they weren’t reduced based on the variable-of-interest, but because of the category? They weren’t taken off the list because of their citations, but because of their contrarianism (for want of a better term) and AFAICS doing so reduced the case made by the paper, rather than strengthening it.
“Not correcting your analysis for selection bias (should a third party have done so) would also sink any paper in a statistically sophisticated journal.”
As if Prof. Tol’s papers didn’t contain flaws that ought to have sunk some of his paper, and that he refuses to discuss.
Pielke: “Victor Venena’s comment is a good example of trashing someone behind their back. He should have alerted me to his critical claim and given me a chance to respond. But this backstabbing is apparently now “normal” in the climate science and policy issue, unfortunately.”
The climate branch of the US culture war where people find pointing to the truth rude.
The climate branch of the US culture war where people who block me for pointing out the truth want to get an alert.
dikranmarsupial: “Note Prof Pielke could have tagged in John Cook or @skepticalscience, but did not do so. I responded by politely pointing out, with the evidence that his own interaction there had actually been rather poor. The result, he blocked me (the block has since been lifted).”
The climate branch of the US culture war where people find it completely normal to complain other do what they do themselves. (And tagging someone on Twitter is easier than doing so on blogs where I am not aware of the social rule to give people alerts.)
You gotta love the climate branch of the childish US culture war.
VV: “This kind of nit picking and complaining about a few people would not change the results. ”
Steven Mosher: “Really? The media counts for marc Moreno come largely FROM HIS OWN BLOG Richard Betts counts include 83 mentions in the laguna beach times.. None of them correct. There is no evidence they got ANY of the counts correct.”
Nice that you bring up new topics, but I hope you do not mind if I do not put in the work to defend claims I did not make. My point was that the categorization of a few people in a sample of hundreds of people will not change the final result.
Even afterwards, an infamous professor in economics called this minor detail a “fatal flaw”, which does not increase my trust in the economics profession. Although to be fair, hiring errors happen everywhere.
Steven Mosher: “This is simple. What they purport to show is neither novel, suprising, or interesting. If fact it is SO trivially true that you can fuck up everything , labelling, Design of experiment, basic counting and STILL get a generally true result.”
I have not seen many (any?) defending this study, what I see are people pointing out that, again, the arguments of the climate “sceptics” make no sense. In this case there would have been valid arguments in how the two groups were selected, but this is rarely mentioned. It gives the impression that valid arguments are taboo in this tiny subgroup of humanity because they are not sufficiently divisive.
The paper doesn’t show anything about “contrarians” either, given the selection. I’m way down but still (#363) among those, knowing what I did and did not: helped review an NIPCC book and signed a petition in connection with COP 15 (what brought me onto also the Anderegg et al. blacklist back then). Not against publicity as such yet reluctant while still synthesizing, I hardly show in any media at all, only have not refrained from occasional commenting, still, felt as also holder of degree (in Phys.Geogr.) you want to show some flag – not a publishing scientist any longer, but might still contribute in the future. The libelously false about the article lies in sweeping wording about future misinformation emanating from listed-ones, myself included then.
Soren,
What is “libelously false”? I’m not following what you’re saying at the end of your comment.
Hypothesis:-
There are people that are involved in the US/UK media discourse on climate change that show an inverse relationship between the scientific credibility and degree of exposure.
They can be seperated into two groups, contrarians with low science credibility but high exposure, and climate change activists with high science credibility but low exposure.
Research published confirms this.
The contrarians proceed to use all the usual tricks to discredit it.
The groups are dissimilar; (which is kinda the point…)
The statistics are flawed;
The research omits/includes some outliers;
The study is partisan…
But the real interest should be WHY there are two groups that can be distinguished (however inexactly) that show this dichotomy.
It is not the fault of either the CCC or the CCS group, both are being used by larger social forces.
VV Ironically, in that interaction on SKS, Prof Pielke Sr demonstrated a worrying lack of understanding of the statistics of tend analysis (specifically the importance of statistical power if you want to draw conclusions from a lack of a significant trend).
ATTP: “What is “libelously false”? I’m not following what you’re saying at the end of your comment.”
Sweepingly relating the CCC list to misinformation, as in “many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale”. Unless really checking, a reader has my name implicated as more-likely-than-not contributing there.
“Libelously false” meaning not just normally false like other – indeed – misinformation in the paper, but among what e.g. breaches ethical code and could have a publisher sued.
“Prof Pielke Sr demonstrated a worrying lack of understanding of the statistics of tend analysis (specifically the importance of statistical power if you want to draw conclusions from a lack of a significant trend).”
To be fair, Pielke is a regional climate modeller.
Which, in this climate “debate” where a main deceptive point is that all the evidence for climate change comes from climate models, is also somewhat ironic.
@-Sören Floderus
“The libelously false about the article lies in sweeping wording about future misinformation emanating from listed-ones, myself included then.”
So there will be no future repeat of this sort of past misinformation ?
His Excellency Ban Ki Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, NY
United States of America
8 December 2009
Dear Secretary-General,
Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.
Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.
We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.
Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:
Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;
The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;
Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.
It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.
Signed by:
Sören Floderus
VV said:
“To be fair, Pielke is a regional climate modeller.”
Yes, most of his research appears to be below the synoptic scale and into the mesoscale
This doesn’t mean he is clueless with respect to other aspects, as this stuff is challenging enough as it is (except to me 🙂
Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit reduces global vegetation growth
> climate scientists need to work more with professional statisticians.
In fairness, Richie is more of an econometrician, which means he can try to second guess not only other scientists from other fields, but also economists:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/07/23/instead-he-simply-pretended-the-other-two-estimates-did-not-exist-that-is-inexcusable/
Soren,
Something is only really libelous if it’s not true.
That petition was mostly science-oriented, true, and had nothing on the benefits of CO2 or other talking-points. I didn’t like the word “proven” and “prove” though – that’s how it is.
Soren,
This has been done, time and time again. The probability that recent climate change is of mostly natural origin is extremely small.
Sören seems to be seeking legal advice:
Our Viscount is very rich. I’m sure he could help, besides providing free legal advice.
ATTP, obviously I disagree, but yes all boils down to certainty, and is a matter of communities finding together and learning gradually: detection of solar-climatic links not yet incorporated.
Willard, I doubt it be the way to go; I haven’t asked directly either.
> detection of solar-climatic links not yet incorporated.
That’s the kind of comment that makes one a contrarian, Sören, e.g.:
Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf
Using “but uncertainty” to minimize AGW may only be good enough to parry accusations of denial.
izen –
Not that I want to distract from “skeptics” getting the vapors because “alarmists” call them names…
> Perhaps better is that people have a preference at least, for simple conspiracy narratives that position them as the ‘good guys’ heroically opposing the bad and evil forces. This can be seen in the attachment to religious faith.
The polarization then arises because the worse your opponents, the better and higher the moral ground you occupy.
======
I agree. I’m sure that saying people are naturally inclined towards polarization is inaccurately reductionist. People are naturally inclined towards many things, including cooperation. Likewise, the term “tribal” is problematic.
But yeah, people like to be good guys, and sometimes a good way to be a good guy is to identify a bad guy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/pundits-who-decry-tribalism-know-nothing-about-real-tribes/2019/01/29/8d14eb44-232f-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html
> The application of this to both sides in the Climateball(tm) wars should be obvious.
=====
No doubt.
Currently in the “skept-o-sphere”
Amd no one, I mean no one, gets the vapors quite like Monckton (although Willis runs a respectable second place).
Willard, “That’s the kind of comment that makes one a contrarian, Sören, e.g.”
Except no, “contrarian” would imply just opposing, without necessarily valid argumentation.
Soren., opposing with invalid argumentation (c.f. the NIPCC report, which implies the rise in CO2 is natural) is contrarianism.
Contrarianism just means disagreeing with the mainstream position. If you don’t accept the mainstream position, then you are a contrarian. It isn’t a big deal, it is a natural part of science for there to be people who don’t agree with the mainstream position.
> Except no, “contrarian” would imply just opposing, without necessarily valid argumentation.
You don’t get to decide what “contrarian” means, Sören. You can check thy Wiki for more.
Here’s something you might like:
Forgot to add: if anyone has citations I can add to the Matrix, I’ll take them.
[One drive-by is enough, Dave. No more spam. -W]
dikranmarsupial, “opposing with invalid argumentation (c.f. the NIPCC report, which implies the rise in CO2 is natural) is contrarianism”
Might well be, but is not anything I wrote or think.
I was pointing out your error in two parts. (i) not all of the arguments are valid (in fact few of them are) and (ii) whether the argument is valid or not is irrelevant to whether someone is a contrarian, as it simply means someone that doesn’t agree with the mainstream view.
I am not in the least surprised you ignored (ii) entirely.
Dave –
> What’s more, even though both droughts and floods can be catastrophic, droughts used to be worse. Modern history records no flood disaster comparable to the global drought and famine of 1876-78, which killed about 3.7% of the worlds population.
====
Given technological and infrastructure developments in the last 150 years, I would think that events in the 1870’s might be of questionable value for judging the risks posed by risks and floods, respectively.
For example, do you have any numbers on deaths in the US from drought as compared to deaths in the US from flooding over the past two decades or so?
Dave,
Your comments are way too long. Maybe you could be a little more succint.
I think your claims about droughts are simply wrong. Got to Chapter 3 of the National Climate Assessment. For example
You also say:
This is simply nonsense. Anthropogenically-driven global warming will almost certainly lead to enhanced evaporation and will also change the distribution of precipitation events. It’s exactly this kind of thing that can influence the severity, and frequency, of droughts. To suggest that no such reason has been identified is bizarre.
dikranmarsupial wrote, “…the NIPCC report, which implies the rise in CO2 is natural…”
Citation, please? I am unaware of anything in any of the NIPCC reports which makes that mistake.
dikranmarsupial, your definition of contrarian includes all no matter how mainstream opposition was arrived at, contrarily or validly. I include only contrarian arrival.
dikran –
> as it simply means someone that doesn’t agree with the mainstream view.
I don’t want to get into a back and forth with you on this…but…
FWIW, I have a somewhat different perspective. I generally think of “contrarian” as a label for someone who disagrees basically for the sake of disagreeing.
I recognize that it can also have a more specific meaning – along the lines of someone who disagrees with the mainstream view (particularly in a scientific context).
I see this as somewhat to when “skeptics” use the term “alarmist” to label people who estimate the risks of ACO2 to be higher than they do themselves. The “skeptic” might respond that they are only using the term accurately to describe someone who expressed alarm over the risks posed by ACO2. But I think that they should understand and account for the fact that often the term “alarmist” has a pejorative connotation.
That said, “skeptics” getting the vapors about being called a contrarian is absurd, imo.
Page 164.
This is nonsense caused by not understanding the difference between residence time and adjustment time, which is a Carbon Cycle 101 topic. They also display rather poor scholarship in citing Essenhigh’s paper, but not my peer-reviewed comment on it that appeared in a later issue of the journal explaining that very point.
Joshua, given what happened earlier, I shall (as Jeeves would advise) issue a “nolle prosequi” on that.
Soren “dikranmarsupial, your definition of contrarian includes all no matter how mainstream opposition was arrived at, contrarily or validly. I include only contrarian arrival.”
Yes, feel free to redefine words however you like, but don’t expect everybody else to change their usage to suit you.
[source]
Not to settle the question, but instead to illustrate the problem with referencing dictionaries in such discussions:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/contrarian
O.K. Joshua, you make it impossible for me to continue here.
> I don’t want to get into a back and forth with you but
Then don’t.
dikran, exactly, key there is rejecting _majority_. The contrarian will often arrive at the invalid using a majority criterion. The simply _unconvinced_ rejecter, who may also come to reject the majority, only not invalidly (like a contrarian), still gets to be found in a minority camp, next to also contrarians.
> The simply _unconvinced_ rejecter
Whatever personal reason you may have for rejecting is immaterial, Sören. Rejecting is rejecting. Fancy footwork does not count.
Maybe we can avoid arguing about the definition of the word “contrarian”. It seems pretty clear that in the context of this paper it was simply used to describe a group who have an association with groups who typically argue against the consensus positions (humans are causing global warming, or that they might be but it isn’t yet serious, or won’t be serious – or some suitable variant of that).
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[Playing the ref. -W]
Well I just finished a look at the record for marc morano
Things to note:
1. he is the most highly mentioned denier in their database, with 5121 Mentions.
2. 3856 of these by the reaseachers own count come from Morano’s own blog.
So if the concern is deniers getting media attention, well YA, search for morano
and you will find his name on his ownn damn blog
3. There about 50 more mentions on drudge… these are just links to…. you guessed it,
marc morano’s blog.
Who else mentions Morano a lot?
Media matters
Think progress
Politico
Slate
Huffington
Daily Kos
http://oneworld.org
So ya, morano gets mentioned a lot, by himself, and by the left.
Oh ya, there are a bunch of entries from Wikipedia..Say what?
Here is a “media mention” of Morano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hayhoe
too fucking funny.
Now I can be pretty damn sure these guys didnt check their data. A cursory look at several files
indicates they didnt do some basic checking. FFS, they are filled with refrences that are dead links.
