From Tom Nelson, it was too good not to repost, especially when Lewandowsky hands out moral lessons while being immoral himself with his labeling skeptics as “moon landing deniers” with a gussed up survey and statistical slight of hand that turned out to be a an academic scam used as a tool to dehumanize people that have legitimate doubts about the science.
Now that Lewandowsky has declared the AR5 draft leak issue “dishonourable” (something not even the IPCC itself said in their statement) I expect we won’t see any use of AR5 draft information by his mouthpiece pawns, John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli on “Skeptical Science”, because well, using that new “dishonourably” obtained information would be wrong according to Lew.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a researcher of climate change denial at the Cognitive Science Laboratories at the University of Western Australia, said the premature leak of the report was “dishonourable.”
“Science is one of the most transparent endeavours humans have ever developed. However, for the transparency to be effective, preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review,” he said in an emailed comment.
“The leak of a draft report by a reviewer who has signed a statement of confidentiality is therefore regrettable and dishonourable.”
“However, what is worse than the leak itself is the distortion of the content of the draft chapter by some deniers (no, they are not skeptics),” he said.
Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view.
“That’s up from ‘very high confidence’ (90% certain) in the last report published in 2007,” he said. [Hey Stephan: How, specifically, were those 90% and 99% numbers calculated? What, specifically, changed between 2007 and now that accounts for the alleged 90% reduction in uncertainty?]
“In other words, the scientific case has become even stronger and has now reached a level of confidence that is parallelled only by our confidence in some very basic laws of physics, such as gravity or thermodynamics.”
To claim otherwise by cherry-picking part of a sentence out of context is absurd, he said.
“Although it illustrates the standard approach by which climate deniers seek to confuse the public. Climate denial lost intellectual respectability decades ago, and all that deniers have left now is to misrepresent, distort, or malign the science and the scientific process.”
For the last few years, my new passion has been rock climbing…Most airlines [Wait, with the fate of my grandchildren allegedly hanging in the balance, this guy still takes unnecessary fuel-guzzling trips to climb on rocks?!] can handle that, whereas few take sailplanes as check-in luggage
“Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view.”
Now ain’t that impressive. Reminds me of election results in the DDR.
It is good that he mentions Newton’s ‘law of gravity’ as this original piece of fiction was really what started the modeling bandwagon rolling centuries ago and like ‘global warming’ when a theory/model can explain just about everything,then people know there is something radically wrong with the followers of the bandwagon.
Rarely did anyone ever ask what the ‘laws of gravity’ actually are insofar as not a single person has been able to trace Newton’s approach,at least up to now.It is breathtaking in its audacity to subvert some of the greatest achievements of Western astronomical tradition yet the modelers neither know nor want to know.
Edgar Allan Poe ,in praising Von Homboldt ,was probably among the few who questioned a thoery that explains so much with so little –
“To explain: — The Newtonian Gravity — a law of Nature — a law whose existence as such no one out of Bedlam questions — a law whose admission as such enables us to account for nine-tenths of the Universal phænomena — a law which, merely because it does so enable us to account for these phænomena, we are perfectly willing, without reference to any other considerations, to admit, and cannot help admitting, as a law — a law, nevertheless, of which neither the principle nor the modus operandi of the principle, has ever yet been traced by the human analysis — a law, in short, which, neither in its detail nor in its generality, has been found susceptible of
explanation at all — is at length seen to be at every point thoroughly explicable, provided we only yield our assent to —— what? To an hypothesis? Why if an hypothesis — if the merest hypothesis — if an hypothesis for whose assumption — as in the case of that pure hypothesis the Newtonian law itself — no shadow of à priori reason could be assigned — if an hypothesis, even so absolute as all this implies, would enable us to perceive a principle for the Newtonian law — would enable us to understand as satisfied, conditions so miraculously — so ineffably complex and seemingly irreconcileable as those involved in the relations of which Gravity tells us, — what rational being could so expose his fatuity as to call even this absolute hypothesis an hypothesis any longer — unless, indeed, he were to persist in so calling it, with the understanding that he did so, simply for the sake of consistency in words?” Allan Poe
At the bottom of the mathematical modeling hoopla,of which this global warming mess is merely a sideshow is Newton’s agenda which is an offshoot of Ra/Dec modeling – a homocentric exercise as cruel as any the world has ever seen in that it is vicious.
The theory of gravity indeed !,if only the world knew what it actually represents.
‘nuf said.
“Although it illustrates the standard approach by which climate deniers seek to confuse the public.”
Classic projection. It is the alarmists that never want the public to see the entire body of evidence.
Please, good doctor, explain how the following fits the narrative:
1) Missing hot spot.
2) Temperature during the last interglacial.
3) Missing water vapor feedback.
4) Missing reduction in outgoing IR.
5) How even a 100% increase in CO2 that is only a 1.1% increase in GHE could possibly cause a 20% increase in temperature.
“Science is one of the most transparent endeavours humans have ever developed. However, for the transparency to be effective, preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review,” he said in an emailed comment.
=======================================================================
Translation: “Science is one of the most transparent endeavors humans have ever developed. So now lets make it opaque.”
Lewandowsky: “To claim otherwise by cherry-picking part of a sentence out of context is absurd, he said.”
“Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view.”
I hope that “virtual certainty” was not cherry-picked!
It’s funny how the more global temperature diverges from IPCC projections the more certain they become that it’s man’s co2. What if we go into a decade long cooling? What then? How do they climb down after nailing their flags to the mast? 16 years of a temperature standstill and they become more convinced. Amazing stuff. This couldn’t happen in any other field of science – I think.
Steve Sherwood, one of the authors of the report and Co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a researcher of climate change denial at the Cognitive Science Laboratories at the University of Western Australia.
Obviously neither of these guys has any financial or other conflict when commenting on climate pseudoscience.
Isn’t amazing how people can create fields of pseudoscience to investigate without having the basic intelligence to determine if the underpinning pseudoscience is sound ??
All of the discussion about climate pseudoscience is about peripheral issues like a storm or a period of dry, wet hot or cold weather – who cares about things we cannot do anything about ?
Lets investigate the basis for the hypothesis and how climate pseudoscience has made a fundamental error and what evidence there is to demonstrate this error.
The witchdoctors have conflated narrative adhockery with peer-review in their Just So Stories For Little men. These stories will go the way of The Song of The South soon enough.
Absolutely the CAGW scam is 100% mann made.
De Nile is a river in Egypt and the phoney Dr may soon wish he was in it.
The projection of these clown is revealing, in simple justice shall we do unto these artists as they state they would do unto us?
Such lunacy is refreshing, keep them talking as we have no friends as useful as these experts.
What I would like to hear Lewandowsky tell me is what scientific principals underlie “Cognitive Science”!
Obviously Stephan, like most climate alarmists, is not familiar with the old joke about 87.34% of statistics being completely made up. What a prat.
I thought Newton’s theory had long since been supplanted? By Einstein… and even he wasn’t sure he had it all right?
Is lewandowski having a freudian slip?
Rock climbing is a very hazardous pastime. Statistics in Australia from 1955-2004 show these figures:
Table 1: ACAD Overview
Fatal, Severe, Serious, Moderate, Minor, Unknown
Category % Entries 5 4 3 2 1 0
Rock Climbing 69.2 204 25 19 76 50 29 5
Mountaineering 21.0 62 46 1 8 6 1 0
Gym Climbing 3.7 11 1 2 6 2 0 0
Bouldering 1.7 5 0 0 0 5 0 0
Abseiling 4.4 13 11 0 2 0 0 0
Climbing Sub-Total 100.0 295 83 22 92 63 30 5
Other 7 5 0 0 1 1 0
Total 302 88 22 92 64 31 5
Statistics from Iain B. Sedgman : Climbing Accidents in Australia http://uobcommunity.ballarat.edu.au/~isedgman/climbing/Accidents.pdf
It will be interesting to see how Professor Lewandowsky gets on with his encounter with the laws of Gravity.
Yes, it is entirely dishonorable to leak the draft of the AR5 working group 1 report. The report is still a draft and tentative in nature. It is still subject to revision and change just like the raw temperature data. After revisions the facts , conclusions and recommendations could be entirely different and could be opposite as to what is presented in the draft reports. In recent days, there has been controlled leak into the mainstream media that is entirely different and contradictory to the leak draft report to prepare the political masters to allocate special budget to further confirm a settled science , provides the political masters a sound political platform to scare the voters to maintain the status quo and photo opportunity for crying in the next weather episode that has no connection to climate. Anyway the public in general does not understand the difference between weather and climate.
“climate deniers”
“a researcher of climate change denial”
I have NEVER met a ‘climate denier’ or a ‘climate change denier’ in my life.
Is this man for real?
Do ‘Universities’ (And in the case of the University of Western Australia I use this term very loosely.) now study straw-man?
This pseudo scientist is an embarrassment for Australia.
the CAGW Gatekeepers are always good for a laugh, especially in the MSM, which kept Monckton’s “16 years” – the highlight of Doha – “confidential”.
of course, the MSM jumped all over Alec’s “leak” within hours, and produced almost identical meme headlines worldwide, showing their usual –
“…loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.” (George Orwell)
@DirkH
it’s the GDR, German DemocraticRepublic – RIB
Sorry, RIP
Hi Anthony,
Im fascinated to learn that Lewandowsky employs “mouthpiece pawns, John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli “. Could you provide support for that statement please? Or perhaps consider withdrawing it as ad hominem.
REPLY: Why should I bother? The facts of association are clear enough. Lewdowsky’s, Cooks, and Nuccitelli’s essays with ad homs are far worse than that for real people to see, and unlike fake people such as yourself who make ad hom stock in trade as I have observed from your ID on numerous occasions elsewhere. Your whining is denied. – Anthony
Science should be transparent, as in this particular case
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/10/solar-cycle-24-still-in-a-slump/#comment-1172258
:
I wonder if anyone’s bothered to tell the poor fellow that there hasn’t been any stat sig warming since around 1997, and – if I don’t miss my guess – the warming trend isn’t likely to restart for at least another decade.
