Update 5 pm Eastern: 1,000 comments on thread at http://judithcurry.com, and some very “feisty” discourse in this new era of civility.
Since my post on the “RealClimate’s over-the-top response” of Gavin and the Team has been getting a lot of discussion, I thought it only fair to mention that Dr. Judith Curry dropped in to leave a note. She said:
For more fun and games with Gavin, see my latest post at Climate Etc “Hiding the Decline” http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
Judging from comments like this one:
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“I’m calling it like I see it”
How brave of you.
My point is that by lowering yourself to insult, you block off all sensible discussion of specific technical points – if you are so certain in your thinking that no further discussion is required, then fine. No more discussion will occur. But it would have been far better for you to have had the character to allow for disagreements without being disagreeable (did you not pick up anything in Lisbon?).
…
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It seems there’s a veritable free for all going on there. Gavin’s having a little trouble managing in a format that he doesn’t get to manage. See:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
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Thread of the year! Kudos to Dr Curry for raising the issue .
Having just read through the comments, the only possible reaction is Wow!, Wow! with brass knobs on and a big china gazunder. The exchange is…. extraordinary. Dr Schmidt is gnawing at the ankle of integrity* with some vigour but little effect. And, sweetly, he has even brought doghanza along to give him moral support.
My respect for Dr Curry, already high, increases.
JF
*see cartoons by Josh.
I was surprised to see Judith wade into this matter at such a late stage but thought her comments good. They were nicely and calmly set out and I was pleased to see a scientist condemning what is clearly unacceptab;e practice which practice has discredited science amd climate science in particular. I applaud her for her stance.
Her comments have certainly produced a reaction
/Sarc on
Well Anthony, Gavin is out of sorts give the poor guy a break. I Mean just look at the list of things happening to him:
1. The government agency that is paying his paycheck is transiting from what science they still do to a Muslim outreach program.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/07/nasas_muslim_outreach_106214.html
I Mean think about it. It would not be easy trying to learn Farsi and Arabic and then trying to explain Hide the Decline and how the Hockey Stick is robust in those languages in just 6 to 9 months.
2. While he was off doing outreach, Eric Steig losses it over on RC and he wasn’t there to spin them out of it.
3. After missing out on that and finished with his outreach to the Muslims he finds that the evil republicans have passed a bill that might do away with his job that allows him to blog all day (When not doing outreach).
However there was even more Horror the Evil Republicans were taking away the money for the EPA to Impose CO2 regulations
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703803904576152753496208560.html
So of course Gavin is little off his game and little snippy, he has had a bad 2010 and 2011 isn’t looking to swift either.
/Sarc Off
High humor. I limited my comments mostly to misconceptions regarding PCA. It is amazing, but people really think there is some magical way to just tease out “temperature” as if it had some sort of name tag throughout time in tree rings. Sigh…
Even more interesting, IMO, is that Gavin, self-admitted dullard w.r.t. statistical analysis techniques, chose to wade into the quicksand on this one. His only technical defense is several since refuted papers all with the same problems. Even JC is basically calling him an idiot.
Mark
While I am encouraged by Dr. Curry’s challenge to Gavin, why does she not also question his non-climate background (mathematics) or for that matter the Don of GISS – James Hansen.
When Greek meets Greek.
Kindest Regards
Can we have the enormous intellect of ‘ianash’ on here? It’s ok, I’m just joking. She (ianash) is typical of the reason I gave up actually discussing anything on blogs, and just make periodic contributions. It’s a shame that forums get to this level, and I can see the appeal of allowing all comments – against the alternative that is RC and the truly awful Open Mind. But I still think it’s a great shame that we have this wonderful tool for discussing serious subjects, yet have to suffer the mind-thoughts of people like ianash.
R John says:
February 23, 2011 at 12:03 am
There’s no reason she should except to point out the double standard the same idiots hold for everyone else (notice the pattern of double standards, btw?) Steve M’s background is certainly non-climate.
There are so many “fields” within climate science that to expect anyone to be an “expert in climate science” would be akin to thinking the techs on on the TV show CSI are realistically capable of everything they do every week.
Mark
“Gavin’s having a little trouble managing in a format that he doesn’t get to manage.”
It’s easy to see why people following Gavin’s diatribes over at FauxClimate.org believe everything he blogs; since Gavin is actively denying even polite counter comments/posts under the guise of “SPAM filtering”.
I commend Judith Curry for trying to get “the scientific method” back into climate science. I read the whole article and thought it was well argued. It may not be “new knowledge” but it shows that even amongst “warmers” (maybe a weak one?) there is a quest to return to science as it should be practiced. Maybe we will see more climate scientists coming out and becoming scientists again now that the Republicans have a say over how money is spent (or not spent) on proving AGW, Climate Change, Climate Disruption or whatever it is called today.