Jesus, it takes a couple minutes to write a script to load the link, download the page and visually
check that something is still there. Nothing there? sorry, you dont have a replicatable piece
of work. My advice to these clowns is this: When your claim relies on a text on the internet,
DOWNLOAD THE FRICKING TEXT and archive it. memory is cheap.
Further. It takes a little effort to categorize the various blogs/bloggers that mention deniers
to see that many of the mentions ARE NEGATIVE.. FFS. this is internet searching and scraping
101.
This is not nitpicking.
and dont even get me starting on the fact that 1 source ( about 10% of all their data) is seriously
fucked up and doesnt appear to have any articles on climate science.
Want another example?
Roy Spencer. 1064 mentions Who mentions Roy more?
CNN (2) or Daily Kos (6)
Forbes(4) or desmog(20)
Fox News (3) or the guardian(20)
Heartland (11) or the Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper (82)
Psst NONE of these 82 are correct.
National Review(1) Media matters (11)
New York Times (3) or Pronk Palisades(39)
who? Pronk Palisades of course. Here is a “media mention” about roy?
WTF? oh ya, dude has a website, repeats links at the bottom of his page.
It is a TRIVIAL MATTER TO CHECK AND CLEAN YOUR FUCKING DATA and delete sources that are nonsense.
who mentions roy more?
redstate? ( hint twice)
or skepticalscience? ( hint 21 times)
nit picking of course.
Lets look at Judith.
Who mentions her more than 1 time?
climatedepot.com 91
Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper, Our Town – Our Paper 83
Free Republic 29
Guardian 28
Daily Mail 23
wattsupwiththat.com 21
drudgereport 19
Examiner.com 17
skepticalscience.com 17
judithcurry.com 16
New York Times 16
Daily Caller 15
Think Progress 15
Washington Post 15
climateaudit.org 11
thenewamerican.com 11
Wonk Room » Home Page 11
austrianews 10
Breitbart 10
Reason 10
steynonline.com 10
wapedia.mobi 10
Power Line 9
The Register 9
westernfreepress.com 9
fabiusmaximus.com 8
onlineopinion.com.au 8
Washington Times 8
watchdog.org 8
catallaxyfiles.com 7
Instapundit.com 7
NH INSIDER 7
ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com 7
Reference, Facts, News – Free and Family-friendly Resources – Refdesk.com 7
bbc 6
Daily Kos 6
Forbes 6
FOX News 6
heartland.org 6
Media Matters 6
motls.blogspot.com 6
nofrakkingconsensus.com 6
pc.blogspot.co.uk 6
tbirdnow.mee.nu 6
Time 6
Wikipedia 6
yahoo.com 6
Althouse 5
Arizona Republic 5
bishophill.squarespace.com 5
Christian Science Monitor 5
cornwallalliance.org 5
desmogblog.com 5
eenews.net 5
hockeyschtick.blogspot.com 5
Huffington Post 5
jonjayray.comuv.com 5
kotv cbs 5
NPR 5
Real Clear Politics 5
scientificamericann 5
The Seattle Times 5
Transterrestrial Musings 5
Ace of Spades HQ 4
akdart.com 4
canadafreepress.com 4
Daily Herald – Arlington Heights, IL 4
Hyscience 4
Investors 4
notrickszone.com 4
One Citizen Speaking… 4
register-tech 4
scienceblogs.com 4
smalldeadanimals.com 4
sppiblog.org 4
Star Tribune 4
The Associated Press 4
The Boston Globe 4
The Daytona Beach News-Journal 4
The Orange County Register 4
The Tampa Tribune 4
thegwpf.org 4
thetruthseeker.co.uk 4
USAToday 4
WBOC-TV 4
WNYC 4
all around cleveland 3
American Power 3
American Thinker 3
AOL 3
archive.is 3
archive.org 3
bvblackspin.com 3
Campaign Desk: CJR 3
Common Sense and Wonder 3
houstonchronicle 3
Instapundit 3
katu abc 3
masterresource.org 3
Politico 3
pubsecrets.wordpress.com 3
reason.com 3
Samizdata.net 3
San Antonio Express News 3
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 3
sourcewatch.org 3
The Corner on National Review Online 3
The Denver Post 3
The Kansas City Star 3
The News & Observer 3
The Pirate’s Cove 3
The Providence Journal 3
The Sacramento Bee 3
TT’s Lost in Tokyo 3
Utne Reader 3
Washington Examiner 3
yidwithlid.blogspot.com 3
Albuquerque Journal 2
Alternet 2
andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com 2
Anorak News 2
answers.com 2
ARRA News Service 2
Ars Technica 2
Austin American-Statesman 2
billkerr2.blogspot.com 2
Bloodthirsty Liberal 2
California Home Page 2
CalWatchDog 2
carbonbrief.org 2
Cato 2
cjr.org 2
climatechange.procon.org 2
climatechangenationalforum.org 2
climatesciencewatch.org 2
climatism.net 2
Daily Headlines 2
Daily Telegraph 2
dailycaller.com 2
David Frum’s Diary on National Review Online 2
directorblue.blogspot.com 2
economictimes 2
FAIR 2
financialpost.com 2
Globe Gazette – North Iowa News 2
gopbriefingroom.com 2
greenfyre.wordpress.com 2
Grist 2
Hacker News 2
hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au 2
humanitariannews.org 2
investors.com 2
Israpundit 2
Just Average American» Discussing today’s political and cultural issues 2
kaltesonne.de 2
klimazwiebel.blogspot.com 2
LA Times 2
Laura Bassett 2
lepost.fr 2
Lexington Herald-Leader 2
loonpond.blogspot.com 2
Mother Jones 2
mrc.org 2
MSNBC 2
naturalnews.com 2
Nature 2
NBC News 2
oilprice.com 2
outersite.org 2
page : Appeal-Democrat 2
Pattericos Pontifications 2
peakoil.com 2
plos.org 2
populartechnology.net 2
pronkpops.wordpress.com 2
publishersglobal.com 2
punditpress.com 2
rabett.blogspot.com 2
reportingclimatescience.com 2
Right Wing News 2
ruvr-en 2
San Mateo Daily Journal 2
sciencemag.org 2
Sister Toldjah 2
soccer.fanhouse.com 2
Spectator 2
Start Thinking Right 2
texasgopvote.com 2
The Blaze 2
The Commercial Appeal 2
The Intercept 2
The Moderate Voice 2
The San Diego Union Tribune 2
The Volokh Conspiracy – – 2
theday.com 2
TorontoStar 2
triblive.com 2
Tulsa World 2
Twitchy 2
ucsusa.org 2
us.oneworld.net 2
Weekly Standard 2
weeklyworldnews.com 2
wmmbb.wordpress.com 2
Wolf Howling 2
WorldNetDaily 2
yaleclimateconnections.org 2
YouTube 2
##############################
so, ya Judith gets mentioned alot by skeptical blogs and right wing media.
but hey 16 times by the NYT !!!
wanna go there? and see the 16 times? nope you dont.
@steve m
The Laguna Beach Indy is indeed odd. It is strange to include a local newspaper in the first place. And then none of the articles seem to have anything to do with the subject. There’s realtors called Betts active in Laguna Beach, and curry restaurants.
Could this be a Sokol?
By now I am almost sick and tired of responding to climate change deniers who are guilty of distorting and simplifying science to such an extent that it is almost unrecognizable. I and others have continually responded to the piffle spewed by Dave Burton and other deniers here and elsewhere on social media. The guy works in computer IT for heaven’s sake, and doesn’t have a clue how complex adaptive systems evolve, assemble and function, but that doesn’t stop him and his buddies at the CO2 Coalition from doing everything they can to ensure that humans put as much CO2 into the atmosphere as possible at the behest of the fossil fuel industry that profits handsomely from it. Their mission is to camouflage this fact with shoddy science. And they do it in bucket loads.
There are of course numerous flaws in Burton’s ‘science’ that I have dealt with before but which he ritually ignores (because he doesn’t understand it and it doesn’t fit in with his narrative). The first is that natural systems function non-linearly. The argument proffered endlessly by deniers assumes that cause-and-effect relationships in nature are linear. Tweak one abiotic factor (CO2) and the world turns into a green utopia. It is pure and utter nonsense. There are a myriad of ecophysiological caveats: changes in other abiotic factors (temperature, rainfall, drought intensity – especially extreme climate events embedded into warming) that will impact plant communities and biomes. The recent heatwaves and droughts in Europe – protracted in 2018 and record heat in 2019 – pushed plants and animals to and perhaps beyond their adaptive limits. There has been a mass dying of trees in the Netherlands where I live and perhaps elsewhere following the 40 degree heat shock experienced last month. And this is only the beginning. Emerging analyses suggest that extreme climate change-related events harm biodiversity across the board, and plants the most.
Then there are differential plant responses to increased CO2 – in C3 and C4 plants for example – that will create competitive asymmetries leading to winners, losers, and simplified plant communities (e.g. reduced redundancy and effects up the food chain). Then there are changes in plant stoichiometry that must be factored in. Carbon (C) is not a limiting nutrient for many plants and certainly not for higher order consumers up the food chain. Most animals are nitrogen (N) limited, and as plants take up more C in their tissues, N is shunted out, meaning that herbivores and their natural enemies must feed more to compensate. Finally, there will be changes in plant allelochemistry that occur in plants with N- and C-based defenses. Plants with C-based defenses become more toxic whereas plants with N-based defenses become less toxic. How this non-repeatable experiment plays out in nature is anyone’s guess, but the result will inevitably be simplified communities that are less resilient.
None of this appears’s in Burton’s simplistic drivel. His world again is simple and linear. He equates total biomass of some plants as a proxy of fitness while ignoring qualitative measuresand effects up the food chain. Of course his and the CO2 Coalition’s propaganda is not aimed at scientists like me who he knows will deconstruct it. Instead, it is aimed at the lay public whose understanding of ecology is elementary.
> Lets look at Judith. Who mentions her more than 1 time? climatedepot.com 91
You could have stopped right there.
Too funny.
Reminding of a famous NYT headline:
“Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says” (September 15, 2004)
And there’s this from the Philadelphia Inquirer
“President Trump once again tweets info he first saw on Fox News” (Feb 26, 2017)
> Here is a “media mention” of Morano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hayhoe
I think this refers to:
“[18]” signals this interview in which there are three “morano”:
https://grist.org/climate-change/chatting-with-newts-dissed-evangelical-climate-expert/
That may not cohere with the theory that Marc is just a guy who self-cites himself.
The above quote is a quote from Media Matters, but the link is dead.
> the link is dead
Found back the story:
https://www.mediamatters.org/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-serving-de-facto-editor-gingrich-book
Let’s take stock.
Marc Morano is former spokeperson of Senator Inhofe, the father of the Inhofe Cheeseburger.
Marc Morano’s previous bosses include Rush Limbaugh.
Rush reads Marc’s hit job, tells teh Newt about it, and Newt kills Katharine’s chapter, which took her more than 100 hours to write. Then Chris Horner FOIAed her emails, and Marc celebrates on his blog.
How funny can it get?
daveburton, sometimes things appear to get caught by Akismet. A lot of links in one post, or a link it doesn’t like (the spoof Daily Mail headline generator, probably accidentally because it changes its text every time someone visits and so looks suspicious), a keyword it doesn’t like, possibly a word count, etc. So I copy anything long into a text editor.
The sign in my browser is that it disappears instantly, without the usual refresh time, and the text doesn’t appear with a note saying it’s awaiting moderation.
Jeffh said:
This has caused many to stumble. The majority of analyses relies on assuming linear responses– everything from Fourier series to principal components analysis. I’m suspecting that’s why scientists are having a hard time with modeling natural variability. [Chill. -W]
Thanks for the list daveburton. I do observe however, that most are not peer-reviewed articles, and one is a century old. I’ll check out the peer-reviewed ones but not all at once. If you’ve been reviewing the literature you’ll realise that a lot (most/all?) of the recent stuff points the other way (I will post some but probably won’t have time today).
From the slide set you extracted from:
His last slide shows how he wants it presented (“Greening Earth: Correct Perspective”). Along with a CO2 trend, a warming trend, an SLR trend and an Arctic sea-ice loss trend.
I presume that, as with satellite temperatures, there’s a lot of processing required to turn AVHRR images into biomass values. So I’d like to see what others come up with using the same data. And according to his own fifth-last slide, the greening seems to have stopped in 2000. So maybe it’s like some of the econometric projections: benefits up to 1°C or so, then disbenefits at higher temperatures. IOW we’re already at peak greening. That would be consistent with another paper I by chance came across last week: Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit reduces global vegetation growth
Yep, looks like peak greening is behind us. Pity warming isn’t.
> looks like peak greening is behind us.
If this could remain a thread about the thinness of the contrarian bench, that’d be great.
Sooo… from a quick look.
Bastin et al. More dryland is expected to replace forest, but the good (or less bad) news is that there’s a bit more forest cover in drylands than was previously thought. Not that there’s been a recent increase due to CO2 fertilisation, it had just been systematically undercounted.
Zhu et al. Looks like the greening pretty much stopped in 2000, and the one dataset that goes past then is perhaps turning downwards now.
Donahue et al. Some greening in warm, arid environments. But no mention of whether it will outweigh forest loss elsewhere. Seems unlikely, what with warm, arid environments being water-limited.