It is becoming increasingly evident to anyone who hasn’t got their head up their backside that it is Lewandowsky, Cook and their ilk that are the deniers now.
Of course, something that doesn’t help their case is that since the death of Peak Oil and the dawn of the shale gas revolution, there just isn’t the political will to promote CAGW any longer, there’s more money to be made from fraccing than there was taxing the dwindling reservoir of conventional fossil fuels, and, as anyone who has been paying attention is well aware, politics and money has been the top and bottom of the AGW hypothesis all along.
Really ? Perhaps he should start by staring into a mirror.
I interpret that as meaning that they have a 1% chance of keeping their jobs should temperatures fall in a sustained manner.
Aside from the minor detail that science has no idea what gravity is and even less idea about gravitational anomalies. And as for thermodynamics…
Lewandowsky is a piece of work. First he was a expert in understanding the psychology of the so called “Deniers”, now he is an expert in interpreting the IPCC reports and an expert in gravity and thermodynamics. Wow such talent for only one man.
“preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review”
Wrong on many different levels.
It makes unsupportable assumptions about who should conduct peer review. It confuses “journal review” (selected reviewers before publication) with wider review (anybody who reads the document and raises valid objections).
In addition, it invites us to assume that the IPCC documents are reporting “science”. But the IPCC doesn’t perform any science and is not presenting or interpreting scientific observations. So wrong again.
carefully framed reuters’ article re some more CAGW “confidentials”:
13 Dec: Reuters: Timothy Gardner: Lawmakers press EPA chief on “Windsor” email alias
(Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Gunna Dickson)
Republican lawmakers want the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency to explain her use of a government-assigned email address under a fake name…
Lawmakers and a public interest watchdog group have complained that Jackson’s second account – named after a family dog – was not something that could be easily linked to the administrator.
Emails Jackson wrote using that account may not have been captured by Freedom of Information Act requests or made it to national archives, they argued…
http://news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-press-epa-chief-windsor-email-alias-031420329–finance.html
I have no problem with confidentiality in a scientific endeavor that involves patents, such as drug research or new technology. However this “climate” stuff involves all of us and the people involved all seem to have ulterior motives rather than altruistic intentions.
Apparently the word “transparency” means different things to different people. From this observer, the entire concept of the IPCC is anything BUT “transparent”. A large group of well financed people spending huge amounts of time and money to attempt to prove an unprovable hypothesis is NOT Science. And how, exactly, did we get to a point where proclamations from on high are “science”?
I’ve been saying for years that eventually people will look back on this and wonder what they were thinking… it’s like a kind of mass madness where people fervently believe something that was always demonstrably ridiculous. Yes, “climate fear” is ridiculous, and reminds me most of “Koro Syndrome” (look it up)
Jimbo says:
December 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Wouldn’t and shouldn’t.
But Jimbo, in the face of a contradiction, simply check your premises–you’ll find one of them is wrong. In this case, it is that this is a “field of science”. It is none other than a field of politics, and everybody knows just about anything goes in politics–especially the irrational–in order to achieve the UN’s facinorous agenda.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 15, 2012 at 12:45 pm
“It is good that he mentions Newton’s ‘law of gravity’ as this original piece of fiction was really what started the modeling bandwagon rolling centuries ago and like ‘global warming’ when a theory/model can explain just about everything,then people know there is something radically wrong with the followers of the bandwagon. Etc etc etc”
——————————————————————————————————
Newtons Law of Gravity works and can deliver a current space vehicle to the outer planets. AGW theory doesn’t work on many levels. That’s the difference. AGW is a flawed hypothesis and does not reach a level anywhere near being a ‘Law’ that in the case of Newton has been proven to be practically correct for relatively lower velocities below that of light velocity. AGW is empirically unproven.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity readily explains Newtons Law as a consequence of the ‘curvature’ of space surrounding a mass or masses.
What Lewandowsky simple shows is his total ignorance of scientific theory, principles and the scientific method. He is completely out of his depth and has not a fragment of expertise on this subject to offer in my opinion.
Prof Lewandowsky appears to have recieved his PhD in Australia. It is now well documented that there is an age group there that was educated on how not think critically.
They have been educated to answer to authority without question.
The nation has a chance yet, but is rapidly sinking into total oblivion.
Sad to watch…………sad to watch.
Of all the shonks currently promulgating the lie of AGW Lewandowsky is a standout.
Chris B – His intonation is quite embarrassing. He appears from this video to be very wrapped up in his own perceived importance and sense of intellect. But he does himself a disservice with his extreme position on the legitimacy of alternative viewpoints as it diminishes any credibility he hopes to establish by claiming membership of the elite group known as ‘scientists’
“Human role in climate change now virtually certain” (1)
It is quite fortunate English is not my first language after all. Sometimes it makes me ponder on the underlying logical structure of propositions, what native speakers almost never do, having that wonderful gut feeling thing that reveals meaning immediately as the proposition unfolds with no conscious effort involved whatsoever. Or so they think. Or rather, they’d never reckon they could be duped in this field, on home ground, so to speak.
Nothing can be farther from truth. That’s what weasel words are for after all. Like “virtually”.
According to the free dictionary it means something like in essence but not in fact. Okay, let’s make the substitution.
Human role in climate change now in essence but not in fact certain (2)
What’s the negation of this proposition? After playing a bit with propositional calculus, one finds this sentence:
If human role in climate change now in essence certain, it is so in fact as well (3)
But (3) is the negation of (1), so what Lewandowsky actually says is
“human role in climate change now in essence certain” (4)
does not imply
“human role in climate change now in fact certain” (5)
It is so, quite independent of the truth value he would like to attach to proposition (4).
Had he put it that way, very likely a virtual consensus might be built on this stance.
Let the good Prof speak – the more he opens his mouth and comments on things he hardly understands the more clear it becomes to the public that the AGW emperor indeed does not have any clothes..
Not only that, the Lewandowsky’s and their SkS ilk would like to deny the public the right to examine the actual science rather, than some massaged and manufactured climate data, in a debate that is framed by “their agenda” rather than allowing the public at large to consider all the facts and make their own decisions.
It’s the old argument from authority. Arguments from Authority can only thrive when you prevent transparency of science by using secrecy, obstruction, collusion, diversion, smears and inuendo as a platform of behavioural activity to prevent the views of others exposing the authority weilder has feet of clay.
Ah, la Lunar Lewandowsky. Keep those Youtube clips coming they say it all. If the schadenfreude don’t getcha then the craziness will. What would happen to the clause if the MSM started playing clips like that to the general public? The melodramatic changes in emphasis. The eyes! Oh the eyes have it all right.
Thank you Chris B.
Dexter neds to update his code
Also, please tell me Dr. Lew, if “science is one of the most transparent endeavours humans have ever developed” then why does Dr. Mann and the UVA fight so hard to prevent the release of emails they are required to release by law? Tell me how your statement is true since people who agree with you fight so hard to hide data and methodologies? It isn’t too hard to find scientists like to exclude important data and then fight tooth-and-nail to keep that important data hidden, not just with CAGW but in other fields too.
The second sentence directly contradicts the first. Assuming the first sentence is true (which it isn’t), once you release something there should be no more need for transparency because everything should already be there!
It is only dishonorable to leak information if that leak will embarrass the project management. If however you are on the other side, i.e. intent on showing management to be what it is, at least in your view, you are a hero. My view most if not all management is beyond their level of incompetence. (me included when appropriate) I still don’t know why anyone give Lewandowsky any press beyond the time of day? Surely we have better things to talk about.
December 15, 2012 at 2:12 pm | Klimarealist says:
@DirkH
it’s the GDR, German DemocraticRepublic – RIB
————————————–
DDR = Deutsche Demokratische Republik, one and the same thing.
December 15, 2012 at 3:36 pm | Dennis Nikols says:
_______________________________________
Ah! But, if that “leak” was to be obtained through deception and contained some forgery then it would be “honourable”.
“Science is one of the most transparent endeavours humans have ever developed. However, for the transparency to be effective, preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved ”
Thank you for the good laugh. At first it is a discussion about analysing scientific papers and besides, how would secrecy of any kind improve the transparency? Well simple, the word transparency has a different significance, what we stupid deniers have not yet understood.
Transparency means the process looks for any “outsider” like it is intended to look, like in a showcase. He does not see the process itself, the discussion, the arguments, but only exactly the steps that are required for his poor limited brain to get to the desired result. Not to get confused with all that scientific complexity.
The problem is we still cling to those old understandings of words like transparency, science, peer review…
Well at first I laughed at the sentence, but then reading through the whole it made me very sad. What a limited understanding of CAGW-skepticism does he have. And he is named “a researcher of climate change denial”?? It is scary, far from normal.
Ivar Giaever is perfectly right, this is religion not science.
From an evolutionary point of view, people like Lew thrive in the Australian university system because they are rewarded via natural…I mean political…selection. Here’s an example of how it works. Just last month, well AFTER his conspiracy theory paper fiasco, he was rewarded with another $338,000 of taxpayer’s money from the Australian Research Council, together with his conspiracy survey buddies (while >90% of applicants missed out). The abstract of their grant application read “The public now has access to vast amounts of scientific knowledge and information on the internet and in other new media. Paradoxically, this increasing availability of knowledge has been accompanied by the increasing traction of pseudoscientific misinformation. This project explores the reasons underlying those trends and seeks solutions.”
So, his crap projects support the correct political side –> he gets the most coveted ARC grants and nationwide media coverage –> that makes his university very happy (particularly UWA that is massively in debt) –> that increases his political weight inside the university –> he uses that increased political weight to force dissenting opinions out of his university. Lew’s UWA colleague K Judd explicitly told me once that he’s been lobbying the UWA Vice Chancellor for years, to force “deniers” out of academia and was disappointed not enough measures had been taken against them yet.
If you want to reverse the trend and go back to honest empirical science, you need to reverse the direction of natural/political selection.
Up he pops, like a bad skin rash, the addlepate professor of cognitive incoherence and statistical mumbo jumbo, to give the world the benefit of….. nothing whatsoever. Being the psychologist he clearly thinks he is he would of course immediately be able to tell when something is genuine….wouldn’t he?