Personally, I think the quality of the trolling says a lot about the strength of the argument.
I particularly liked this from Dr. Curry:
“I’m more interested in the handle than the blade of the hockey stick. I also view understanding regional climate variations as much more important than trying to use some statistical model to create global average anomalies (which I personally regard as pointless, given the sampling issue).”
The handle is crucial because if the proxies do not adequately show the degree of natural variability that goes to the heart of whether what we are seeing in the real world with our modern day sensing techniques is in any way unusual.
The regional climate variations are critical because it seems to me that a change in the distribution of the air circulation systems is the best guide as to whether the troposphere as a whole is experiencing net warming or net cooling.
As a a result of the dominance of AGW theory for more than two decades those critical issues have been ignored and any investigations apparently suppressed.
Poor Gavin has blown his last (did he ever have any?) shred of credibility. As for his dishonesty – well it shines out like a beacon.
He’s no scientist.
I see Judith’s comment is no longer there. Or at least I couldnt find it.
When this all over, I am going to apply for a NASA grant to create a nice montage for there headquarter using some old Piltdown Man stuff and some cores from Yarmal 061.
Seems to me that Dr Curry is gently falling off the fence. She has always been a warmist, even if only “luke”, but gradually she is seeing what the rest of have known for years, that AGW was never about science, it was always about politics from the moment when Margaret Thatcher set up Hadly.
I remember as a kid, some folk saying “they’d tax the air you breathe if they could get away with it”. Well now in England they do except it is the air you breathe out.
Reading that stuff over at Judith’s reminds me of rats in a sack, all fighting and squabbling over their righteous and sanctimonious indignation. Yuk!
Potentially this could develop into a significant story (particularly if one of the MSM papers were to run with it). The post and comments on Bishop Hill are worth a look.
Dr Curry is being very brave and is being treated by idiots in the alarmist camp as a traitor. Dr Curry is trying to be true to the scientific method and this is causing alarm for the true believers. Most people on her blog are supportive but some are a tad upset and angry. The symptoms of a lost argument even Gavin is angry and peeved [what a shame]
I am very disappointed in the replies. Almost every time Gavin posts a comment, Dr Curry folds immediately and leaves rebuttals to others in the comments.
He compares apples with oranges in terms of leaving data off graphs, and then asks her to cite something to back up another of her comments and she folds completely, even saying, “Good one Gavin, brilliant argument.”
WTF?
There are so many other fields of science, not corrupted by politically motivated AGW grants, oil money or other distracting influences, who for over a century have gathered data which shows that this current decade is NOT the warmest in history. From the fields of history, politics, archaeology, anthropology, geology, oceanography, marine biology, geography, botany, zoology, etc. all have papers which show evidence that lots of different parts of the earth were warmer during the past 1000 years than they are now.
The Hockey stick team produce a dodgy graph from unreliable and largely irrelevant tree-ring data to create a proxy, leave out the part where that tree-ring reconstruction fails to support the thermometer record (a record already suspect due to homogenisation issues) and then they pass that off as being a more accurate record of the last millennia temperature than all the other peer-reviewed and documented historical data combined?
Dr Curry then folds on the slightest pressure and is losing massive amounts of credibility on that one thread alone in my eyes.
I really hope that part II is better with cited examples and links to data and shows Gavin up for the arrogant, bullying, hypocritical pseudo-scientist he really is.
The really interesting thing is that JC ‘gets’ the seminal importance of the original TAR hockey stick in convincing policymakers that there was a problem – by candidly admitting that it had fooled her as well! This makes her thread all the more damning IMO.
I agree with Anthony that our pal Gavin must have had a bad hair day. (both of them)
I just went through all the comments on JC’s “Hide the
Decline” post. Gavin & his band-on-the-run played around in the open venue. I am glad for them that they could escape their self imposed exile at RC. They acted childlike, poor dears, except for their reflexive snarling habit.
Note to Anthony: I am accessing WUWT right now in the P.R.C. I thought someone commented last year that WUWT couldn’t be reached from here.
John
Well, I’ve waded in over on that thread and decided to wade back out for a while.
After the Gavin’s brusque, irritating and disruptive comments, some of the usual suspects like imanass, dogsbrethz, Jen, etc attacked the thread in true troll like Romm-ulan fashion.
Responding to the minions of non-sense can actually be quite tiring.
Anyway, I’m quite proud of this little posting I made over there…..
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/#comment-45878
With reference to the title of the post…. I’d rather not! LOL