Cheng et al. May be more positive, but a new methodology and an outlier since 2000 compared to other satellite analysis. Too soon to tell. BTW, my statistics textbook has 21 index entries on outliers and 4 on influential observations. How to treat them, what to look out for, when to include or exclude, when to show with and without and explain to the reader that a lot hinges on that one point, whether to hold fire until you have more data in that part of the range, and of course to check for transcription or data coding errors. Perhaps econometricians use a different textbook.
Chun et al. One experiment on one plant with only CO2 changed and the rest, including temperature, water and I presume relative humidity kept the same. They won’t be in the real world. Not very relevant, and anyway “corn growth variables such as height, leaf area, and biomass accumulation were not significantly different in CO2 or water stressed treatments”. So although they perhaps used less water, growth was not enhanced. Some sort of homeostasis perhaps? Or a limiting nutrient?
Xie et al. Again, CO2 only changed, other conditions kept the same. Of doubtful relevance to the real world.
Novick et al. Trees growing in relatively infertile soils (at least the canopy dominants) may gain some protection against bark beetles from higher CO2. Shame the fast-growing ones on fertile soils don’t. So some of the sparser, slower-growing forest may survive, but the good stuff we really need will die.
Hao et al. Yes, better drought prediction would be a good thing and might mitigate some damage. Better not to add droughts in the first place, though.
Fitzgerald et al. Wheat in dry environments like Australia can deliver greater yields, at least under increased irrigation. Just as well Australia’s breadbasket has got water to spare. Oh, hang on, didn’t I hear they were ploughing crops under and slaughtering livestock due to a water shortage?
Sorry daveburton. Not reassured.
Sorry Willard, we crossed. I’ll leave it there.
No worries.
You really ought to think about writing blog posts. You just made one or two.
I did say previously I’d think about it, didn’t I? Most likely candidates would be the PETM and later ETMs (PETM was bad but can we see a tipping point in the ETMs?) or glacial+warming double whammys (end Ordovician, and there’s a smidgen of evidence at end Permian; and of course now). Would need to get my ducks in a row first.
Maybe when I finish reading Mark Maslin’s book The Cradle of Humanity, about how geological and climatic changes (may have) influenced human evolution. TL;DR so far: just like it’s the landing that kills you, not the fall, it was the change that did it, not a particular steady state.
Dave_Geologist, [Snip. – W] if you’d like to discuss any of this off-forum, you can find my contact info by clicking on my name.
For the record: Willard and Venema lied about what I have written on global water vapor trends. I reported on a lack of a trend at one observing site, a peer reviewed paper and a preliminary study of trends which showed no significant trends in weblog posts some years ago. Never a significant negative trend. Since then papers have appeared using reanalyses that do show a positive trend which I have tweeted on. But their behavior illustrates a fundamental goal of such individuals to obscure and lie about those they disagree with.
I am pleased in the post itself, Ken Rice presenter a more balanced view.
Roger,
My preference would be that commenters don’t accuse others of lying, especially if that is then followed up with a claim that it is a fundamental goal of such individuals. Given that the context here is essentially related to the norms of science, it would seem that such a claim would violate those norms. This seems – to me at least – to be rather ironic.
[Edit: I can’t actually see where Willard said anything about what Roger had said, so it seems hard for Willard to then have lied about what Roger had said. FWIW, I also recall when Victor was highlighting that the NVAP dataset wasn’t suitable for trend analysis and this did indeed seem to be related to Roger suggesting that there was no water vapour trend. Maybe Roger no longer regards this to be the case, but it does seem a bit of a stretch to now accuse Victor of lying.]
For those reading these comments, I have posted the latest ERA5 reanalysis of global water vapor trends courtesy of Ryan Maue on my twitter – @RogerAPielkeSr
Since 2010 there has been an overall positive trend. Before that, consistent with my weblog posts there was no clear trend. If Victor Venema and Willard were really interested in a discussion on this subject they would have contacted me.
Instead they chose, as they did in the past, to denigrate and ridicule.
I am glad Ken Rice has let me comment on his weblog. That, and the joint post we did several years ago, is a glimmer of hope in the need for constructive debate.
Ken – You are right. I should avoid such terms. Stating that they were wrong and inaccurately reported on my views should have sufficed. Readers should know, however, that their attacks on me have been relentless.
Nevertheless, I need to avoid falling into their mode of personal attack.
Roger Sr
Roger,
Victor’s point, though, was that the NVAP dataset was not suitable for trend analysis. It seems that the dispute is whether you claimed it was decreasing, or that there was no trend. It seems a bit extreme to accuse Victor of lying over this distinction. [Edit: Posted this before Roger’s most recent comment had been posted. Fair enough.]
Ken – on your reply, Victor said I wrote there was a decreasing trend. In weblog posts from several years ago, I reported on data that showed no significant trend. The wrong wrong he used was “decreasing”. He must have known that, as he quoted from my articles where I never claimed it was decreasing.When I wrote those weblog posts it was ~flat as confirmed in the reanalysis figure up to that time period as confirmed in the figure on my twitter.
So, as I commented above, I should have have said he inaccurately presented my views in order, as I see it, to confirm I am a not climate scientist but a contrarian as listed in the Nature article. As you yourself recognized I am not a “contrarian”. For my summary view, see my pinned tweet at @RogerAPielkeSr.
As to Willard’s comment, I read in the thread. He just had to jump in apparently.
Roger,
What I was actually suggesting was that I didn’t think anyone would regard your formal contributions as a scientist/researcher (publications, for example) as contrarian.
Here is my final weblog post on the NVAP analysis where I reproduced what Tom VonderHaar communicated regarding that data.
That post was in 2010!
Here is what he wrote and I accepted
“the extant NVAP dataset is not currently suitable for detecting trends in total precipitable water”
I concluded my post with
“Since this is such a fundamental climate metric to compare with the IPCC multi-decadal global model predictions (which project a continued increase in tropospheric water vapor), the achievement of an updated (through 2010) accurate analysis of the NVAP data should be of the highest climate science priority”
This has not been done with the current reanalyses. Victor could have clarified with me if he were really interested in constructive debate.
Meanwhile, between them Al Gore and Greta Thunberg got TWICE as many media mentions as the total mentions of all of the 386 “contrarians” combined, and you’re whining that contrarians get too much air time?
Really?
w.
W.,
I wasn’t whining. It seems self-evident that contrarian views have much more visibility in the media than would be warranted if we were basing this on the credibility of their scientific views. Of course, sometimes it’s good to highlight contrarian views. Sometimes not, though.
Thanks, ATTP. Since the media’s trumpeting of Greta and Al’s views far outweigh “contrarian” views, I fear your protests about visibility ring hollow. Non-contrarian views are wildly over-represented in the media … and despite that, and despite governments and schools and universities all also toeing the party line about Thermageddon and pushing your ideas 24/7/365, you STILL can’t get folks to believe it.
I can see why that must drive y’all nuts …
Also, you are talking about YOUR VIEW of the credibility of my views, or Richard Lindzen’s views, or a host of other “contrarians”. But despite endless claims to the contrary, the science is still far from settled.
And as a result of it not being settled, me, I’m happy to let the views fight it out both in the scientific sphere and the media sphere. I will say that I find it bizarre that y’all spend so much time complaining in the media about how people listen to your scientific opponents … that doesn’t happen in any other field of science I’m aware of.
Best regards to you and yours,
w.
Willis,
Why don’t you do this then?
w. obviously doesn’t understand the design of the study, which is tracing references back to peer-reviewed work. They demonstrated the obvious in that the majority of Heartland Conference presentations don’t trace to valid peer-reviewed literature, while the IPCC material does. Anyone is free to supply a post-peer-review comment to PubPeer.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/A48D39DF5BC38AF762D7070AB00D32
w. –
I notice that you didn’t address the question of whether “skeptics” get disproportionate amounts of media coverage relative to their prevalence in the scientific literature on climate change.
I can see why you didn’t though, as that must drive y’all crazy.
Also interesting…
>I will say that I find it bizarre that y’all spend so much time complaining in the media about how people listen to your scientific opponents
====
I have noticed over the years that “skeptics’ in the “skept-o-sphere” spend “so much time” “complaining” about media coverage, and how they’re victims of a vast media conspiracy against them. I will say that I don’t find it bizarre in the least, however. Creating a sense of group identity around self-victimization of a big bad guy is fairly banal and easy to understand.
BTW, Love the homespun syntax. Gives your comment a real down-home, aw shucks quality.
Total water vapour should be increasing. That is why Pielke keeps on showing the NVAP dataset on social media were the trend is not increasing without informing his audience that this dataset is explicitly not suited for trend analysis.
I misremembered Pielke’s claim as decreasing water vapour. For the false argument that there is a problem because NVAP does not show an increasing trend it is irrelevant whether NVAP is flat of decreasing. I gave a link to a post with all the details. To portrait my claim as wrong while seeing the claims of Pielke on social media as fine requires a special mindset.
Pielke now showing a reanalysis dataset is not much better. Reanalysis data allows one to study weather patterns in the past, it is rather poorly suited for trend analysis.
Models tend to have differences in the mean compared to observations. Initially only few observations will be available and the mean water vapour mostly given by the model mean, while later on more and better observations will nudge the reanalysis towards the mean of the observations. The latter can also change, especially when (new) satellite come in.
See for example the abstract of this report by Bengtson (director of the ECMWF and the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg) et al. (2004). https://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/publikationen/Reports/max_scirep_351.pdf
“The global trend in IWV [in the reanalysis dataset ERA40] for the period 1979-2001 is +0.36 mm per decade. This is about twice as high as the trend determined from the Clausius-Clapeyron relation assuming conservation of relative humidity. It is also larger than results from free climate model integrations driven by the same observed sea surface temperature (SST) as used in ERA40. It is suggested that the large trend in IWV does not represent a genuine climate trend but an artefact caused by changes in the global observing system such as the use of SSM/I and more satellite soundings in later years. Recent results are in good agreement with GPS measurements. The IWV trend for the period 1958-2001 is still higher but reduced to +0.16 mm per decade when corrected for changes in the observing systems.“
“it is irrelevant whether NVAP is flat or decreasing”
And maybe I should have explained that reanalysis data stems from the analysis of the current weather pattern by weather prediction models. This current weather pattern is the initial position from which weather prediction models compute the future weather. Modern weather prediction models use the previous weather predictions updated by new observations to make the analysis of the current weather. In this way they also have an initial weather pattern where there are currently no observations. So a (re)analysis is a mix of model and observations.
> I can see why that must drive y’all nuts …
For the same reason you’re punching hippies, dear Willis. Except for the fact that you might really be punching hippies while fantasizing about driving ClimateBall players nuts.
If you could drop down the mind probing, that’d be great.
***
> As to Willard’s comment, I read in the thread. He just had to jump in apparently.
I suppose Senior means something by that, but what?
It’s easy to show that he has an important part to play in the Contrarian Matrix. Witness how he still defers to Spencer & Brasswell. Here’s NG’s response:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111228223016/http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/08/roger-pielke-jr-s-inkblot/#comment-1463
Somebody recently told me that Senior’s blog used to have comments. He shut it down. [See ADDs, tho.] Junior also deleted all his comment section, which means everything his contributors wrote in response to his posts over the years. But like Junior’s, some traces might persist on the Internet Archives. It certainly would deserve due diligence.
ADD1. Teh Archive tells me that Senior always closed off his comments on his actual blog.
ADD2. The Archive tells me about ancient blogs, e.g. climatesci.colorado.edu
Another way to refute Senior’s “who, me, a contrarian?” stance:
https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/1163152866070032384
Compare and contrast:
“The Laguna Beach Indy is indeed odd. It is strange to include a local newspaper in the first place. And then none of the articles seem to have anything to do with the subject. There’s realtors called Betts active in Laguna Beach, and curry restaurants.
Could this be a Sokol?”
haha.
Willis has actually completed what I was planning on doing. It is pretty devastating.
I dont care too much about the privacy issues or calling people deniers. That is a side show.
The real show is the design of experiment and the utter lack of any QC on the authors/reviwers
part.
Every time I see one of these studies that mine text and present numbers, I know 1 thing.
Climate studies or other studies. THEY NEVER READ THE ACTUAL ARTICLES.
text mining is extremely difficult and prone to all sorts of errors. anyone who has ever done it
for PAY, know this. Everyone who does this for pay know you have to QC your approach
This is willis list of mention count by source
top 10
lagunabeachindy.com: 6279
climatedepot.com: 4877
feedproxy.google.com: 3908
huffingtonpost.com: 2543
adsabs.harvard.edu: 1442
blogs.discovermagazine.com: 1115
thinkprogress.org: 871
desmogblog.com: 827
freerepublic.com: 709
dallasnews.com: 650
That is about 1-2 months of reading, say between 160 and 320 hours. In short, I could read
all the article in the top 10 sources they mention in about a month or 2 of solid reading.part of the fucking job.
To give you an example, I once had to work with a huge database of daily written reports
of thousands of feild agents and used topic modelling. Did I spend 100’s of hours reading
stuff to check the models? Of course
“> Here is a “media mention” of Morano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hayhoe
I think this refers to:”
Yes willard I know. I read it.
The vast majority of Morano mentions are his own fricking blog
there are are also those mentions ( like the one on hayhoe) that have zero
to do with the media mentioning him as some kind of authority on science.