Like this-
“There are only a pitiful few deniers, Stephan tells me, adding that they use multiple aliases to mount their anti-Gaia barrages. And most chilling of all, they are paid, presumably by Big Carbon, to work this dreadful mischief! “Bear in mind that a proportion of those comments is orchestrated,” he writes, “and for all we know there are only a handful of people with multiple electronic ‘personas’ each, who are paid to create disproportionate noise.”
“You heard it from a professor, so don’t doubt that revelation for a second.”
John Cook also chips in with the wisdom of the ancients. Something about Ghandi, den**rs and dead rats on the doorstep. He writes, ” deniers attack everyone indiscriminately from the lowly blogger to the most IMMINENT climate scientists in the world.” Those imminent scientists must be imminently shaking in their imminent boots.
The blogger, Verdant Hopes, concludes:
“Now I am worried. I have been finding dead rats on my doorstep for some time, even before I started blogging. I had believed (in my innocence) that they were Sparkles’ handiwork, but now I fear Big Carbon has been instructing its operatives to monitor my opinions and engage in pre-emptive intimidation.”
http://verdanthopes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/tomorrow-belongs-to-us.html
Ah, the man who spawned the “Flusted Bush”
Modern Conspiracy Theories:
1. Moon landings never happened.
2. Smoking is beneficial to health.
3. Drunk driving is safe.
4. Sceptics are funded by ‘Big Oil’.
5. The science is settled.
6. CAGW.
7. Climate statisticians are decent honourable people, trustworthy who can rightly consider themselves the ‘Chosen of God!
Considering that there is not one shred of defensible evidence for what he claims, particularly regarding the climate, he sure is pedantic and full of the idea that he is unarguably right. It would appear that almost everything he says of the skeptics is more true for him.
It is also quite clear that he knows little science.
Indeed, getting around the “prestige” and unwarranted credibility that the IPCC garners, we have to work on lowering their credibility. That’s a reality when you are trying to counter a multibillion dollar business of a scam.
FWIW,
For about the last decade I have been ordering the same wall calendar, it has wonderful pictures of various weather phenomena.
The calendar inserts a weather story (full page) between each month as the pages are flipped.
The 2011 edition started to jump on the CAGW bandwagon, so much so that I considered getting something different for 2012.
The 2012 edition inserted stories between 7 of the months, that dealt with (individually):
Sinking islands
Invasive plants (due to warmth)
Agriculture (the usual)
Changing monsoons
Crime (hot people get mad)
Investments (betting becoming unpredicable ?)
Chesapeake Bay (worse than it is)
The 2013 edition only inserts:
Epidemiology (spreading disease)
Penguins (with a picture showing the warmth over the Antarctic peninsula)
————
I’m almost tempted to read some of the inserts this year, as I used to 🙂
“In other words, the scientific case has become even stronger and has now reached a level of confidence that is parallelled only by our confidence in some very basic laws of physics, such as gravity or thermodynamics.”
How can this man have an appointment as a professor of anything?
OMG. He said “thermodynamics”. That’s like sciency.
So, an old psych prof knows the science involved?
Ovaltine, Professor?
SkS good for something – this is the relevant quote from AR5 beta:
Lewandoswky though finds the above too complicated (or inconvenient) so he reduces it down to:
So you see in the warped mind of Loondownsky:
– IPCC say Global Warming™ is due to humans.
– Skeptics say Global Warming™ isn’t happening (apparently?).
ipso facto, skeptics are science deniers, debate is over, we’re all doomed if we don’t sign the blank cheque.
“it is extremely likely that human activities (with very high confidence) have caused most (at least 50%) of the observed increase in global average temperatures since 1951.”
Referring , of course, to the GISS and Hadcrud “ADJUSTMENTS” (which are AT LEAST 50% of the calculated increase)
and a the accidental “LOSS” of remote temp stations of so that UHI effects are bought more into the calculation but still ignored. (there’s the rest of it !!)
So yep, I agree totally with their statement.
We can take a powerful lesson from our planetary neighbors, Mercury and Venus in this regard—the average distance of Mercury from the Sun is 36 million miles, and the average temperature is 355 degrees Fahrenheit. The average distance of Venus from the Sun is 67 million miles, and its average temperature is 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
So we have Venus at almost twice the distance from the Sun as Mercury, and its temperature is almost three times as hot, seemingly contradictory to common sense—how could that be possible?
It turns out that Venus’s atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, super efficient at those levels in capturing and preserving the Sun’s heat creating a greenhouse effect on steroids; and back here on Earth, we are spewing this gas into our atmosphere at the astounding rate of 15 to 30 billion metric tons per year, decade after decade; and as a result CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm (parts per million) in the preindustrial age to 390 ppm at present; a 40 percent increase.
[snip. “Denial”, “denialist”, and other similar pejoratives are not allowed here. Please read the Policy page. — mod.]
“Climate denial lost intellectual respectability decades ago.”
I didn’t know this crap was decades old.
By “climate denial,” one could assume he means “man-made climate change denial.” Don’t assume it; you must first assume he is rational.
“However, for the transparency to be effective, preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they…” become final and can no longer be influenced by skeptical outsiders. (Fixed it.)
“Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view.”
=====
Of course the key word here is “virtual.” In their view “virtual certainty” simply refers to the virtual reality of climate models. It has nothing to do with the real world.
“However, what is worse than the leak itself is the distortion of the content of the draft chapter by some deniers (no, they are not skeptics).”
=====
Lewandowsky’s certainty about skeptics being deniers is matched only by his confidence that humans have caused global warming. That tells you all you need to know. I’d love get his predictions on which stocks will do well in the coming year. Then I could get rich by noting his investment advise and doing the exact opposite.
Camburn says:
December 15, 2012 at 2:57 pm
“Prof Lewandowsky appears to have recieved [sic] his PhD in Australia. It is now well documented that there is an age group there that was educated on how not think critically.
They have been educated to answer to authority without question.
The nation has a chance yet, but is rapidly sinking into total oblivion.
Sad to watch…………sad to watch.”
————————————————————————————————
You have been too speculative on your pronouncements Camburn
Your generalisations do not altogether ring true although your “sad to watch” is true of Lewandowsky.
The following is from Lewandowsky’s web site:
“Brief biographical sketch
I completed my undergraduate studies at Washington College, Chestertown, MD, USA, in 1980. I then did my post-graduate training at the University of Toronto, earning a PhD in 1985. After various stints as a research fellow, I took up my first full-time academic post at the University of Oklahoma in 1990. I moved to the University of Western Australia in 1995, and I have been here ever since.”
Incidentally my Aussie qualifications B.Sc., M. App. Sc., PhD and I am probably of your “certain age group” but I certainly don’t “answer to authority without question”. And it’s not valid that I don’t think critically otherwise I would not read or contribute to WUWT. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. (lol).
Was his non-critical thinking therefore seeded in USA, Toronto perhaps or did he just escape to a country or even a State where AGW nonsense ideas in 1995 and now are more palatable?
Cheers.
joe arrigo,
Venus is not hot because of CO2. Search the archives here to understand. We have been over this too many times already. Just FYI, Mars’ atmosphere is almost pure CO2 too, and Mars is mighty cold.
Potty Training for Eco-dummies:
“Science is one of the most transparent endeavors humans have ever developed. However for transparency to remain effective….we must be allowed to bludgeon all critical ideas and individuals so that only the pre-selected meme is presented”….[the Old Speak translation]
Englishman John Crapper invented the modern water flush toilet, which soon lead to the two most popular slang terms “John” and “Crapper”. The Brits later nicknamed this the Loo, for which the great minds at the Cognitive Club at UWA, have now provided an Aussie spelling. If you consume Mann made IPCC garbage you might then have an AR5 leak issue….proceed to the Lew….you are not then forced to have transparency….instead, use the Lew paper….suddenly….ALEC RAWLS IS DISHONOURABLE ! ! !
Flush the Truth….you can now reinstall your figleaf….return to cognitives dissonance, pseudo science with its lucretive government rewards. AGW ignores the Laws of Thermodynamice, but Professor Rocky Lew is advised to pay special attention to the Laws of Gravity. There is no emperical evidence that rock climbers can paper over Newton.
The annoying part is that the press now turn to Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist, for comments on climate science, when the man himself has clearly indicated he thinks it should remain the realm of the ‘experts’, apparently thinking the average man is not suitably equipped to handle such complicated concepts:
Psychologists have not always been highly regarded; referencing this story (not sure if it was on WUWT before, but anyway, certainly relevant here):
joe arrigo,
So, I’ll repeat the facts again, just for you.
Over the same atmospheric pressures as those found in Earth’s atmosphere, the Venusian temperature is ALMOST EXACTLY WHAT IT SHOULD BE for its comparative distance from the Sun, despite the Venusian atmosphere being mostly CO2.
Now off you go and do some learning. Do not continue to live in ignorance. !!!
“preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review”
I suggest we know enough about the IPCC to make a judgement about their misuse of the principle of “peer review”. Their AR4 of 2007 is a complete disgrace. Of the 18,531 references cited by the “scientists”, 5,587 references were not peer-reviewed. Among the non-peer reviewed “items” are press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, discussion papers, MA and PhD theses, working papers, and advocacy literature published by environmental groups.
http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.php
Not only were these illustrious, authoratitive sources (all 5,587 of them) what the “scientists” relied upon to support their scaremongering, but they went to the added effort of hiding them among the other references. There was nothing to show that the non-peer reviewed illustrious, authoratitive sources differed from the peer reviewed sources – they were scattered, unmarked throughout the “real” references. Every chapter contained some of those pretend illustrious, authoratitive sources.
What is most disconcerting is that every one of the cabal of creators and editors of AR4 have put their name to this chicanery, and their puppeteers have stated they will repeat the subterfuge in AR5.
Lewandowski is the gift that keeps on giving. He is a parody of the locked-in leftist intellectual roaming the campuses of what was once known as the “free world’ pontificating nonsense about things he knows very little about.
He’s done more to cast doubt on the dubious science he celebrates than anyone who is not writing pre-ordained papers on the subject.
“joe arrigo says:
December 15, 2012 at 5:34 pm”
Oh dear, the Venus argument, again! Yes, the atmosphere of Venus is ~98% CO2, it is closer to the Sun, but the mass of the atmosphere on Venus is ~90 times the mass of the atmosphere of the Earth. That’s why Venus is hot. I’ll let you Google why Mars is so cold; hint, it has something to do with the mass of the atmosphere.
catweazle says
I wonder if anyone’s bothered to tell the poor fellow that there hasn’t been any stat sig warming since around 1997,
———-
Since this “15 years of no warming” from the CRU data set is so popular now, can I start a vote to have the collective WUWT send Phil Jones and the CRU guys an admission of fault and a big fat apology for sending so much spew his way.
Accompanied by a gracious thankyou for providing a dataset that proves what you guys said was right all along.
markx says:
December 15, 2012 at 7:08 pm
The annoying part is that the press now turn to Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist, for comments on climate science,
——————————–
Don’t be too annoyed. Having this freak as their spokesperson will only hasten the truth coming out in the non-press controlled real world. Post and e-mail the YouTube video everywhere.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 15, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Thanks, Gerald. Poe was a very bright and perceptive chap, and his views were constantly dismissed on the grounds that he was an alcoholic (or drunk as they called them in those days). Then, as now, the ad hom was an easy way of disposing of the opposition. In fact, he had a remarkable creative and analytic brain which produced great insights on practical, theoretical and creative levels. Thanks for bringing him into the discussion.
I think the perfesser is getting a lot more attention around here than he deserves. And aren’t we spelling Lewinsky wrong?
” climate science is like gravity”
yeah, when you get really high concentrations of it , it distorts the fabric of time and space. CO2 molecules become paradoxically massive and absorb twice as much infra-red. This is called particle duality. Centuries become decades, then years, causing glaciers to melt hundreds of times quicker than in a normal universe.
All this was laid down by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. It’s a case of your reference frame.
The United Nations Framework on Climate Crap is what is known as a non-referential frame.
This basically means it has a lot of spin and can’t be used as a reference for anything at all.
” climate science is like gravity”
climate science attracts money, this money attracts more climate scientists. Eventually, when concentrations get high enough it reaches a critical mass and implodes, creating a financial blackhole surrounded by a climatological grant horizon. Any grant money in the vicinity gets inexorably sucked in and nothing useful can ever come out.
Is using physiological aggression illegal? I know you can be disbarred in civilized countries.
If Lew knows physiological aggression is or can be harmful, should he be made accountable?
If Lew knows physiological aggression is or can be harmful, should he also be made aware that intentional psychological focus of aggression can be a driver physiological aggression of both one’s self and others.
If Lew knows physiological aggression is or can be harmful, should he also be made aware that intentional psychological focus of aggression can be a driver of physiological aggression of both one’s self and others.
joe arrigo says:
December 15, 2012 at 5:34 pm
We can take a powerful lesson from our planetary neighbors, Mercury and Venus in this regard—the average distance of Mercury from the Sun is 36 million miles, and the average temperature is 355 degrees Fahrenheit. The average distance of Venus from the Sun is 67 million miles, and its average temperature is 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
=======================
Joe,
Like the reason for your adherence to a dubious hypothesis the reason Mercury has a cooler atmosphere than Venus is almost entirely due to density, although in one case it’s atmospheric and in the other it’s intellectual.
So he hopes to start gliding again at Narrogin? 200Km drive each way from Perth where he works. 7 to 9 liters of Avgas for a launch, more if you need a retrieve after an outlanding.
I’m with Glenn Reynolds: ” I’ll believe it is a crisis when the people who say it is a crisis start acting like it is a crisis.”
I really hope he starts flying at Narrogin. He’ll see the name of this skeptic on the soaring instruments in the instrument panel that I designed and manufactured.
Lest we forget.
Please tell me tax payers are paying his wage! I’ve just watched that video above from Chris B. And that is an illegal form. full stop.
Sorry, I meant to say-> He’s an unproductive, aggressive leach, hell bent on controlling what makes you tick, I’m aloud to say that, right? wafp
Allowed
Creepy …
Started watching the Lewan-Whatever-His-Name-Is video and just could not go through with it.
What a weird presentation, this man has.
Can you guys please take him back to the USA? Please?
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld – Former United States Secretary of Defense – February 12, 2002
Chris B …
Gees, this Lewy guy hasn’t even learnt to shave yet.!
And I bet he FAILED “attribution calc” intro (never got to 101) .
ps.. those “attribution” guys are downright weird, I’ve met a couple of them !!
Computer geeks that know nothing else !! (remind you of some modellers somewhere, perhaps ???)
If you paid them enough, they would try to prove Mother Teresa was behind Pearl Harbour and 9/11 …………….Which is essentially what they have done with CO2.
Hyperbollox……
Josh’s rendition of Lew is far too flattering. He really looks slimey in the video. He seems to be a very insecure little boy, feeling threatened by “climate deniers”. Really?
Joe arrigo; the high temperature on Venus is nothing to do with GHG warming.
This is because to get thermal equilibrium between two emitters, the surface and the adjacent atmosphere at the same temperature, the thermal GHG emission form the atmosphere, nearly black body, annihilates the same wavelength emission from the surface.
Yes, there can never be any CO2-GW on Venus, Mars or the Earth. There is no surface IR to cause it.
If this, standard heat transfer physics, did not happen the World would have been a ball of hot gas a long time ago.
How you can spout this stupid nonsense that the heating of the Venusian atmosphere is due to ‘trapping of IR’ by CO2 is beyond me.
Did you never do any high school radiative physics?
So let’s take the good professor’s statements and look deep into his soul.
1. “…the premature leak of the report was dishonourable…”
Yet “climate science” has no problem using or quoting papers that haven’t been reviewed or published – in some cases they’ve created press releases about these “grey-papers”. Sounds dishonourable to me.
2. “…Science is one of the most transparent endeavours humans have ever developed. However, for the transparency to be effective, preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review,” he said in an emailed comment…”
Well, in most “climate science” papers, data remained “confidential” AFTER they’ve been peer-reviewed and published. Where’s the “transparency” there?
BTW, tell us again how the words “transparency”, “improvement” and “peer review” apply to YOUR recent “survey paper”. From what came out, I think the “improvement” step was missed.
3. “…The leak of a draft report by a reviewer who has signed a statement of confidentiality is therefore regrettable and dishonourable…”
One word here – Gleik.
4. “…However, what is worse than the leak itself is the distortion of the content of the draft chapter by some deniers (no, they are not skeptics),” he said…”
Actually, what’s worse than the leak itself is the distortion (or omission) of the facts by some of the drafters (no, they are not scientists).
5. “…Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view…”
First, he has to remember that this is just a draft report, and is not official until it’s been “improved” and has gone through the “Climate Science Peer Review” process. Rest assured, it’s virtually certain that when the CSPR process is done they’ll be up to 99.99% confidence.
But that comment also means he’s read the released draft (maybe even getting a copy from a colleague who was also a reviewer). Either way, by commenting on the contents he goes against the IPCC request: “…Each page of the draft makes it clear that drafts are not to be CITED, QUOTED, OR DISTRIBUTED and we would ask for this to continue to be respected…”
Oops.
Well this thread is certainly a fun read. Somewhere up there, was a nice candidate for the Bullwer Lytton Prize; complete with a Cockney accent too.
As for the “virtual certainty” of man made global warming; Iwouldn’t quite go that far in dismissing it.
I do know what “virtual images” are; I deal with them and see them every day; and of course, I can see them, even though they aren’t really there, like real images are.
So psychologist Lewandowski, should know better than anyone, that “virtual certainties” are just a figment of one’s imagination; it’s all in his head.
Funny thing language; how often do people use words that mean the exact opposite of what they think they mean.
Which is why people who think they are so sophisticated, usually are.
“In other words, the scientific case has become even stronger and has now reached a level of confidence that is paralleled only by our confidence in some very basic laws of physics, such as gravity or thermodynamics.”
Just wondering…
Is it “Out of his depth on a wet pavement”, “So far out of his depth the fish have lights on their Noses.” or “So far around the bend he can no longer see daylight.”?
The madness of Lewandowsky cannot end well. Sceptics will never forgive and the Internet will never forget. For Lewandowky there is no avenue of escape. There is no easy exit with “CO2 does cause warming, just less than we thought”. The reality is that radiative gasses cool the atmosphere. Warmists are not just wrong by degree but by sign. The hoax cannot be indefinitely sustained. Lewandowsky is on a path to a rubber room.
joe arrigo says:
December 15, 2012 at 5:34 pm
” … we are spewing this gas into our atmosphere … ”
I find it interesting, in a psychological kind of way, that the drive-bys, such as yourself (prove me wrong – return here with some facts to back up the guesswork) nearly always use the word ‘spewing’ when referring to our CO2 emissions.
I much prefer the open-minded ‘liberating’. It rolls off the tongue, describes the effect and wont cover me in projection if performed to windward.
AndyG55:
At December 16, 2012 at 12:03 am you say
You point to one of the (possibly THE) most egregious error of IPCC so-called “science”.
‘Attribution studies’ are a possible method to discern mechanisms which are NOT capable of being a suggested cause of an observed phenomenon.
In an attribution study the system is assumed to be behaving in response to suggested mechanism(s) that is modeled, and the behaviour of the model is compared to the empirical data. If the model cannot emulate the empirical data then there is reason to suppose that the suggested mechanism is not the cause (or at least not the sole cause) of the changes recorded in the empirical data.
It is important to note that attribution studies can only be used to reject a hypothesis that a mechanism is a cause for an observed effect. Ability to attribute a suggested cause to an effect is not evidence that the suggested cause is the real cause in part or in whole.
An understanding of this is provided by consideration of the game called Cludo. At the start of the game there are several ‘suspects’ who can be attributed as the possible ‘murderer’. Data is acquired which reduces the suspects who can be so attributed. Eventually sufficient data is obtained until all except one hypothesis of the ‘murderer’ is rejected, and the remaining hypothesised ‘murderer’ is assumed to be guilty.