There are tons of mentions on the left which call him out as a contrarian.
They did the study wrong. wrong design. they didnt even spot check there #2 source.
Willis checked it. I checked it. The articles are not even about climate science.
> Willis checked it. I checked it.
“∼100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change”? I srsly doubt it.
When one orders a Petri dish, one can’t ask for quality ingredients. Speaking of which:
Pingback: Blacklist by Nature follows defamation by BioScience: journals reject ethics of science | polarbearscience
@willard
Detecting trends is difficult (because of singularities in the math) and harder when the trend is small relative to the seasonal cycle.
I did not believe the eyeball test of Pielke Sr. Maue provided the data. I ran the KPSS test, and various others for robustness. Water vapor is stationary around a statistically significant upward trend. Pielke’s eyes did not deceive him, and my initial doubts were unfounded.
@steve m
Comparing the raw data to the published numbers, it is clear that some data cleaning and pre-processing has taken place. It is not described in the supplementary information. The released code does not cover this part of the study either.
Joel Wood’s file is intriguing too. Caroline Lucas published a letter in the Guardian, cosigned by Joel Benjamin and Rod Wood.
Joel’s firmly in favour of a carbon tax, by the way.
1.This is a soft science, and no one (except for the offended) seems to really care to “scientifically” show what seems to be blatantly obvious
2. Who wants to carefully read all these documents for consistency considering #1?
Cleaning up citations in something like Google Scholar is abetted by individuals that can self-correct entries. Cries for a better ontological system in the form of a semantic web by none other than Tim Berners-Lee have been met with a big yawn, mainly because Google does a “good enough” job via natural language queries and heuristics and they can continue to crawl and pound away with unlimited resources where they fall short.
Linked open data may still gain traction in the future when society realizes that marking “1-to-many” uses of data serve us better than the ambiguous “many-to-1” pounding that Steven Mosher seems to enjoy working masochistically.
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-alexa-friendly-world-of-wikidata
Its still costs and data still gets stale or recategorized and can disappear at a moments notice, but from my experience when the semantic web works it’s pretty slick.
Here is a recent Morano clip on Fox news.
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-climate-denier-marc-morano-dismisses-un-report-warning-risks-global-food-supply
> Joel’s firmly in favour of a carbon tax, by the way.
Ross McKitrick too. That sure means something.
***
> Detecting trends is difficult
Depends on the kind of trend. Take this comment:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100726125904/http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/presentation-in-golden-colorado-july-22-2010-by-susan-solomon-climate-change-a-challenge-for-our-times/
P09 is one of the few papers Senior always cites. Its title is Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Something tells me that this paper does not contradict the claim that the “dominate human climate forcing is the radiative effect of human added carbon dioxide.” Therefore the trend AT observed is corroborated – Senior says one thing in paper, and quite another online.
Oh, and for those in the back, here’s the tweet that started the ClimateBall episode at the time:
https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/696377213663313920
Leaving in the seasonal cycle rather obscures the trend. Over a rather short time period, where I suspect e.g. ENSO will have some effect, would we expect to see a significant trend. Has an analysis of statistical power been performed?
Prof Pielke Sr, have you performed an analysis of statistical power for this problem? Given the expected signal-to-noise ratio, how long a period would we need to confidently expect a statistically significant result if there were an underlying increasing trend?
I wrote an article for SkS on this issue if anyone is interested in stats : https://skepticalscience.com/statisticalsignificance.html
Dikran, that NVAP dataset is the one for which Victor points out that it is not suited for trend analysis (according to the authors of the paper on that dataset).
It’s quite disingenuous for Dr. Pielke to protest that he has not continued to promote the patently false claims that a) water vapor isn’t increasing in the atmosphere (it is!) b) this refutes our understanding of the water vapor feedback (it doesn’t!) and c) this is a refutation of climate models (nope!) well after his 2010 blog post.
One can find him doing it for years past that time on social media, including by repeatedly citing a dataset he has been informed innumerable times shouldn’t ever be used to make such claims, and citing an “electronics author” personal web site(!).
The realities are that water vapor is increasing in the atmosphere (see pretty much every State of the Climate report or similar synthesis) and that the water vapor feedback is observed, positive, and inline with our expectations based on theory and modeling (e.g. Liu et al., 2018, DOI:10.1002/2017JD027512).
NB: while the ERA reanalyses products are amazing in many ways, their water vapor data prior to 1992 is documented to be incorrect (biased too high over oceans) prior to the availability comprehensive water vapor data from SSI/RSS (see Trenberth et al. 2015, DOI:10.1002/2014JD022887 ; Chen and Liu, 2016 DOI:10.1002/2016JD024917).
Looking at the water vapor data from 1992-present shows an increase inline with our observations of warming and expected responses to things like volcanoes and ENSO.
Marco, indeed, however a failure to consider statistical power seems to be a common failing when people highlight a lack of a statistically significant trend, so it is an error in its own right.
Reanalysis data should probably have been referred to as model-aided data as a warning to unsuspecting users.
From P09 –
(skipping hypothesis 1, bold added)
Why are those hypotheses mutually exclusive?
Can’t there be a number of significant human influences that are of concern, even if aCO2 is the dominant influence?
Joshua,
It’s not obvious to me either that those hypotheses are mutually exclusive. The thing I don’t get about Roger’s suggestion is that we can quite reasonably deal with different aspects in different ways. The emission of CO2 has a global effect. Hence, dealing with this would seem to require some kind of reasonably coherent global effort. Many of the other factors are local and, hence, can often be dealt with locally. That doesn’t mean that there would never be some global effort to deal with some specific local issues (Amazon rainforest, for example) but it’s surprising to me that the global story has focussed more on CO2 emissions than on some of the other factors. I don’t think this necessarily implies that these local factors should be ignored. It could simply be that we don’t need to develop some kind of global response/agreement to deal with them.
No – the two views require different policy responses – see https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/1070016326293323776
Anders –
> but it’s surprising to me that the global story has focussed more on CO2 emissions than on some of the other factors. I don’t think this necessarily implies that these local factors should be ignored. It could simply be that we don’t need to develop some kind of global response/agreement to deal with them.
=========
Did you by any chance mean to say that it isn’t surprising to you that the global story has focused more on CO2 emissions?
I do think that it would be better if aCO2 were more uniformly viewed in the full spectrum of all potential influences. However, I also think that many times I see “skeptics” flip the script, so to speak, to focus on those other influences as a way to paint concern about\ aC02 as “alarmism” in service of a “ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT!!” agenda.
Roger –
> No – the two views require different policy responses – see
I don’t think that means that the hypotheses are mutually exclusive (just perhaps, that perhaps some approaches to policy are mutually exclusive).
Instead of just “no” with an argument by assertion, perhaps you could answer this question:
Can’t there be a number of significant human influences that are of concern, even if aCO2 is the dominant influence?
“Comparing the raw data to the published numbers, it is clear that some data cleaning and pre-processing has taken place. It is not described in the supplementary information. The released code does not cover this part of the study either.”
yes, not sure what to make of it since there is a discrepancy without an explanation.
Found another similar thing.. Steve Koonin is mentioned on desmog as a denier, but I am not seeing
him in their list they used??
some cleaning has gone on….
re: in service of an ‘agenda’
Yes, Dr. Pielke has made the accusation that the IPCC is intentionally ignoring aspects of science (they don’t actually ignore them, but alas) because they are not interested in synthesizing the science but rather advancing an agenda to control energy systems.
In point of fact, despite his false claims about mutual exclusivity on the science and policy side, the actual IPCC/mainstream scientific community view clearly and explicitly recognizes the roles of non-CO2 forcings, including for impacts, mitigation, and adaptation as a cursory look by any good faith actor would confirm.
For other publications on why a broader view is needed, see
McAlpine, C.A., J.G. Ryan, L. Seabrook, S. Thomas, P.J. Dargusch, J.I. Syktus, R.A. Pielke Sr. A.E. Etter, P.M. Fearnside, and W.F. Laurance, 2010: More than CO2: A broader picture for managing climate change and variability to avoid ecosystem collapse. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2:334-336, DOI10.1016/j.cosust.2010.10.001. https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/r-355.pdf
Mahmood, R., R.A. Pielke Sr., T.R. Loveland, and C.A. McAlpine, 2016: Climate relevant land use and land cover change policies. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 195-202, e-View doi: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00221.1
Marland, G., R.A. Pielke, Sr., M. Apps, R. Avissar, R.A. Betts, K.J. Davis, P.C. Frumhoff, S.T. Jackson, L. Joyce, P. Kauppi, J. Katzenberger, K.G. MacDicken, R. Neilson, J.O. Niles, D. dutta S. Niyogi, R.J. Norby, N. Pena, N. Sampson, and Y. Xue, 2003: The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy, 3, 149-157.http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-267.pdf
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system.Springer, Berlin, Global Change – The IGBP Series, 566 pp. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783642623738
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309095069/html/
Matsui, T., and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2006: Measurement-based estimation of the spatial gradient of aerosol radiative forcing. Geophys. Res. Letts., 33, L11813, doi:10.1029/2006GL025974.
Click to access r-312.pdf
As just one example, IPCC has focused on carbon sequestration effect of vegetation and not adequately assessed the role of vegetation (and land use/land management) on water cycle, surface heat and moisture flux changes, ect. See Marland et al paper, for instance, including noting the authorship.
The issue is not that added CO2 is a major concern (it is) but so are other other human climate forcings which also have first order effects on the climate system. Indeed, from our research (and others as reported in the cites above), humans have a multi-faceted effect on the climate. It is more than the IPCC has emphasized.
@steve m
Steve Koonin is indeed missing.
Quality control may not be the authors’ strongest suit.
Roger,
I can’t look at your tweet, obviously. All I’m suggesting is that it may not be surprising that there has been a focus on CO2 since that would seem to require some global agreement/response. This doesn’t necessarily mean that other factors that have a strong regional impact should be ignored; it may just be that you don’t need to focus on global agreement in order to respond to these.
Richard,
I’m still quite fascinated by you making somewhat snide remarks about the lack of quality control in other studies, while appearing to ignore examples where you too may have been less than careful (Gremlins).
ProfPiekleSr In the tweet you reference
https://twitter.com/RogerAPielkeSr/status/1070016326293323776
#1 is, as far as I can see, factually correct:
The overwhelming scientific evidence *does* tell us that human greenhouse emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes. Climate change *is* real, we *are* causing it, and it *is* happening right now.
if they are mutually exclusive, then #2 must be incorrect.
Fortunately for your position, they are not mutually exclusive, increasing GHG emissions is not our only problem. This seems to be an example of a “false choice”.
Seems like a poorly conceived concept badly executed, and a good reminder that whilst peer review is a useful gatekeeper, it is no guarantor of quality.
I’d guess it’s pretty much impossible to do a quantitative study of the relative media presence of contrarian and consensus scientists, as there basically aren’t any of the former – hence “thin bench”.
As to relative weight given in the media to contrarian and consensus messages, I guess that could be possible, and I daresay it’s been done- perhaps someone here would know?
Quite something to see Dr. Pielke continue to insist, despite all contrary evidence, that the IPCC does not deal with non-CO2 forcings on the climate system. I would challenge anyone to look at the IPCC Reports themselves and verify whether this is true (it’s absurdly false).
I’ll even give Dr. Pielke the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he’s failed to keep up to date on what current IPCC reports say, and stick to ones I know he has commented on/misrepresented in the past.
By no means complete, the tables of contents from these chapters alone illustrate the falsehood: TAR WG1 Chapter 6; AR4 WG1 Chapters 2,3, and 7. The actual full ARs even more so.
But I encourage readers to look for themselves to evaluate Dr. Pielke’s veracity.
Roger –
I’m not really particularly interested in the political back and forth about what you may or may not have said, and how it should be interpreted. While you engage in that with other commenters, I’m still hoping to being you back to my comments.
I’m asking specifically about what you definitely wrote in your article.
It seems to me that central to the thesis of your article is, what appears to me, a fundamental flaw of logic. That is why I asked you that question twice. I’ll ask it again in hope that you’ll answer:
Can’t there be a number of significant human influences that are of concern, even if aCO2 is the dominant influence?
In this age of people wondering how scientific articles with major flaws get published, I am wondering how your article got punished. But maybe the logical flaw is mine. That is why I’m asking you to answer my question.
Given that I’ve already asked it twice, with you responding on topic but not answering the question, I suspect I may not get an answer. But I do consider it perhaps conspicuous that you haven’t answered.
“Changes in land conditions, either from land-use or climate change, affect global and regional climate (high confidence)” https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2019/08/4.-SPM_Approved_Microsite_FINAL.pdf
Our point is that added CO2 is not the dominant human climate forcing wrt to climate impacts to society. It is one of a set of first order human climate forcings which need to be responded to in an integrated manner. The hypothesis of CO2 as the dominant human climate forcing with respect to societal and environmental impacts is being refuted. This does mean added CO2 is not a major concern. Unfortunately, it’s much more complex a problem than that.
And the IPCC is moving in the direction proposed in my article.
I am complete with this thread. Interested readers can make up their own mind.
Roger,
This does seem to be a rather odd thing to say and does seem to be contrary to what a majority of climate scientists would accept.