In ‘climate science’ only one cause of unexplained climate change is hypothesised. That hypothetical cause is AGW. And anything which cannot be explained is attributed to be AGW. However, there may be many other causes both known and unknown.
In other words, ‘climate science’ attribution studies are merely a version of the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’; i.e. “We don’t know the cause of this degree of climate change so it must be AGW”.
As I have often pointed out, ‘climate scientists’ are not the first ‘experts’ to adopt this logical fallacy. In the Middle Ages ‘experts’ said, “We don’t know the cause of this crop failure so it must be witches”
Attribution studies as practiced by ‘climate scientists’ are superstitious pseudoscience.
Richard
Only thing I have to say is that since the affair around Dutch psychology ‘scientist’ Diederik Stapel, I don’t take anybody in the field of psychology serious anymore.
JimRJBob says:
December 15, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Allowed
Admit (an event or activity) as legal or acceptable.
Give (someone) permission to do something.
In context,
It sounds right.. But I said, “Aloud,” not silently or in a whisper. But with “Clear definition”
Confirmed.
Firmly settled.
richardscourtney says:
You point to one of the (possibly THE) most egregious error of IPCC so-called “science”.
Yep, these guys are like rabid dog with a bone.. give them ONE idea, that’s what they will try to prove.
ZERO thought of any other possibiliy !!!
And try to suggest any other possibility, darn do they get uppity !!
Remind you of any particular group.???? 😉
@Camburn
Lewandowsky has no science qualifications and is not a product of the Oz universities – to the extent I that I can discover.
His Degrees: B.A. Washington College, Chestertown, MD, U.S.A., 1980 M.A. University of Toronto, 1981 Ph.D. University of Toronto (Supervisor: Bennet Murdock), 1985
It is indeed “sad to watch” the demise of UWA with the importation of clowns like this one given that it used have a good reputation.
Lewandowsky’s lacks the basic understanding of what the principles of science are and what sets it apart from other fields of study. I suggest he could sit through a Feynman lecture on these principles and delusionally believe his work is a pristine example of those principles – just with a bit of psych rationalization.
@TonyM
“Lewandowsky’s lacks the basic understanding..”
no need to say more. sufficient, and concise !!
‘Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.’ Reinhold Neibuhr.
H/t Janet.
======
@ Richard,
Further in this ‘attribution’ stuff-up
I suspect that in the case of climate science, the attribution programmers were only ever given one alternative (CO2 causes temp rise), and their sole monetary aim was to prove that attribution,
The fact that they STILL haven’t managed to scientifically prove the causation, even after billions of wasted dollars, pretty much points to there being basically ZERO causation.
As a fellow Aussie I’ll second TBear.
Please, America, take him back.
We have far too many F-rated Yanks infesting our universities and scientific institutions because they couldn’t cut it back home. And I have to pay their grants and wages!
LazyTeenager says:
December 15, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Since this “15 years of no warming” from the CRU data set is so popular now, can I start a vote to have the collective WUWT send Phil Jones and the CRU guys an admission of fault and a big fat apology for sending so much spew his way.
Accompanied by a gracious thankyou for providing a dataset that proves what you guys said was right all along.
Lazy, as observation, all these data evaluation tend to adjust the data. Each new version has the interesting result to cool a bit the past values, and change the slope to take out the 1950-1975 cooling.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/03/has-the-crutem4-data-been-fiddled-with/
All these years of adjustments and the skeptics keeping track of it do not allow for further big tricks.
The big thanks goes to the skeptic community keeping track of the data keepers and their data manipulations:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/another-giss-smoking-gun/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/cooling-the-past-at-giss/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/how-giss-corrupt-us-temperatures/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/giss-adjustments-in-iceland/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/ghcn-adjusting-the-adjustments/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/new-ghcn-version-cools-the-past-even-more/
and many many more, see climate audit, see proper data validation:
wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/cooling-the-past-at-giss/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/visualizing-how-wildly-corrupt-noaa-and-giss-are/
where would the data be without the skeptics keeping an eye on it? And you chose to post that comment on a thread with hypocrisy in the title. Best fit.
Prof Lewandowsky said that the report’s statement that humans have caused global warming was a “virtual certainty” meant it’s authors had 99% confidence in that view.
If the proof is THAT strong, why the need for confidentiality?
Logical and moral FAIL
Out of mild interest I opened Lewandowski’s personal blog – see below.
I doubt if I have ever come across such an utterly pointless individual, outside of a government bureaucracy. Look at the blog and judge for yourself. What has he ever done that has been genuinely useful?
Having the ability to dream up a stream of half baked theories simply doesn’t count as being useful.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=lewandowsky&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CDgQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebsites.psychology.uwa.edu.au%2Flabs%2Fcogscience%2FStephan_Lewandowsky.htm&ei=oZ_NUKL1OKyq0AXChYGYBQ&usg=AFQjCNFd_4XJrDuzXpy6K3yaWLWr8B82iQ
Jimbo says:
December 15, 2012 at 1:24 pm
It’s funny how the more global temperature diverges from IPCC projections the more certain they become that it’s man’s co2. What if we go into a decade long cooling? What then? How do they climb down after nailing their flags to the mast? 16 years of a temperature standstill and they become more convinced. Amazing stuff. This couldn’t happen in any other field of science – I think.
It is not science it is a return to Alchemy
If the shoe fits….
mfo says: @ December 15, 2012 at 4:03 pm
….The blogger, Verdant Hopes, concludes:
“Now I am worried. I have been finding dead rats on my doorstep for some time, even before I started blogging. I had believed (in my innocence) that they were Sparkles’ handiwork, but now I fear Big Carbon has been instructing its operatives to monitor my opinions and engage in pre-emptive intimidation.”
http://verdanthopes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/tomorrow-belongs-to-us.html
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Talk about being incapable of logical thinking!!!
If it started BEFORE she was blogging it is most likely a neighbor or acquaintance she messed with. No details on her except she wants “natural Justice” and worked for a non profit
LevelGaze and TBear,
Sorry guys. Lewandowsky was born in Australia so, he is yours to keep.
On a different note, it amazes me how a single, flawed, internet survey based “study” took Lewandowsky from being an unknown “researcher of cognitive memory” to being a renowned “researcher of climate change denial”, a “climate scientist”, and a spokesman for the CAGW movement. Are Lewandowsky, Nutticelli, and Mann the best that the CAGW crowd have to offer??
BTW, any updates on Mann’s lawsuit??
The man’s a fraud. I’ve encountered Shaman’s with a better grasp of human psychology. Come to think of it, maybe he should leave maths alone as well – he patently has no grasp of it. He seems to operate on Dr. Goebbels dictum – “Tell a lie big enough, often enough and it becomes the truth.”
Oops, I forgot Al Gore, “climate spokesman extraordinaire” and “inventor of the internet”.
eo says:
December 15, 2012 at 1:58 pm
“Yes, it is entirely dishonorable to leak the draft of the AR5 working group 1 report.
Anyway the public in general does not understand the difference between weather and climate.”
Point 1. Didn’t see you telling us all the Gleick was “dishonorable” for obtaining information by false pretences (oh and making up some other stuff!)
Point 2. Climate is just “average weather” over a period of time.
Anything else.?
Based on his careful application of advanced statistical methods, Prof. Lewandowsky has determined that by the time the IPCC publishes AR6 in 2020, even if there has been no observed warming during the preceding 22 years climate scientists will be 108% certain that all climate is caused by human activity.
Speaking as a professional psychologist and someone who has taught graduate research, I suspect that Professor Lewandowsky missed out on the lessons of the basic research course he took himself as a graduate student. If he had fully understood how research works, he would know that there is very little in the huge body of anthropogenic global warming “research” to support the theory. In my class, Lewandowsky would get an “F” for his superstitious opinions. That is all that they are.
He should stick to learning theory; at least his work in that field of inquiry is harmless.
Stephen Lewandowsky writes the following from:
The Challenge of Understanding Accumulation, By Stephen Lewandowsky
“It’s unsurprising, then, that Hans Schellnhuber, climate advisor to the German government and himself a natural scientist, recently argued that 90% of all research on global change ought to be conducted by social scientists.”
And what do we know about Schellnhuber:
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber wants stronger green hammer
In response to a question about sharp Argentine and Brazilian government attacks on ecologist positions, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the German Chancellor’s deindustrialization council, WBGU, said in Frankfurt yesterday that, unfortunately, the global climate problems cannot be solved globally, because, for that one needs to have a global government, which does not exist. He said that he very much regrets that it does not exist.
http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/hans-joachim-schellnhuber-wants-stronger-green-hammer
(Was Schellnhuber a former movie actor?)
Hans today
Hans as a movie actor?
In summary, Lewandowsky claims that people like me are “conspiratorial thinking” denialists of global warming because we believe in conspiracies like global government.
But Lewandowsky cites Schellnhuber and Schellnhuber wants a global government.
And this is what they call ‘science.’
“eo says:
December 15, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Yes, it is entirely dishonorable to leak the draft of the AR5 working group 1 report. The report is still a draft and tentative in nature. It is still subject to revision and change just like the raw temperature data. After revisions the facts , conclusions and recommendations could be entirely different and could be opposite as to what is presented in the draft reports.”
——————–
That’s correct, but at least we’ll now have an overview of the process through which these revisions will be made, impossible with previous reports.
Climate science will be like gravity when it’s effects can be summed up in a simple equation that predicts accurately the quantity being measured (travel time on a falling object for gravity/temperature change based on CO2 for climate change). Gravity is not based on probability. Climate science is. It will never achieve the accuracy of the law of gravity.
So, he’s professor of “Climate change denialism” or researcher in climate change denialism or something. Is that even a field of science?
Well, if a university appoints someone to chair a department of fairies at the bottom of the garden, then I’m sure they will find evidence for – fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Australian Universities are full of second rate American Scientists who have not been able tomake it there. There are now very few Australian academic institutions who are even listed on the top 200. This a a really goodexample
If climate science is a strong as Newton’s laws of gravity, then how come climate science can’t explain the beginning and end of ice ages?
It’s as if Newton’s law of gravity couldn’t explain why the apple fell downwards instead of up.
“…the scientific case has become even stronger and has now reached a level of confidence that is parallelled only by our confidence in some very basic laws of physics, such as gravity or thermodynamics”
Is this part of the “dishonorable disclosure”, this 99% certainty (up from 90%)? Then why disclose it now? Talking about thermodynamics. Is it 99% certain that humans have caused most (/all?) of post-industrial warming – which means “as certain as basic thermodynamics”?? Isn’t it that most of the warming in climate models is a result of imposed positive feedbacks in addition to the 3.7w/m2 forcing for CO2 doubled? What about cloud change over the tropical oceans as possible negative forcing/feedback? What about black soot in Greenland as the main cause for recent melt there? What scientific case? Still clean CO2 is the 99% culprit – even for the ice loss up there?? Professor Lewandowsky, one doesn’t have to believe in conspiracy theories in order to question your statements and defamations. What certainty are you exactly talking about?
Peter Miller says:
December 16, 2012 at 5:04 am
“I doubt if I have ever come across such an utterly pointless individual, outside of a government bureaucracy. Look at the blog and judge for yourself. What has he ever done that has been genuinely useful? ”
That’s why he is in the government bureaucracy.
Lars P. says:
December 16, 2012 at 4:48 am
“Lazy, as observation, all these data evaluation tend to adjust the data. Each new version has the interesting result to cool a bit the past values, and change the slope to take out the 1950-1975 cooling.”
The fun thing is that HADCRUT375 will still show global warming when London is covered by glaciers.
Henry Galt says:
December 16, 2012 at 1:09 am
I much prefer the open-minded ‘liberating’. It rolls off the tongue, describes the effect and wont cover me in projection if performed to windward.
===============================
Very William F. Buckleyesque. Nice.
@ FrankK (December 15, 2012 at 6:13 pm):
Regarding Lewandowsky’s background: Toronto academics enthusiastically embraced political correctness in the 1980s, when he was doing graduate studies there. All the trendy group-thinkers became fellow travellers in the quest to throw off all the bonds of truth. Those of us of a different academic leaning managed to acquire and retain critical thinking abilities and even make it into tenured positions by keeping our heads down and keeping our thoughts to ourselves.
But it was a magnificent period for those who embraced the ‘right way of thinking’ (i.e. thoughtlessly parroting the new politicized interpretation of everything, including the weather) as it enabled them to float into the ivory towers in the rising tides of political correctness without ever having to have an original thought. On top of that, they are so well buffered by each other that they develop a robust complacency that cannot be punctured by any application of truth, logic, or arguments to appeal to human decency.
It seems to me that with our Human Rights Commissions and our new (thanks to PM Trudeau) constitutional limits on free speech (which said commissions interpreted to mean that nobody could say anything critical of politically-protected special-interest groups), Canada, and especially Toronto, were ground zero for the emergence of virulent, and politically muscular, political correctness. Lewandowsky is a prime example of the miasma of toxic invective that these people spew out when others resist this political movement’s accepted narrative. Lewandowsky is definitely a product of Canada, not Australia.
By the way, I too am of U of Toronto ‘alumnum’
Gail Combs says:
December 16, 2012 at 5:51 am
mfo says: @ December 15, 2012 at 4:03 pm
….The blogger, Verdant Hopes, concludes:
=============================
I think it’s a parody.
Johanna
Poe was indeed perceptive without knowing the ins and outs of what Isaac was doing no more than his contemporaries did and right up to the present time,all that matters to the theorists is that once you mention ‘laws of gravity’ it conjures up equations and any contention ceases,it doesn’t matter that Newton’s Principia is written in the language of geometry and easily taken apart,the ideology is so prevalent in society that few have questioned it out of fear or unfamiliarity.
Poe was following Humboldt and here the curtain rises on a more focused version of Poe’s comments where theory/models are based on spurious conclusions,not so much individual topics such as climate but a wider view of the matter where the real problem exists .Climate is not a battleground for competing models as the problem is modeling itself and it had a definite beginning ion the late 17th century via Newton and his clockwork solar system .The excerpts from Poe and Homboldt are meant to appeal to individuals who can see they can reason properly and that is as rare today as it has been for a number of centuries –
“This empiricism, the melancholy heritage transmitted to us from former times, invariably contends for the truth of its axioms with the arrogance of a narrowminded spirit. Physical philosophy, on the other hand, when based upon science, doubts because it seeks to investigate, distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is merely probable, and strives incessantly to perfect theory by extending the circle of observation. “This assemblage of imperfect dogmas bequeathed by one age to another— this physical philosophy, which is composed of popular prejudices,—is
not only injurious because it perpetuates error with the obstinacy engendered by the evidence of ill observed facts, but also because it hinders the mind from attaining to higher views of nature. Instead of seeking to discover the mean or medium point, around which oscillate, in apparent independence of forces, all the phenomena of the external world, this system delights in multiplying exceptions to the law, and seeks, amid phenomena and in organic forms, for something beyond the marvel of a regular succession, and an internal and progressive development. Ever inclined to believe that the order of nature is disturbed, it refuses to recognise in the present any analogy with the past, and guided by its own varying hypotheses, seeks at hazard, either in the interior of the globe or in the regions of space, for the cause of these pretended perturbations. It is the special object of the present work to combat those errors which derive their source from a vicious empiricism and from imperfect inductions.” Homboldt ,Cosmos
I was taught (granted, long, long ago) that the word Hypocrisy began with ‘Hyp’.
Is ‘Lew’ now more appropriate?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Watch Lew’s eyes as he talks. Deep down he doesn’t even believe this crap himself!
@ntesdorf
One can only hope.
vigilantfish says:
December 16, 2012 at 10:12 am
@ FrankK (December 15, 2012 at 6:13 pm):
Regarding Lewandowsky’s background: Toronto academics enthusiastically embraced political correctness in the 1980s, when he was doing graduate studies there. All the trendy group-thinkers became fellow travellers in the quest to throw off all the bonds of truth. Those of us of a different academic leaning managed to acquire and retain critical thinking abilities and even make it into tenured positions by keeping our heads down and keeping our thoughts to ourselves.
But it was a magnificent period for those who embraced the ‘right way of thinking’ (i.e. thoughtlessly parroting the new politicized interpretation of everything, including the weather) as it enabled them to float into the ivory towers in the rising tides of political correctness without ever having to have an original thought. On top of that, they are so well buffered by each other that they develop a robust complacency that cannot be punctured by any application of truth, logic, or arguments to appeal to human decency.
It seems to me that with our Human Rights Commissions and our new (thanks to PM Trudeau) constitutional limits on free speech (which said commissions interpreted to mean that nobody could say anything critical of politically-protected special-interest groups), Canada, and especially Toronto, were ground zero for the emergence of virulent, and politically muscular, political correctness. Lewandowsky is a prime example of the miasma of toxic invective that these people spew out when others resist this political movement’s accepted narrative. Lewandowsky is definitely a product of Canada, not Australia.
By the way, I too am of U of Toronto ‘alumnum’
—————————————————————————————————————
Thanks for that clarification vigilantfish. Your clear summary explains it all.
Regards F
On the AGW side is the claim that suggests only people engaged in climate research are qualified intellectually to participate in the debate, as in the 77 out of 78, or otherwise sold as the 99%. Everyone else is not welcome to the party.
However, apparently the real hypocrisy is this psychology researcher, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, can now be added to the claimed qualifications, along side Al Gore, which is so tightly scrutinized by AGW experts. He stands before the world with the hard science background by which to apply his superior cognition and dictate who is a “denier” and who is not. I am curious as to his collegial hard science background that qualifies him to make such judgements, after all, it is pretty evident he can’t even put together a survey based on the rudiments of a basic statistical research class.
So if jet-fuel guzzling climate warming politicians and (cough-cough) scientists win the day and gain the throne we will by taxed out of any means to pursue our constitutional freedoms (can’t even guess who will be the court jester – there are SOOOOO many choices). Then the question becomes, what will WE do when those sitting on the throne respond to our protest with “let them eat cake”?
If only climate scientists can understand this, “believers” must take it on faith, just as one does in religion. The same question applies here as it does to religion–do you trust the all-knowing, benevolent creature telling you if you don’t want to destroy the world, you have to go back to the stone age?
Other_Andy says:
“climate deniers”
“a researcher of climate change denial”
I have NEVER met a ‘climate denier’ or a ‘climate change denier’ in my life.
The latter might be a good description of people who believe that only humans can possibly change climate 🙂
Klimarealist says:
@DirkH
it’s the GDR, German DemocraticRepublic
DDR was Deutsche Demokratische Republik
German Democratic Republic (GDR) being a direct translation from German.
Other_Andy says: “This pseudo scientist is an embarrassment for Australia” … and an imported one at that. We already have our own home grown pseudos the likes of Stevenson et. al. so why employ cast-offs from the US of A?
joe arrigo says:
December 15, 2012 at 5:34 pm
….So we have Venus at almost twice the distance from the Sun as Mercury, and its temperature is almost three times as hot, seemingly contradictory to common sense—how could that be possible?….
___________________________
Read:
Venus part I
Venus part II
There is no mystery as to why Venus is hot and the cause is not CO2.
Graph log temp response to CO2
“preliminary documents ought to remain confidential until they have been improved and checked through peer review”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well Looney Lew blew it right there.
The papers cited are supposed to already have passed peer review BEFORE they got to the IPCC…. right, right? After all how many times do we hear Dana or who ever asking for peer review papers and not only peer review papers but papers from vetted and approved scientists.
Classic projection. It is the alarmists that never want the public to see the entire body of evidence.
Please, good doctor, explain how the following fits the narrative:
1) Missing hot spot.
2) Temperature during the last interglacial.
3) Missing water vapor feedback.
4) Missing reduction in outgoing IR.
5) How even a 100% increase in CO2 that is only a 1.1% increase in GHE could possibly cause a 20% increase in temperature.