Something that may already have been pointed out is that atmospheric CO2 is expected to remain elevated for thousands of years, unless we can find ways to actively remove and sequester it. Hence, the impacts of enhanced atmospheric CO2 will persist for many generations. The same may be true for the other factors that you regard as important, but it would seem that they are much more easily reversed on generational timescales. If so, this might suggest that there is a reason to focus on CO2 emissions, even if the other factors are still worth addressing. Do you disagree with this? If so, what aspect do you disagree with.
Prof. Pielke Sr. Your quote from the IPCC does not support your contention of that hypothesis being refuted.
> I am complete with this thread.
A simple question, three times asked, never answered despite multiple comments made in response.
Ahh. Forget it Josh, it’s the “climate-o-sphere.”
I think it’s worth reflecting on what it means to claim that one isn’t a contrarian when one not only explicitly positions oneself against the mainstream scientific community, but speaks falsehoods about what that community does/does not do, and does this in service of c0nsp:racy theories.
Quoth Dr. Pielke:
“the real objective of those promoting the radiative effect of the addition of atmospheric CO2 as the dominate human climate forcing is to promote energy and lifestyle changes. Their actual goal is not to develop effective climate policies.”
I would argue that if these behaviors and statements are not sufficient justification for the label contrarian the word has lost all meaning.
Ken. Human caused land use change also lasts a long time. As does deposition of pollutants such as black carbon. The evolving view, finally, is that added CO2 is not the dominant climate forcing but one of several first order human climate forcings which need to be assessed in an integrated way. Here is one short example of why this is needed,
“Pielke Sr., R.A., 2001: Carbon sequestration — The need for an integrated climate system approach. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 82, 2021” https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-248.pdf
The latest IPCC report, albeit not all the way there, shows movement in that direction.
This is my last comment in this thread. Thanks for the opportunity to post them. Readers, if they want, can read the papers I listed,
Roger Sr
Roger,
Do you mean land-use change that is often represented as an anthropogenic emission?
I really would quite like to see some more evidence for this. It’s certainly impression that this is not really an evolving view, well, not in the sense that the science community is evolving towards a view that CO2 is not the dominant climate forcing. In fact, if you are using forcing in the standard sense (i.e., radiative forcing) then this would seem to clearly not be the case globally.
Roger,
I’ve just read your article about carbon sequestration. From what I’ve seen, this issues you highlight are indeed being considered (i.e., people are looking at the impacts of various sequestration options). In what way are they being ignored?
It’s quite something to see
* someone claim that the IPCC doesn’t acknowledge something
* ignore the evidence showing that the IPCC has/does/will continue to do so
* then claim “vindication” because the IPCC has been able to expand its research on that subject it already acknowledged simply due to the vastly increased sophistication of modeling and intercomparison groups and improved obs (rather than some philosophical change away from their c0nspiracy to ‘control lifestyles’)
* all while ignoring that the greater the sophistication in representing these non-CO2 forcings and feedbacks becomes, the *more* confident we are that CO2 has been the primary forcing of GMST historically and its primary role in future forcing.
Astounding really.
Ah…okay one last response. The metrics that need to be included are other climate forcings that, as one example, affect regional atmospheric and ocean circulations. In terms of global average radiative forcing, added CO2 is the dominant human climate forcing. Clear significant effect is sea level rise.
On regional circulation scales, which produce droughts, tropical cyclone tracks etc these are more affected by diabatic changes in heating patterns and changes in microphysics from aerosols. Land use/land management also have a first order effect on the regional scale climate statistics as documented in quite a few papers.
IPCC is moving in that direction in the chapters. But not yet highlighted in the SPMS.
There is no “movement in that direction” apart from the normal scientific progress of increased sophistication of observations and modeling. There has not been some philosophical change of heart that has suddenly occurred where now they’re no longer seeking to steal people’s freedoms.
It was dishonest to claim the IPCC ignored non-CO2 forcings from a scientific perspective previously.
It was dishonest to claim that the IPCC ignored non-CO2 forcings from an impacts and policy perspective previously.
It was c0nspiratorial nonsense to use those falsehoods in service of the dishonest claim that “the real objective of those promoting the radiative effect of the addition of atmospheric CO2 as the dominate [sic] human climate forcing is to promote energy and lifestyle changes. Their actual goal is not to develop effective climate policies.”
Just in case anyone is interested, the quote in Peter’s comment comes from this post.
Roger,
I appreciate that you may have decided to stop commenting, but I am interested in whether or not you regard such comments as potentially playing a role in discussions of this topic often being somewhat contentious.
“2. The other human climate forcings include
the diverse influence of human-caused aerosols on regional (and global) radiative heating (e.g., see).
the effect of aerosols on cloud and precipitation processes (e.g., see)
the influence of aerosol deposition on climate (e.g., see and see)
the effect of land cover/land use on climate (e.g., see and see)
the biogeochemical effect of added atmosopheric CO2 has a greater effect on the climate system than the radiative effect of added CO2 (e.g. see).
”
Didn’t action to limit aerosols pre-date concerns about GHGs? The last point seems like it reinforces the importance of action on CO2.
Pretty much all of those things above are in the IPCC ARs. It’s incredibly dishonest for him to have suggested and continue to suggest that they were not.
But I guess when you’re working from motivated reasoning in support of c0nspiracy theories about gubmint control and takin’ freedoms…
The authors have made some egregious category errors in defining CCC’s versus CCS’s ,and list as media movers & shakers a number of people who have been dead for a decade.
A statistical corrigendum seems in order but they still have got the sign right.
Despite a decade of ballyhoo, The contrarians have fallen far short of a scientifically factual counter- consensus on AGW- they simply have not mustered a credible quorum.
Having lambasted the Heartland Institute ever since its first ersatz “International Climate Conference”- which I attended to read the riot act- ( ask Andy Revkin- he checked out that revival meeting too) I’m fairly amused to find myself #272 on the wrong list.
What would Steve Schneider make of that? Though I’ve written critically about the climate wars all across the political media spectrum from The Guardian to the WSJ by way of the LRB , my most cited scientific paper appeared in Climatic Change !
Roger –
I don’t know if you’ll still read this, but what they hey.
You have written, in a scientific publication, that the view that aCO2 is a dominant human influence on the climate is mutually exclusive with the view that there are multiple significant human influences on the climate.
On the basis of your theory of mutual exclusivity, you have then gone on to assign a belief to others – that they categorically dismiss, or perhaps effectively dismiss, other significant human-caused influences on the climate.
So it clearly seems that you believe that some people that are concerned about climate change are more focused on the influence of aCO2, relative to other important anthropogenic influences, than the evidence would support. If so, I would tend to share that view to some extent – even if I would disagree with the conclusions you seem to have drawn from motivation-divining, as to the reasons why people might be as focused as they are on the influence of aCO2 relative to the other influences.
But here’s the thing, which I think that Anders alluded to above: I would think that since you’re (I presume) concerned about the impact of a adisproportionate focus on the influence of aCO2 relative to other anthropocentric forcings, you should be quite careful about questionably creating a framework of mutual exclusivity between your hypotheses 2a and 2b, and then saddling others with a view that those hypotheses are indeed mutually exclusive when, in fact, they may not believe that those hypotheses are mutually exclusive.
Why don’t you acknowledge that there is no logical reason why believing that aCO2 is the dominant anthropogenic influence is, actually, not mutually exclusive with the belief that there are other, important anthropogenic influences? Or, alternatively, explain the logic that leads you to conclude that they are mutually exclusive.
Doing so might help to avoid mis-categorizing people who actually do consider other human-based forcings as significant, but might differ with you as to the relative scale of influence from the different forcings.
I think that you would agree that people’s views being mis-characterized, and people feeling that their views have been mis-characterized, it s problematic aspect of the public exchange about the issue of climate change.
Don’t you think that everyone involved should take precautionary steps in order to reduce the degree to which the mischaracterization aspect is an obstacle to policy development?
I do.
Peter (or anyone else)-
Do you think that there is a problem where, at least sometimes in the public discussion of climate change (I am not singling any participants in particular), there is a disproportionate focus on aC02 as an anthropogenic influence on the climate relative to the actual influence of aC02 as compared to other anthropogenic focings?
If so, how would you think that problem might be addressed?
Russell,
I missed that you’d made it onto the contrarian list. That is kind of amusing (it’s interesting that those who seem to obviously not be associated with the majority on the contrarian list, don’t seem terribly bothered by their inclusion).
Joshua,
Well, CO2 does have a very long atmospheric lifetime, so it’s not all that surprising that it is one of the major focuses. However, there is lots of current discussion about some of the short-lived GHGs (methane, in particular). There is a lot of discussion of aerosols. There is quite a lot of discussion about black carbon (especially in the context of Greenland ice melt). There’s plenty of discussion about aspects related to land-use change (both in terms of the resulting emission and in terms of possible sequestration). It seems to me that many of these factors are indeed being considered.
Joshua, I think that is adopting a frame that is (presumably inadvertently) assuming the consequent. As such, it’s not very sensical for me to answer it as phrased.
Is CO2 the dominant radiative forcing for historical emissions?
Will CO2 almost certainly be the dominant radiative forcing in future emissions?
Is CO2 different from other major radiative forcings in terms of the lifetime of its impacts?
Is CO2 different from other major radiative forcings in terms of what is required to get its emissions to net zero?
I can answer all of these questions in the affirmative.
Is CO2 the only radiative forcing of consequence in historical emissions?
Can other radiative forcings be ignored for purposes of mitigation, adaptation, and policy?
Do spatio-temporal scales not matter for the relative importance of a given forcing on the system?
I can answer all of these questions in the negative.
But the question you asked presupposes some things that would require unpacking before I could give you a sensical answer.
I think the IPCC and related syntheses have factually communicated the reality of CO2’s role in the subject of climate change.
Anders –
> It seems to me that many of these factors are indeed being considered.
I don’t disagree. And certainly your point about the “lifetime” of aCO2, relative to the likely “lifetime,” or potential of reversibility, of the other influences is a hugely important consideration.
But I do sometimes wonder if there is, at least in some contexts, an problem where other influences get less attention than the evidence might merit. Or maybe I’ve been swayed by a kind of propaganda-effect from reading too much in the “skept-o-sphere.”
Which is why I asked my question – to help get some feedback in that respect. I’m not sure that you directly answered my question. I got the sense above that you think there might be a problem, in a sense, of insufficient focus on other influences – please note, this is not meant as a characterization of the scientific community per se, or of the IPCC. Judging how closely those entities have quantified the relative level of influence from different sources is an immensely complicated task – one that would require great care and diligent control over potentially biasing processes.
Peter –
> But the question you asked presupposes some things that would require unpacking before I could give you a sensical answer.
What are the presuppositions you think I’m making?
Joshua,
There may be less attention than they deserve. However, it’s probably difficult to judge in some subjective way. Something I do often wonder is why people who think something isn’t getting enough attention don’t spend their time highlighting this *other* important factor, rather than appearing to criticise other people who’ve chosen to focus on something else. Broadly speaking, there’s no real reason why these couldn’t be complementary, rather than in conflict. In some cases they’re related. Aerosol emissions, for example, are also associated with the use of fossil fuels.
“What are the presuppositions you think I’m making?”
“disproportionate focus on aC02 as an anthropogenic influence on the climate relative to the actual influence of aC02 as compared to other anthropogenic focings”
assumes that there is at least hypothetically some “correctly proportionate” allocation of focus, and moreover that “focus” in this context is one thing that has a definition everyone agrees on.
I cannot say whether “been swayed by a kind of propaganda-effect from reading too much in the ‘skept-o-sphere'”, but this argument is one I see repeated often there.
There are good faith discussions about the pros and cons of increasing a policy emphasis on for example black carbon and other particulate by products of incomplete combustion, or shorter-lived but stronger GHGs, or ODSs. I enjoy those discussions, but they seem to largely compare apples to oranges or assume political dynamics that don’t exist in the real world.
Anders –
>Something I do often wonder is why people who think something isn’t getting enough don’t spend their time highlighting this *other* important factor, rather than appearing to criticise other people who’ve chosen to focus on something else.
Indeed. At least from an angle of productivity wr/t policy development, it seems to be a highly counterproductive practice. Which then raises the question for me as to what kind of psychological process is taking place beneath the surface.
> Broadly speaking, there’s no real reason why these couldn’t be complementary, rather than in conflict.
I agree. I think they aren’t in conflict. And that’s why I think that forcing them into some kind of frame of mutual exclusivity is not only logically flawed, but counterproductive. But unfortunately, although I tried my best, I couldn’t get Roger to engage on that point.
> In some cases they’re related. Aerosol emissions, for example, are also associated with the use of fossil fuels.
Yes, another red flag w/r/t the “mutual exclusivity” frame.
> A simple question, three times asked, never answered despite multiple comments made in response.
In fairness, Senior refused many times to answer it in 2015:
Search for Very Tall’s comments in that thread.
Note that NRC 2005 appears in Senior’s handwaving above.
If he could acknowledge that the trend Richie detected defeats the point he was making by citing an analysis by CliveB in contradistinction to Benjamin Cook’s reminder and VeeV’s rebuttal, that would be greatly appreciated.
Peter –
> assumes that there is at least hypothetically some “correctly proportionate” allocation of focus, and moreover that “focus” in this context is one thing that has a definition everyone agrees on.