I’ll tackle two of these. The reduction in outgoing IR isn’t “missing” because the net outgoing IR cannot be reduced. It has to add up to balance the insolation. If you are arguing that there is no IR hole in the bands of the various GHGs, well that’s simply not the case. If you are arguing that it is difficult/impossible to resolve an change in the emission temperature/height associated with the concentration, given the noise that is quite possibly true although I believe that there are papers that claim to have done so. However, there are serious signal to noise problems with only 33 years of reliable data (at most) and with large changes associated with ENSO that may or may not be related only to “CO_2”. In that case, however, the reduction isn’t “missing”, it is just difficult to resolve and hence perhaps unproven.
5 you just didn’t mean. A 20% increase in temperature would be over 50 K. Remember, temperature is properly measured in K, not C. Nobody asserts that doubling CO_2 will produce a 50K+ increase in temperature.
A 5K increase in temperature is around 2%. That is within the bounds of possibility, depending on the feedback. If feedback/climate sensitivity is “high”, every degree of CO_2 warming is accompanied by 1-2 (or more) of H2O produced warming. Is that water vapor feedback missing? Arguably — again, there are some data that suggests a correlation, but a failure of sorts over the last decade plus. So your real point is 3, because 5 is an (accidental) straw man.
The real question is — will we experience the ~1 to 1.5 K increase we might reasonably expect from a doubling of CO_2 all other things being equal, or will we experience more, or less than this depending on the magnitude, sign, and nature of the feedback, against a background of considerable natural variation we have no control over that could easily produce effects of this magnitude on its own over a century plus timescale?
I’d argue that the answer is not yes, it is not no, it is that we do not know. The most plausible answer is — in my opinion only, as it is impossible to meaningfully predict it at this time — that we will indeed see around 1 K total warming, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all by 2 K or 0 K, or much surprised by 2.5K or -0.5K. Or both — we could go down by 0.5K in the short run and still go up in the end by 1 K or more.
But the next twenty to 80 years of good data should help us develop a good theory. Of that I have a lot of confidence.
rgb
markx says:
December 15, 2012 at 7:08 pm
….Psychologists have not always been highly regarded;….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They are still not.
Seem cognitive psychology already has a lot of mud on its face.
UPDATE:
IMHO science is getting a black eye as more and more fraud makes headline news.
It is getting bad when you see articles like this: The juiciest science scandals of 2011 with a picture of a scientist in hand cuffs at the top.
The article links to “The Scientist magazine has helpfully gathered together all the weirdest and worst science scandals of 2011 as well as bringing us updates on some ongoing science trainwrecks that started way back in 2010.”
Others I have seen are:
Red wine researcher flagged for fake data
FDA says CRO Cetero faked trial data; pharmas may need to redo tests
A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform
US Scientists Significantly More Likely to Publish Fake Research, Study Finds
A must read:
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data
Looney Lew is not helping the reputation of science or academia and neither are the ‘Climate Alchemists’.
LazyTeenager says:
December 15, 2012 at 7:51 pm
…Accompanied by a gracious thankyou for providing a dataset that proves what you guys said was right all along.
____________________________________
WHY?
We paid for it. And it is a healthy chunk of change too.
eo says:
December 15, 2012 at 1:58 pm
LOL!
Sorry, some of my fellow sceptics’ humour modules are out of calibration and they missed the clues in the text.
DaveE.
In response to Eliza’s comment that there are now very few Australian universities in the Top 200.
According to the Times Higher Education University Rankings, Australia has the following universities in the Top 200 as of 4 Oct 2012:
University of Melbourne – No 28
Australian National University – No 37
University of Sydney – No 62
University of Queensland – No 65
University of New South Wales – No 85
Monash University – No 99
University of Adelaide – No 176
University of Western Australia – No 190
In a country with around 40 universities, I’d say it’s not that bad.
Unimportant fact, from ABC Radio of all places. Just 26,000 trees are cut down to provide the world’s Lew paper, every day. From a book being discussed called “Bum Fodder”. No, Lew didn’t write it, it was fact, not fiction. (Bum Fodder: now in all good bookshops! « Wild Ink)
Pamela Gray says:
December 16, 2012 at 11:47 am
….. Then the question becomes, what will WE do when those sitting on the throne respond to our protest with “let them eat cake”?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well the last time round the idiots in power said “let them eat cake” there was a ‘cold spell’ aka the Little Ice Age, a bad volcanic eruption followed by famine and Madame Guillotine.
So far we have got a wimpy sun. In the USA we have gotten rid of the Strategic Grain Reserve. We are using a lot of acreage to grow corn for ethanol since that pays the best. In March of 2012 “Inventory levels “…lowest in more than three decades” the fewest since 1977, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Global food prices rose for a second consecutive month in February on higher costs for cereals, cooking oils and sugar, as shown by the index of 55 food items tracked by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.” link
Meanwhile the USDA made some sort of five year deal with China on agriculture, 16 million kids in America are going hungry, the real unemployment is ~23%. Oh, and our energy costs are set to skyrocket thanks to the EPA. The government will be regulating farms soon thanks to a new food law and the government has started registering home gardens. Mean while there is talk of a fiscal cliff and stagflation Not a political climate I consider warm and fussy even before you add in a carbon tax.
Back to the VOLCANO
The Laki or Lakigígar volcano of Iceland eruption in 1783-4 is thought to have sparked the French Revolution. (Some think the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull means the larger Katla Volcano is Overdue. The whole area is of course ‘active’)
OH and here is a really great article on the subject.
(They still bow to the CO2 climate god)
So it looks like we are DOOMED, even without a major volcanic eruption we are DOOMED and must therefore sacrifice our politicians to the volcano gods or was that GAIA?
Takes tongue back out of cheek.
Eliza says:
December 16, 2012 at 9:12 am
Australian Universities are full of second rate American Scientists who have not been able tomake it there. There are now very few Australian academic institutions who are even listed on the top 200. This a a really goodexample
—————————————————————————————————————————-
@Eliza
You may be right about some overseas academics and certainly about Lewandowsky. He is not a scientist even if he purports to be one and is not in the field of hard science where his approach just would not be tolerated.
I suggest you are a bit loose when you speak of the uni standards – even today. Oz has a population of 23 million. Depending on which uni rankings one chooses but:
– Seven Australian universities (out of 39) ranked in the top 100, and four ranked in the top 50
– 64 per cent of Australia’s universities ranked in the top 500
http://www.studyinaustralia.gov.au/northamerica/Education-in-Australia/University-Rankings/University-Rankings
It was published at “The Conversation” on the 15’th, a Saturday. Initially comments weren’t allowed. Today is the 17’th (Monday); probably they opened comments today. Right now, 6:03 pm, comments have been closed. Some conversation that was.
It is good that he mentions Newton’s ‘law of gravity’ as this original piece of fiction was really what started the modeling bandwagon rolling centuries ago and like ‘global warming’ when a theory/model can explain just about everything,then people know there is something radically wrong with the followers of the bandwagon.
observational law uniquely a 
one.)
, it failed miserably and he became quite agitated and depressed. However, the problem was not with his hypothesis, it was with the measurement — the measurer had neglected to correctly account for the Moon’s substantial orbital motion during the overnight period during which angular measurements were taken to perform a parallax estimation of distance. When this was rectified by others and new numbers announced by letters, Newton plugged in the new numbers and his hypothesis worked perfectly.
for the larger mass. Henry Cavendish, almost a century later, finally managed to measure G in a laboratory and thereby “weighed the Earth” (and the sun, and Jupiter, and Saturn, and Mars).
Wild rant, but you’re picking on the wrong person. First of all, Newton was the polymath supergenius to end polymath supergeniuses. The guy invented calculus just so he could invent physics, and then in later life he invented the modern system of banking and currency. He isn’t/wasn’t on the English pound note for F = dp/dt.
Second, Newton didn’t operate in a vacuum of data. His work was informed by the observational work of one Tycho Brahe, who was this really rich guy who had little actual work to do and who loved observational astronomy as a hobby and practiced it a ton in the latter years of the 16th century. He built up a mountain of the coordinates — accurate to within 1-2 arcseconds, IIRC — of nearly everything of interest that is visible to the naked eye on cold nights in northern europe. But he sucked at math.
So he hired a mathematician — physicists not being invented yet — to go over the data, and then promptly died, possibly poisoned (possibly even poisoned by the mathematician, although this is a bit doubtful) who de facto inherited said mountain of data and spend the next decade analyzing it. Johannes Kepler discovered that there were certain regularities visible within the data concerning the planets, which he reduced to three “laws” although it must be admitted that his use of inductive inference was rather extreme given the number of planets he actually analyzed.
In case anybody cares, Kepler’s Laws were:
* Planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun at one focus
* Planets sweep out equal areas in equal times
* The semimajor axis of a planetary orbit cubed is directly proportional to its period squared, with the same constant of proportionality for all planets.
He performed this analysis at almost exactly the same time that Galileo, using his own version of the recently invented telescope, was affirming the Copernican heliocentric model (which had to be compared to the Ptolemaic/Platonic geocentric model which also worked but which was more complex and hence lost points to the razor) with direct observation. Sadly, Galileo and heliocentrism ran afoul of the Pope, one Saint Cardinal Bellarmine, and a belligerent reaction to loss of power and the protestant movement by the Catholic Church, which effectively ruled Europe at the time, and Galileo was forced to recant and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. (The Church had only years before burned one Bruno alive, in part for deducing without a telescope that the Universe was infinite, the stars the same things as our sun, uncountable and too far away to see with the naked eye, and very probably surrounded by planets and filled with life, where we are only within the last twenty years starting to verify the last of this remarkable series of scientific predictions.)
Rene Descartes was preparing to release a mathematical work supporting heliocentrism but — faced with Galileo’s persecution — thought better of it. Still, his invention of analytical geometry was the foundation of Newton’s analytical calculus and hence of the discovery/invention of physics. Thus matters stood for over half a century.
Newton did not, in fact, attempt to explain “the Universe” with his law of gravitation, nor did it come entirely out of his ass. He was a charter member of the brand new Royal Society, the world’s first formally funded scientific organization (although, bear in mind, there were many stupendous discoveries made over the years with government support — nearly all of them, in fact, since one typically required a royal grant to hold a position at a University or to teach) and one Robert Hooke, officer of the Royal Society, very likely gave him the hint to look at inverse square laws. Nobody knows where Hooke might have come up with it, but he invented/discovered the force law for springs and may have thought deeply on the matter to the extent that one can crippled by a lack of calculus or a dynamical principle.