Well, let me break that down a bit. Yes, I do think that at least theoretically, there is a “correct proportion” in the degree to which the different influences contribute to climate change. That doesn’t mean that I think that establishing that correct proportion is a remotely trivial task. It isn’t meant to suggest that I know the correct proportion. And it doesn’t even mean that I think it’s realistic to think that we could ever establish the correct proportion to an perfect precision. But I do think that it is important to constantly open the discussion up to evaluation – as if we ever to get to a place where more instrumental policies are developed to address climate change, directing resources correctly is a paramount consideration.
No, I don’t think that focus in the context is one thing that has a definition that everyone agrees on. Quite obviously, that is not the case. But again, I think that the question of focus, relative to the magnitude of influence is a worthwhile discussion. Perhaps one of the starting points is a definition of what focus means.
An interesting article to contrast this post. Nature has published another dataset with the public names of scientists, including the people our US culture warriors complained about being mentioned. This time the topic is self-citation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02479-7
So that the curious do not have to download the file:
Pielke Senior 14.34%
Tol 14.24%
Judith Curry 12.47%
Pielke Junior 6.16%
“I’m fairly amused to find myself #272 on the wrong list.”
I would also be amused as I have a clean clean conscious. It must be a hard life as a climate “sceptic”, but they somehow have to snap themselves out of it.
> I’d guess it’s pretty much impossible to do a quantitative study of the relative media presence of contrarian and consensus scientists, as there basically aren’t any of the former – hence “thin bench”.
The bench is so thin that reviewing contrarians on a case-by-case basis ought to be enough. Following the times and lines of Morano’s political hit job looks more convincing to me. Following Senior’s handwaving too, e.g.:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2013/12/pielkes-all-way-down.html
Readers can go check the questions. They’re quite similar to the ones we’ve been served here.
Joshua,
I’m not sure it is that easy. There could be factors that have a large impact on a regional scale and virtually no impact globally. So, one would need to define quite carefully how one was assessing the relative impacts. There’s also the issue that while we these anthropogenic influences continue to change, the impacts themselves are likely to change. There could be a scenario where one impact dominates but would not continue to do so if we didn’t also do something about the other factor (for example, some regional factor could have a dominant impact under a scenario where we limit global emissions of CO2 but would not have a dominant impact if we failed to limit CO2 emissions).
“I do think that at least theoretically, there is a ‘correct proportion’ in the degree to which the different influences contribute to climate change. That doesn’t mean that I think that establishing that correct proportion is a remotely trivial task.”
This isn’t what I was saying- this is actually the relatively easy part. If all you are asking is if CO2 receives attention proportionate to its role in climate change I can assuredly make that case, given certain (what I would consider to be) trivial stipulations of argument.
So if the assumption determining what constitutes appropriate proportionality in “focus” is simply that it matches proportionality of climatic significance, this is a vastly less difficult thing to answer (of course from my personal perspective).
Example stipulations:
we’re talking about this in the context of climate change as generally understood in the scientific and political contexts to be about historically recent, and relatively near future, large (spatiotemporal) scale changes on this planet (not Mars); we’re talking about contexts like risks, policy significance, etc.; we’re talking about large-scale policy decisions including but not limited to national policies and international treaties, rather than what is important to a subnational actor. etc.
Of course one could object to any of these stipulations, but I confess that I find such Hulmean games decidedly uninteresting to play when most everyone else (even those who reject the science) can at least agree on the relative geopolitical context.
Peter –
> If all you are asking is if CO2 receives attention proportionate to its role in climate change…
That’s a useful question as it helps me to clarify (to myself) what I’m asking – which is more along the lines of asking whether other influences are not getting enough attention. A bottom line presumption there would be some kind of limited pie/zero sum of resources. Which I’m actually not sure I think is a given or a useful construct. The size of the resource pie, imo, is a function of will, and so would be hard to quantify. I think that a lot of what Anders wrote interacts with that aspect – that much if the point is that policies would be complementary.
Peter –
I’m afraid I didn’t understand your 9:33. But regardless, I have enough to chew on for a while, and my tomatoes beckon.
I think it quite likely that the consensus focuses on the various contributions to climate change in the order of preferred mitigation rather than weight of contribution to the total. CO2 and other greenhouse gases seem to constitute a larger proportion than others. It is also the hardest to combat. Those of us who look at the situation through a different lens and who wish to go after the low hanging fruit, such as Fast Mitigation supporters, are seen as obstacles by the consensus.
Above, ATTP talks of greenhouse gas contributions as global and demanding a global response. This is not strictly the case. Although the gases do diffuse, the vast majority of gases are emitted by a small handful of countries. And although the names of some of those countries will change over the next few decades, it will still be a small handful of countries that emit most of those gases.
This is not something that often enters the conversation.
Tom,
No, I think this isn’t true. I think the problem is the some people do this by arguing that everyone else has to change what they’re promoting, rather than simply going out and promoting this option. I don’t think many disagree that we could tackle some of these low-hanging fruit, they simply don’t respond well to people who go around being divisive, rather than constructive (as your comment is illustrating quite nicely).
Yes, it is also true that a handful of countries could make a substantial difference. However, if we hope for economic development in developing nations then it also requires that they find ways to do so without also going through a phase of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. You also need to consider that there are likely short-term costs to reducing emissions, so one needs to also consider how you account for this if a small number of countries go ahead with substantially reducing their emissions, while others don’t.
It regularly enters the discussion.
@victor v
I’m glad to be below the median.
Venema: “Tol 14.24%”
Paper: “the median self-citation rate is 12.7%.”
Tol: “I’m glad to be below the median.”
Explanation??
vtg,
I wondered the same for the moment, but I think that’s from a different study and the median self-citation rate in this study is 15.5%.
@vtg
I only looked at the graphs. Median is around 16.5%.
I took it from the link Victor posted? Which study does the 15.5% come from?
vtg,
In the text, it says
The figures also seem to refer to this dataset and show the median as being slightly bigger than 15%. I think the 12.7% was from a smaller study that had about 10000 researchers.
@vtg, wotts
The Nature summary cites two medians, 12.7% and 15.5%. The former is the relevant one.
Richard,
Are you sure you mean “former”. If you do, then it’s hard to see how you’re below the median (unless you have an odd definition of “below”).
“The former is the relevant one.”
Why, out of interest?
Because Richie’s above it. Simples.
I’m on the 60.7%ile in the smaller dataset.
“The former is the relevant one” because Victor used the numbers from the smaller dataset with the lower median.
“The former is the relevant one” because Victor used the numbers from the smaller dataset with the lower median.
But you’re above the lower median, no? Not below as you first stated?
Richard,
I’m still trying to understand why you think you’re below the median when your self-citation rate is 14.2% and the median is 12.7%. Unless I’m misunderstanding something about this analysis, it suggests that 50% of those in the sample have a self-citation rate of 12.7%, or less, and 50% have a self-citation rate of 12.7%, or higher. Since you’re in the latter category you would seem to be above the median, not below.
Richard Tol wrote “Your null hypothesis should therefore be that I do not make elementary errors.” NHST performed, p < machine epsilon. ;o)
I’ll just leave this here 😉
“However, if we hope for economic development in developing nations then it also requires that they find ways to do so without also going through a phase of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. ”
How? With what? This is the problem that needs to be solved. Solve it.
“You also need to consider that there are likely short-term costs to reducing emissions, so one needs to also consider how you account for this if a small number of countries go ahead with substantially reducing their emissions, while others don’t.”
It’s a global economy, a small number of countries will not substantially reduce their emissions while others do not. This is obvious by now and it’s causes are three-fold- 1. the cost is very high for available technology and no nation has shown a willingness to pay it and 2. developing nations don’t want this either- their economic growth is largely dependent on a small number of wealthy countries buying stuff from them and 3. it’s incoherent, we have ample evidence that moving emissions from developed to developing countries increases global CO2 emissions because we haven’t addressed the problem of energy without emissions.
Thomas Fuller’s comment seems to be particularly confused.
“the consensus focuses on the various contributions to climate change in the order of preferred mitigation rather than weight of contribution to the total. CO2 and other greenhouse gases seem to constitute a larger proportion than others.”
CO2 is the largest contribution to the total climate perturbation. CH4 and other well-mixed GHGs are second. This is an empirical finding and something taught at the high school level. The idea that the focus is on these GHGs but that they’re not the primary contribution to the problem is factually incorrect and quite bizarre.
“Those of us who… wish to go after the low hanging fruit, such as Fast Mitigation supporters, are seen as obstacles by the consensus.”
In point of fact the largest advocates for this sort of thing are quite obviously members of the scientific consensus such as V. Ram or Drew Shindell. As I said previously, there are good faith discussions about the pros and cons of increasing a policy emphasis on for example black carbon and other particulate by products of incomplete combustion, or shorter-lived but stronger GHGs, or ODSs. I enjoy those discussions, but for the most part they seem to largely compare apples to oranges or assume political dynamics that don’t exist in the real world.
These comments sound like contrarian caricatures rather than an informed view based on any actual evidence.
Jeff,
Not quite sure what your point is. It seems as though you’re essentially highlighting why this is ultimately a global issue.
Peter,
Yes, they do sound like that.
From what I have read, “fast mitigation” includes methane and HFCs. Tom may wish to clarify his meaning.
@wottsyflotts
61 > 50
Confronted with new evidence, namely that there are two datasets and I had referred to the wrong one, I revised my opinion.
Richard,
Yes, I realise that 61 > 50. I’m just not sure in which way you have revised your opinion. Also, not quite sure in what way an opinion is the relevant way to assess this information. Do you still think you’re below the median? If so, which dataset are you using?
Maybe an easier question is “do you think that 61% of the researchers in the sample self-cite more than you?”
“Not quite sure what your point is. It seems as though you’re essentially highlighting why this is ultimately a global issue.”
It is a global issue. Global policy isn’t aligned with that. [Playing the ref. -W]
“@wottsyflotts” we appear to be in kindergarten again.
@wottsywottsywottsyflotts
I’m below the median in the big sample, but above the median in the small sample: 12.7 < 14.2 < 15.5. (Dikran: I'm not sure that everyone in kindergarten can order rational numbers.)
The big sample is not published and not particularly relevant as it is dominated by people with one paper (zero self-citation) or two papers (with the second one the only paper citing the first one).
Richard,
Yes, this seems obvious, which is why it was surprising that you claimed to be below the median when using the small sample.
“(Dikran: I’m not sure that everyone in kindergarten can order rational numbers.)”
Some skills you learn as you grow older; some behaviours most of us grow out of.
One game that people ought to grow out of is being deliberately cryptic so you can make fun of people when they misunderstand you. Rather transparent and childish game if you ask me, especially from an eminent professor of economics.
So, Tol was wrong then resorts to childish name calling to hide his embarrassment.
Remarkable albeit routine from him. It’s not as if the mistake actually mattered.
Maybe, just maybe, when I made the first claim, I was not aware of the second sample and that I am really in between medians.
Richard,
Maybe, just maybe, that’s why we asked you to clarify, which you could easily have done, instead of doubling down.
Had you just said that and admitted your minor error, you would have made yourself look at lot less silly.
The ability to recognize and acknowledge ones own errors is quite an important skill for an academic (at least if they don’t want to end up “going emeritus”).
The ability to recognize and acknowledge ones own errors is quite an important skill for life.
At 1:35 pm, I am still under the impression that there is a single sample. At 1:42 pm, I realize there are two.
Do keep up guys.
I pointed it out at 1:41.
Oh dear.
Yes, dearest Ritchie, you noticed at 1.42
You immediately erroneously claimed the lower number was the “relevant” one rather than simply acknowledge an error.
Then, at 3.48 you finally acknowledged your error, but preceded that acknowledgement with childish name-calling.
This is really embarrassing, but entirely in keeping with your behaviour in all other issues, so not a surprise.
Do you want to stop now, or shall we go back over all those other embarrassing episodes.
Prof Tol wrote “At 1:35 pm, I am still under the impression that there is a single sample. At 1:42 pm, I realize there are two.”
At 1:42 you wrote “The Nature summary cites two medians, 12.7% and 15.5%. The former is the relevant one.”
This was not an admission of error, it is a transparent evasion of it.
“Do keep up guys.”
is just making yourself look even more foolish for not being able to simply acknowledge a trivial error.
is
We all know how this is going to go, so maybe best to call it quits. Richard is unlikely to acknowledge that, even after realising there were two medians, he still selected the wrong one.
“the former is the relevant one” implies that I initially picked the wrong median
Richard,
That still doesn’t really make any sense, but there really isn’t much point in continuing this.
I found the name lists rather useful. Minus 10 credibility for any comment made by any person in one list, plus 10 credibility for any comment made by any person in the other list. It makes applying my own bias so much easier!
It would be even more useful if the actual climatologists in either list were marked in some way, giving them a considerable boost in authority as compared to pretty much everyone else.
Peter Jacobs says: “CH4 and other well-mixed GHGs are second. This is an empirical finding and something taught at the high school level.”
Then I ought to be able to understand it easily. Do you have a source where I can find a high school text on this topic?
I see some resources here: https://www.nsta.org/climate/
And a complaint that few teachers are teaching climate science in schools.
ATTP
“I have to disagree. I think the point is to illustrate something real; contrarians are disproportionately represented in the media relative to their contribution to science. Why do those who object to this object so strongly; probably because they don’t want people to realise that contrarians are disproportionately represented in the media.”
The fact is that nearly half the people in the public object to the 97% group think being forced on them. A 100% increase in skeptic mention still only equates to 4% positive articles [or negative as you would prefer to say].
One of the great things about Skepticism is that the more people insist on being right, well, “because there right really”, instead of maturely discussing the discrepancies the less believable they become.when 4% agrees with what 40% of people think, despite the brainwashing, there is a problem, Houston.
As an aside is the issue here what is referred to as doxxing and what is the viewpoint?
OK.
Not OK.
Depends what side your on?
Wow.
perhaps we can hope that the authors of the paper are a bit more willing than some to
admit and correct meaningless errors.
and
perhaps we can hope that contrarians show some grace when the errors are acknowledged
I will expect that no one on this thread will complain about nitpicking in the future.
‘In this case there would have been valid arguments in how the two groups were selected, but this is rarely mentioned. It gives the impression that valid arguments are taboo in this tiny subgroup of humanity because they are not sufficiently divisive.”
i know. It is very frustrating. half of me wants to redo the study in a way that DK and I discussed on twitter. he had some objections, of course, but I think it would be an improvement on the current
paper. That is the way things are suppose to work. no paper is perfect. you spot issues, sometimes errors, sometimes iffy methods, and you try to improve on what others did. The other half of me says whats the point? I don;t disagree with the finding, and if I re do the paper this would be the
outcome:
Side A: FFS Mosher why are you wasting your time proving the obvious.
Side B: Still not True! you labelled people! you made this tiny error, you left out X,
you are blacklisting, balh blah blah blah.
I am struggling with this issue on my UHI work. I’ve got a bunch of cool stuff ( on advection, or UHA–, which is some relatively fresh territory )
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.5885
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2452
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0055-3?WT.feed_name=subjects_climate-change
Really important
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10546-017-0263-0
but in the end, I’m thinking.. the world doesnt need yet another UHI study of the global record
and the folks who reject the IPCC account, won’t find any study worthwhile. The folks who matter
find it un interesting, and the folks who dont matter will never learn.
Sorry in a bad mood. If you have a grad student in search of a project…
angech,
No, this is not doxxing. Doxxing is about publishing private information about an individual on the information, not publishing well-known, publicly available information.
SM I’d rather see you working on the scientific data, FWIW, doesn’t have to be the instrumental record.
angech “The fact is that nearly half the people in the public object to the 97% group think being forced on them.”
Well they could try coming up with evidence that the 97% were wrong and discussing it in good faith? Just a suggestion.
@steve m
Work on the urban heat island effect would be very important.
At the moment, we have raw data and homogenized data, stripped of measurement error and the urban heat island.
As most people live in cities and an even greater share of economic activity is concentrated there, I would love a data set that splits the urban heat island effect from measurement error and other inhomogeneities.
Richard,
As far as I’m aware, people have done work on the urban heat island effect. For example, this. There are others.
Thanks, Wotts.
There’s this paper too https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3301
angech said:
Since you’re Australian, maybe you can explain why Australians seem to show ~50% more skepticism than other nationalities.
“Scepticism in a changing climate: A cross-national study”, Bruce Tranter, Kate Booth
University of Tasmania, Australia
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378015000758
Please explain this to me, angech. I know why we in the USA are d u m b in regard to this, after all we elected T r u m p !
instead of maturely discussing the discrepancies
It’s astounding how wrong people can be about how they go about doing things. The great preponderance of group think/confirmation bias is in the ~3%.
“The great preponderance of group think/confirmation bias is in the ~3%.”
As an example: Pattern Recognition in Physics (pRIP) a journal set up by climate skeptics on the understanding that it would be a general science journal rather than a vehicle for their theories. Second issue is a a special issue of the journal on climastrology, where the articles were peer reviewed by each other. Result publisher pulls the plug on the journal for nepotistic review processes etc.
Another example: Skeptics are still clinging on to the idea that the rise in CO2 is natural (Starr, Essenhigh, Salby, Harde, Humlum et al. Berry etc.) despite it being one of the few things we know about climate that really is established well and truly beyond reasonable doubt (nothing can be established beyond unreasonable doubt). Even Prof. Curry (having promoted Salby) is unwilling to say that his theory is incorrect and defends against criticism (“zeroth order”). The flaws have been pointed out repeatedly, so the fact the canard still flies out on a regular basis, and is defended, is down to groupthink (and a complete lack of self-skepticism).
“The flaws have been pointed out repeatedly, so the fact the canard still flies out on a regular basis, and is defended, is down to groupthink (and a complete lack of self-skepticism).”
That is the friendly explanation.
VV, yes, I’m weird ;like that ;o)
SM I think you publishing on UHI/UHA would be great and I’d be happy to help any way I can, and no doubt plenty of others would as well. It’s always nice to kick the tires on things, especially if you can think of an interesting way to kick them!
The bull-pen is relieving the thin bench
She is apparently pulling in the vagaries of the stadium wave to expand the low-end uncertainty.
“these natural processes can contribute to tails on both ends of the distribution”
Sounds like someone (still) doesn’t understand that it is the tail with the high impacts that largely dominates the optimal decision on what to do.
Utterly shocked to hear that Dr. Curry has an… “idiosyncratic” understanding of a topic she’s attempted to familiarize herself with despite no academic training or willingness to consult genuine experts.
But cold cills.
P.P. :
“Since you’re Australian, maybe you can explain why Australians seem to show ~50% more skepticism than other nationalities.”
After two visits, I suspect it has something to do with mining ~ 50% more coal per capita than any other nation..
wtf?:
The log-over-linear “saturation effect” to moderate incremental GHG forcing, important science for the policy debate, goes unmentioned. …
“The log-over-linear “saturation effect” to moderate incremental GHG forcing, important science for the policy debate, goes unmentioned. …”
So, the criminal enterprise Enron’s chief speechwriter Rob Bradley chooses to believe the physics of saturation but not the reality. The two possibilities are (1) doesn’t realize he is in a circularity trap, or (2) knows this but passes his fake concerns on to gullible readers. What would a speechwriter do?
Michael 2 asked, “Do you have a source where I can find a high school text on this topic?”
They aren’t textbooks, but the first five links (and some of the others) on my “learn more” resource list are mostly high-school-level material:
[Mod: Sorry, I’m not going to let people post links to unreliable information.]
Dave,
I followed your link. A number of your sources are awful. What are you trying to do, promote pseudoscience?
Spoiler alert: DO NOT use the links that Dave Burton suggested above because they are all nonsensical climate change denier sites e.g. Prager University etc. As such they are abominable. For actual accurate science it is always advisable to go with a reputable body (NASA, NOAA, etc).
Ken that is EXACTLY what Dave Burton is trying to do. Prager University? Abominable.
Jeffnsails850, did you crew for Mike Martin? Drop me an email!
ATTP wrote, “A number of your sources are awful. What are you trying to do, promote pseudoscience?”
No, Ken, I promote sound science, only. The sources I recommend are all exceptionally high quality. They include:
● scientifically accurate introductory information.
● in-depth scientific information from both skeptics & alarmists.
● links to several balanced debates between experts on both sides.
● accurate information about “climate impacts” (sea-level, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, etc.).
● links to the best blogs on both sides of the issue.
[Playing the ref. -W]
Dave Burton is persistent. He also tried to provide misinformation at Skeptical Science yesterday. Gave him a quick lesson on diffusion in response:
https://skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1851#132544
“No, Ken, I promote sound science, only. The sources I recommend are all exceptionally high quality.”
If it includes Prager University, then that is not a high quality source. In one of their videos Prof. Lindzen uses selective quoting of the IPCC report to suggest that climate models cannot predict future climate states, while conveniently not explaining what they mean by “climate state” (things like ENSO). Anybody that didn’t already understand the topic well might think it meant we can’t predict future climate.
Caveat emptor squared (if not cubed).
Dave science isn’t decided by debates it is decided in the journals. If you want to know why, ask Charles Darwin. Debates can be won by rhetoric, rather than by being right. Much more difficult to do in an exchange of journal papers.
Meanwhile back in reality, sea level rise is a real, unusual, and serious threat. Here’s an actual expert on Sea Level Rise;
I particularly like his paper using 2000 year old written records. (Sea level rise affects the rate at which the world is spinning.) This is kinda up my alley since I deal with clock drift issues often. Clock drift is most easily estimated in the long term (seconds of clock drift per year) rather than the short term (femptoseconds per second). In this case Mitrovica uses known time measurements with known astronomical events.
Click to access e1500679.full.pdf
I’d also recommend anyone who is curious to look at real scientific sources before looking at off the wall sources from self serving ‘experts’. After all finding oddballs claiming to be experts on the internet isn’t exactly hard.
I’d start with standard text books used in universities world wide;
I highly recommendPaleoClimates by Thomas Cronin since it discusses the science in various fields and eras. (with citations) It then includes seminal papers in those fields. Overall it hits on 3500 papers or so.
https://www.bookdepository.com/Paleoclimates-Thomas-M-Cronin/9780231144940
If you can handle hard math and chemistry I’d recommend Global Physical Climatology by Dennis Hartmann;
https://www.bookdepository.com/Global-Physical-Climatology-Dennis-L-Hartmann/9780123285317
If you have a poor memory, and can’t quite get your stats straight, you have Earth’s Climate by William Ruddiman (detailed descriptions with pictures, little math, poor referencing);
https://www.bookdepository.com/Earths-Climate-William-F-Ruddiman/9780716784906
Dave,
If those are the sources you’re providing, than you definitely are not promoting sound science. That you don’t realise this is probably one of the issues. I’ve moderated your earlier comment because I’m simply not willing to let people post links to unreliable information on my site.
DM said:
Curious to know exactly where he says this. My suspicion is that he is projecting his own inability to make progress on to others, and thus to discourage future generations of climate scientists. Everything Lindzen says has an embittered negative streak to it.
anoilman wrote, “Meanwhile back in reality, sea level rise is a real, unusual, and serious threat. Here’s an actual expert on Sea Level Rise;”
Here’s something that I’ll bet you didn’t notice in Dr. Mitrovica’s lecture. He said the average rate of sea-level rise since 1930 is 2.3 mm/yr. And then showed a slide with the 23 very best (“gold standard”) long-term tide gauges in the world, and plotted their rates of sea-level rise… all of which were less than the supposed average of 2.3 mm/yr.
It’s a funny sort of “average” which is larger than any of the actual data points.
Details here:
http://www.sealevel.info/mitrovica_cmts01.html
[Playing the ref. -W]
PP, here is the video, notice the claim that the quote is supposed to support:
Still didn’t work. The relevant bit starts at 2:45
dikranmarsupial wrote, “Dave science isn’t decided by debates it is decided in the journals.”
If you want to understand any contentious issue, you have to hear from both sides. The climate debate is no exception, and “the journals” are no substitute for it.
For one thing, there are about 30,000 of them, and you surely aren’t reading them all. In fact, you’re probably reading just a handful of journals, representing one tiny corner of the highly interdisciplinary climate field. E.g., if you want to understand the effects of CO2 on crops, you should be reading agronomy and agricultural economics journals, which “climate scientists” rarely do.
For another thing, the peer-reviewed literature says that the peer-reviewed literature is untrustworthy:
Ioannidis JPA (2005), Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med 2(8): e124.
For more info, Google “replication crisis,” or see the list of papers and articles on the topic, on my site.
[Peddling. -W]
[Chill. -W]
To be clear, if you have a six-sided die, then the “climate state” is the face that is showing at some particular instant of time, but the climate is the statistical distribution over those six states. If you have a fair die, then the distribution is [1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6]. If you load the die (c.f. increasing atmospheric GHGs) then this distribution will change. What the IPCC are saying is that models can only predict the changes in the statistical distribution over state, but it can’t predict the state at any point. This ought to b obvious to anyone that understands how climate models actually work. It is a bit like saying we can’t predict the next roll of the die [but we can predict the distribution of states of a loaded die]. The bit in the brackets is the bit that Lindzen carefully omitted, making the selective quoting, shall we say “deeply nuanced”.
While I don’t use the d-word, this is the sort of thing where I am sorely tempted. It is hard to accept that Prof. Lindzen doesn’t understand what the IPCC report actually says, given that he is a climatologist.
dave “If you want to understand any contentious issue, you have to hear from both sides. The climate debate is no exception, and “the journals” are no substitute for it.”
No, the debate IS IN THE JOURNALS. Face-to-face debate is not how science is done. It used to be, and there is a very good reason why we don’t do it like that anymore. Ask yourself why Darwin didn’t publish his theories for 20 years, and why when he did, he had other people to do the debate for him. It wasn’t because he wasn’t right.
“For one thing, there are about 30,000 of them, and you surely aren’t reading them all. In fact, you’re probably reading just a handful of journals, representing one tiny corner of the highly interdisciplinary climate field. ”
You think individuals taking part in a debate will have read more of them than the scientists who actually work on this stuff and write the papers?
Dave, let me know what you think of the Lindzen video. Check what the IPCC report actually says.
I’m going out and Willard is on holiday, so can we keep this pleasant. And, Dave, your sources are nonsense, so please don’t expect me to allow you to post links to them on my site.
[Playing the ref. -W]
dikranmarsupial asked, “Dave, let me know what you think of the Lindzen video. Check what the IPCC report actually says.”
Well, Prof. Lindzen did get one thing wrong. He said the statement was in the 2007 Report (AR4), but it was actually in the 2001 Report (TAR).
Here is the paragraph from which you think he omitted too much:
I do not agree that what he said was out of context. In fact, I think what he said was quite mild. He could have also pointed out that the large disagreement between the models proves that the models do not model physical reality, and the TAR’s admission that they need to resort to ensembles of models was a tacit admission that none of the models are skillful.
[But Modulz. -W]
Dave: your links should have ONLY included reputable sources like NASA, NOAA, Scripps etc. What you did is dilute the sound sites with links to risible climate-change denying sources like Prager University. You tried to plug the opinions of people like William Happer who have no relevant expertise in climate science. I can’t believe for a second that you didn’t know that contributors here were going to call you out on it. Many, like me, are scientists. I am sure that readers of contrarian blogs might lap up some of the links you provided but few of us here will.
For the uninitiated: Prager University is not a university. It is a think tank set up by conservative pundit DennIs Prager that makes short videos espousing right wing ideology. One of the Prager U videos on climate change was by shill-for-hire Patrick Moore. Needless to say that Moore’s video presentation is utterly abominable nonsense that has been categorically debunked several times.
That Dave includes a Prager U link in his earlier post underpins what I said earlier.
@DaveB:
The citation confirms DMs comment. Lindzen is vague and this comment is misleading, unless climate state is defined properly.
In case he equals with “state” the exact temperature, humidity, pressure… at a certain time and location in the future, this quote tells us nothing new and everyone dealing with non-linear systems like Navier-Stokes etc. and therefore dealing with turbulence, knows this. Various kinds of averages are being dealt with, PDFs etc. I do that every day. As Lindzen doesn’t specify it (maybe he does, but the citation is too brief, here) it gives the impression that climate changes can’t be properly predicted, something skeptics make use of to spread doubt, which I consider as wrong.
“the large disagreement between the models proves that the models do not model physical reality, ”
Define large disagreement. Your conclusion is utterly wrong, too. Did you ever design models? Did you ever include different physical mechanisms to concentrate on capturing certain physical effects? Did you use different mathematical tools and approximations to include certain physical effects, resulting in differences in the model output? Is a model ever able to reproduce physical reality accurately in space and time (we would need to define accurately)? To what extent? When would you consider a model to ever capture “reality”? What is your definition of state?
I never developed a model to reproduce a future state exactly (not possible), but only to reproduce the dynamics in a certain statistical sense. That is what modelers do all the time. You learn that in Turbulence Modeling 101. So Lindzen’s statement referring to the probability distribution etc. is exactly what modelers in turbulence or climate modelling try to achieve. In my opinion he just states that to obscure what is going on and sow doubt.
Put me in the group that thinks that anyone calling Prager University a reliable source is not capable of judging anything in climate science. For a combination take-down of Prager U and Dick Lndzen, try this old post over at Climate Asylum:
The assessment of LIndzen: “He’s so good at the Art of Lying Well (TM) that he can do it without making any factual claims that aren’t technically true (in a sense that almost none of his viewers would understand).”
Paul
“Since you’re Australian, maybe you can explain why Australians seem to show ~50% more skepticism than other nationalities.“
Idiosyncratic, Australians have always had an independent and anti authoritarian attitude. Tell us what to do and we do the opposite.
Russell has a very good point re our coal mining.
We have a small population, a largesse in income due to mining income to the government.
anoilman wrote, “sea level rise is a real, unusual, and serious threat…”
Here’s [peddling. -W]
[Playing the ref. -W]
““No, Ken, I promote sound science, only. The sources I recommend are all exceptionally high quality.”
This is interesting. It would appear dave wants to hang his hat on the sources listed.
That raises certain questions.
1. Is this the best you have? I mean that seriously.
2. Many of these sources are littered with errors. Are you able
to see that? If its pointed out, do you still stand behind the source?
“I do not agree that what he said was out of context. In fact, I think what he said was quite mild.”
In that case you don’t understand the issue and the significance of the “climate state” rather than just “climate”.
Lindzen used the quote to suggest that we can’t accurately predict future climate, and the quote doesn’t support that at all. It is just saying we can’t predict the exact course of internal climate variability, e.g. ENSO, which is obvious to anybody with an understanding of chaotic processes. However on a centennial scale, the effects of variability (which are quasi-cyclic) essentially average out, but the forced response (to increasing GHGs) doesn’t. It is explaining what we mean by an ensemble prediction (essentially a MonteCarlo simulation – a technique widely used in physics).
“He could have also pointed out that the large disagreement between the models proves that the models do not model physical reality, ”
what large disagreement?
“Face-to-face debate is not how science is done”
Especially when such debates are between “top climate expert” Jeff Bennett (number of scientific papers related to climate change: zero – I appreciate he is well read on the topic and a good communicator, though) and “top climate expert” Craig Idso (at least he *does* have some papers related to climate change, but his publication record is very thin). That label of “top climate expert” is Burton’s claim about these two, in case anyone wonders.
It also doesn’t help to see Burton refer to William Happer as an atmospheric scientist. I think he has a grand total of one paper that relates to (one aspect of) the atmosphere. That makes our host here an amazing climate scientist, considering his publication record…
“2. Many of these sources are littered with errors. Are you able
to see that? If its pointed out, do you still stand behind the source?”
Yep, apparently so.
The Lindzen thing is a good example of why debate is not the way to get to the truth in science. When I first saw the Lindzen video that quote immediately set of my b.s. detector. The idea that the IPCC don’t think they can predict future climate with sufficient accuracy would mean their model based work was useless. Hands up anybody that thinks that is actually true? However it took a good five or ten minutes fact checking to find out (as I haven’t memorized the text of the IPCC report). In a live debate, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do that. “hang on audience, that smells like bullshit, lets take a ten minute recess to do some fact checking”. Repeat that everytime something suspicious were said, and the debate would become utterly disjointed. That is why a written debate (e.g. journals) is a better approach (unless you want to be hoodwinked).
I’m curious.
Have the contrarians made any new substantive scientific arguments in the last 20 years? Or the last decade?
Where is the new breed of published climate science contrarians? Say in their 20’s or 30’s.
Why aren’t old white men fostering new young contrarians? Oh wait, that’s the domain of the Catholic Church.
One last go at explaining this in the hopes that Dave can see how disingenuous Lindzen is being. Note that the IPCC quote doesn’t say anything about accuracy, which is what Lindzen is implying.
Next consider a double pendulum:
This is another coupled non-linear chaotic system. We can predict its future trajectory only if we have a completely precise description of its initial state. However, we can work out the statistical distribution of the states of the pendulum that we expect to see (they are not uniform). If we now stick an elecromagnet to one side and gradually turn up the current (c.f. increasing GHG concentrations), then the distribution of states will be biased towards the electromagnet. Now we can’t predict the exact path of the double pendulum as we increase the current (the weather) but we can predict the statistical distribution of states (the climate).
The excerpt from the IPCC report is saying that climate projections are necessarily probabilistic/statistical. Nothing more, it is saying NOTHING about accuracy. It is difficult to see that as anything other than dishonest (assuming that Prof Lindzen actually undnerstands the basic principles of Monte Carlo simulation on which ensemble forecasting is based – perhaps he doesn’t, in which case he is displaying monumental hubris).
A double-pendulum is a coupled system. How about a stratified system, which was Lindzen’s forte?
Isn’t physics weird?
cool! I take it it stops working if the stirring is too vigorous?
DM – very helpful explanation of climate states.
JCH, cheers! Tim Palmer has a talk where he explains things with a different sort of pendulum (with magnets), where his system has “tipping points” as well, I think this is the video:
Probably. It definitely stops working if the fluids are more miscible — this is used as an example of a Navier-Stokes high viscosity/low Reynolds-number solution showing elements of time reversability.
Reminded me of the lab experiment by Plumb & McEwan that tried to validate Lindzen’s theory
“The instability of a forced standing wave in a viscous stratified fluid: A laboratory analogue of. the quasi-biennial oscillation”
Here’s a recent presentation by one of Tim Palmer’s students. Interesting that full CFD experiments can use 16-bit computation (albeit a special format for 16-bit). At the 41:42 minute mark, a comment from the audience “things tend to look more chaotic than they really are”. That really sunk in.
Yes, I’ve watched Tim Palmer’s video.
So far, in my experience, the water in my pot has warmed every single time I’ve lit the burner underneath it. But yeah, maybe some day the pendulum will swing to ice cube.
Paul,
That posits stuff was really neat!
daveburton, I think you should watch the video before stating things that are plainly wrong. Specifically, Jerry Mitrovica never said that the 23 gold standard tide gauges were 2.3mm.yr. I think you should provide a citation proving your assertion before moving on.
http://web.archive.org/web/20181221020115/http://www.sealevel.info/mitrovica_cmts01.html
Dr Mitrovica slide 1… Jerry Mitrovica is not saying that sea level rise is 2.3mm. He showing you that Church and Jevrejeva data sets show 2.3mm per year.
Jerry Mitrovica is saying that the ranges in other data sets are 1.5mm to 2.5mm, which you then show in a graph with 1.5mm (?) per year using a different data set. Do you under understand that you are confusing completely different data sets? Do you see that your second graph is what he said existed in the first graph? Do you understand that in no way did he say that all data sets show 2.3mm/yr.
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything funny about your mistakes, and I think you should clean them up. I’d be fired if I made your kind of mistake on the job.
No more piling on, please.
Paul Pukite
“Isn’t physics weird?” No. Something all Fluid Mechanics 101 students get to see when learning about laminar low Reynolds number flows, shear stress and time scales.
‘JCH, cheers! Tim Palmer has a talk where he explains things with a different sort of pendulum (with magnets), where his system has “tipping points” as well, I think this is the video:”
I had the good fortune of having lunch with him years ago. an awesome human being.
“Isn’t physics weird?”
No way that happened. deep fake
” (albeit a special format for 16-bit).”
hmm. speciality processors….
So it’s either Fluid Mechanics 101 or a Deep Fake.
Borrowing ideas from E-M physics to figure out how to design cloaking waveguides
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.074501
Apparently Prof. Palmer is also quite versatile https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/5/356 (!)
Seems that the C word is banned at Judy’s:
The article is this one:
Our thin bench has a thin skin.
Steven Mosher asked, “1. Is this the best you have?”
I frequently update the list, as new information comes to my attention. I have a lot more good resources on my sealevel dot info web site, but this list is, IMO, the cream of the crop.
[Playing the ref once more. -W]
Paul Pukite (@WHUT) (on August 23, 2019 at 12:35 pm) wrote, “…How about a stratified system…”
That’s apparently called Taylor-Couette laminar flow. You can google “Taylor-Couette” for more information, or here’s a video similar to yours, but with commentary:
That’s a fine video, Destin’s done some other fluid videos where he gets excited, an experiment with vortex rings as I recall.
The problem with Lindzen’s early research is that he completely missed the obvious in stratospheric rotation, where the stratification approximates this flow. He then mistook the difficulty that he was having and projected that on everyone else. The end result was progress stalled and he became an over-zealous AGW skeptic to top it off.
Paul wrote, “…the obvious in stratospheric rotation, where the stratification approximates this flow.”
Paul, the Earth’s atmosphere is the exact opposite of the extremely viscous, ultra-low Reynolds number fluid in Dustin’s experiment.
Low flow rate is equivalent in some degree to low Reynolds number.
Now that DaveB has learned to offer constructive comments without playing the ref, if we could return to the topic, that’d be great.
To Victor Venema:
Re: “For example, Pielke Sr. blocked me on Twitter after he had spread multiple times the myth that water vapour is decreasing and I had pointed out multiple times that the article explicitly wrote that the NVAP dataset he used is not suited for trend analysis.”
Yes, the issues with NVAP were well-known, and covered in sources such as:
http://nvap.stcnet.com/NVAP_Trend_Statement.pdf (“Statement on using existing NVAP dataset (1988 – 2001) for trends: (Tom Vonder Haar and the NVAP production team, July 2010)”)
“Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations”
“The GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment: Results from intercomparison, trend, and homogeneity analysis of total column water vapor”
“The GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment: Overview and introduction to results and recommendations”
And there’s clearly increasing water vapor (acting as a positive feedback) in the bulk troposphere, including in the upper troposphere, as covered in papers such as:
“Upper-tropospheric moistening in response to anthropogenic warming”
“The radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening”
“Global water vapor trend from 1988 to 2011 and its diurnal asymmetry based on GPS, radiosonde, and microwave satellite measurements”
“Construction and uncertainty estimation of a satellite‐derived total precipitable water data record over the world’s oceans”
“An analysis of tropospheric humidity trends from radiosondes”
“Trends in tropospheric humidity from reanalysis systems”
“On the interpretation of upper-tropospheric humidity based on a second-order retrieval from infrared radiances”
“Three decades of intersatellite-calibrated High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder upper tropospheric water vapor”
“Process-based decomposition of the decadal climate difference between 2002–13 and 1984–95”
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