Newton formed the hypothesis that the same force that makes apples fall with constant acceleration g pulls the moon around in a (nearly) circular orbit. If that is true, an inverse square law relates their accelerations, kinematically evaluable using the calculus of circular motion in the case of the moon and hence knowable, directly measurable for the apple, so that the ratio of accelerations is the opposite ratio of the distances from the center of the earth squared. (Incidentally, similar algebra based on this calculus makes the force that preserves the
Sadly, while the radius of the earth was by then reasonably well known (it and the fact that the world is round and revolves around the sun was known as early as 500 BCE, but was lost/suppressed over the intervening millennia) the orbital radius of the moon was known badly. When Newton checked his hypothesis against the current claims for
This then inspired the completion of the work — the full development of calculus, the formal statement of his dynamical principle (laws of motion), and his careful demonstration that the theory that resulted from an inverse square gravitational force law that is bilinear in the masses of the objects leads strictly to trajectories that are conic sections and satisfy Kepler’s observational laws and more, correctly describing (for example) the orbits of comets that are sometimes hyperbolic and not elliptical. By then telescopes were ubiquitous, heliocentrism (at least as far as our solar system was concerned) was a proven fact, Brahe’s work had been extended a dozen times over to additional planets and many moons of planets, and there was no lack of data to test against Newton’s theory. It worked perfectly — with a catch.
The catch is that one cannot determine the constant G from either the theory or from remote observation. One can only measure G by measuring the force between two known masses separated by a known distance. From remote observation where neither mass is known, one can only determine products like
Over the centuries in between then and now, Newtonian gravitation has proven amazingly robust. First, it is a law of nature — this explains or describes its extremely broad explanatory power. Second, it appears to work adequately to explain almost everything we can see that interacts at long distances via astronomical observation, with only very recent “problems” that have required new hypotheses such as dark [matter/energy] and/or modifications of the form of the law to be proposed. It is also not a completely consistent law (because physics is still not a completely consistent theory!). We have no idea, really, how to make it quantum mechanical and how to resolve the apparent paradox between the Einsteinian general relativistic description of gravity and quantum field theory.
It is, quite truly, absolutely absurd for any well-educated scientist to equate our knowledge of climate science and ability to predict on the basis of climate models to our knowledge of the law of gravitation and our ability to predict trajectories far into the future with astounding accuracy. The limits of our ability to do the latter are not theoretical, they are computational — the trajectories we numerically compute in many body problems with gravity being the coupling force are numerically unstable in the long run, with small errors from unaccounted for perturbations accumulating and eventually destroying the accuracy of the prediction. We are, on the other hand, certain that we do not have a complete theory for the climate, and the computational problem that eventually limits the accuracy of long range predictions even for gravity limit the accuracy of climate predictions instantly, because the weather and climate are not only chaotic systems, they are the specific systems where the theory of deterministic chaos was discovered.
Claims of this sort are nothing but political hyperbole — they are not scientifically, computationally, mathematically, or ethically defensible. Much is made of the “religious” nature of this debate, but invoking Newton in it is precisely as meaningless as the invocation of the saints and holy fathers in Bellarmine’s rather famous letter to Galileo, where he draws a line in the sand between the “heresy” of heliocentrism that contradicts the Bible and Biblically endorsed flat-earth solid-sky geocentrism.
rgb
rgb (elective diminutive no surprise) – take a bow. . . . a truly awesome comment. The comments columns on here would benefit greatly from intermittent and wholly unexpected gales to cleanse them of the chaff they gather, but yours are always amongst the most nourishing, flourish inducing and encouraging I’ve ever read and would survive even the most phenomenal of tempests. Thank you.
Thank you.
You’re welcome. A did that off the top of my head because I just wrote most of it (some in a lot more detail) into my chapter on gravity in my online physics textbook:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/intro_physics_1.php
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/intro_physics_2.php
(last chapter in volume 1). The history of gravity is the history of the Enlightenment and discovery and implementation of the scientific method to cast off the antique mythologies of the past and develop an objective, empirical scientific worldview. Enjoy.
Oh, and if you want to read a truly fabulous fictionalized account of it all that is remarkably accurate, I strongly recommend reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy, Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World, wherein Newton, Hooke, Christopher Wren and others are major characters. Brilliantly researched, engagingly executed, with some amazing characters and a horrendously intertwined set of plots and subplots set against the political and social revolutions that were occurring in parallel with (and to some measure caused by) the scientific revolution.
rgb
Gail Combs says:
December 16, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Hmmm. Not many $$$$ to be had if speculation is made worthless by the buffer of storage. Same in Eurozone – destroy the butter mountain/wine lake and the powers of darkness can feed off the uncertainty.
rgbatduke says:
December 17, 2012 at 6:33 am
Fabulous (thank you) – except for Lew 😉 ” … well-educated scientist … ” he aint.
sarc/ Maybe that’s why he continuously fails. /sarc
Lewandowsky is like the parents of a lying child that claims their child isn’t lying – even though they don’t have any knowledge of what transpired.
and as a result CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm (parts per million) to 390 ppm at present; a 40 percent increase.
Or, Joe, to put it another way, it has gone from roughly three hundredths of a percent to roughly four hundredths of a percent of our atmosphere, and we’re worried about Venus like meltdown (according to Hansen, with his “boiling oceans” absurdity) if we get as high as six hundredths of a percent by the late 21st century.
Mars, on the other hand, has an atmosphere that is 95% CO_2, much like that of Venus! According to your theory, then, since the only relevant difference between the atmosphere of Venus and that of Earth is the CO_2 level, the only relevant difference between the atmosphere of Earth and Mars is CO_2 level. We can therefore safely conclude, I’m sure, that the mean surface temperature of Mars is much higher than that of Earth.
Empirical test time:
Mars (95% CO_2) mean temperature 210 K (surface pressure ~0.00630 bar
Earth (00.04% CO_2) mean temperature 287 K (surface pressure ~1 bar)
Venus (95% CO_s) mean temperature 735 K (surface pressure 93 bar)
Goodness, it looks like the assertion that Venus is proof that we need to worry about CO_2 concentrations is complete, unmitigated bullshit because Venus is nothing at all like the Earth as far as its atmosphere is concerned. For one thing there is a whole lot more of it. For another, CO_2 concentration alone seems completely incapable of warming Mars to the point where you wouldn’t freeze solid (if you didn’t suffocate or die of a brain embolism from boiling blood first in an atmosphere that would feel like a hard vacuum to you) in a few minutes of exposure. For a third, “40% increase” is a clever way of concealing the two facts that the absolute magnitude is a tiny fraction of a percent (compared to venus) — that we could endure a 4000% increase and still end up with only 1% CO_2 in our atmosphere.
If we construct a linear scale between 287 K and 735 K, it has to span 448 degrees. If we take 95% and 0% (to the nearest percent) that’s 95 chunks. If we divide, we observe that if Venus had an atmosphere that was 1 bar at the surface, and if there was a simple linear relationship between concentration and temperature, then if we bumped atmospheric CO_2 to a whole 1%, we’d observe a temperature increase of less than 5K.
Of course there isn’t the slightest reason to think that the relationship is linear, and there are excellent reasons to be certain that whatever relationship there is between surface temperature and CO_2, it is hardly independent of surface pressure and that the 93 bar surface pressure might have just a tiny bit to do with its surface temperature. And we would expect this, too, to significantly reduce the warming of Earth, not increase it, given its paltry 1 bar atmosphere.
Of course we completely ignore both insolation — roughly twice as great as that of Earth — and its albedo — 2-3 times that of Earth — in this analysis as well.
So if you were advancing this as a warning — “Earth is like Venus! We must stop emitting CO_2 or melt!” I suggest you reconsider the meaning of the word “like”. I think you will find that Venus is just about as unlike Earth as it is possible to be for a planet that is roughly the same physical size. For example, do you think that the clouds of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid that lie above the CO_2 atmosphere further down might not exactly correspond to the atmospheric chemistry of Earth?
Sometimes things leave me almost speechless. Most often, I have to admit, it is the terrible physical arguments advanced by people that wish to assert that the GHE doesn’t exist. However you sir, have managed to equal them in absurdity by invoking Venus in the same paragraph that you warn of impeding doom because CO_2 in our atmosphere has reached 0.04%.
Good for you!
rgb
In related news:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/maurice-newman-fights-back-no-slur-is-to-vicious-for-robyn-williams-and-the-abc/
So he did his undergraduate work at Washington College in Maryland, USA, huh?
That school has a lovely tradition on May Day–on-campus public nudity. See:
http://elm.washcoll.edu/index.php/2011/04/may-day-the-naked-truth/
United States higher education at its finest.
Rgbaduke
Supergenius indeed !,when you mangle much of Western astronomical achievements to get a modeling agenda based on the calendar based clockwork system of Ra/Dec to work,you are hardly anything more than a mathematical rogue,a mathematician might not care but a person wishing to get to the bottom of this climate modeling mess may make some effort to discover why people are behaving in a less than civilized manner.
Simple test.
Copernicus discovered that the forward- backward-forward motions (retrograde motion) of the other planets is an illusion created by the Earth’s own orbital motion as we periodically overtake those planets –
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html
Newton created an absolute/relative space and motion – a sort of double modeling which tried to account for apparent retrograde motions by an alternative point of view from the one held by Copernicus,Galileo and Kepler as it involves a hypothetical observer on the Sun rather than the proper perspective that retrogrades are merely an illusion created by a moving Earth –
“For to the earth planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the sun they are always seen direct,…” Newton
Any reader and I mean any reader could easily tell you that all planets move in a single direction around the Sun and one of the observed effects of a moving Earth is that planets sometimes are left behind as the Earth overtakes them just as a car moving in an inner circuit on a traffic island will see a slowing moving car in an outer lane appear to fall back in their view.You don’t need to stand in the center of the traffic island (imitating Newton’s view) to figure out what the backward motion is,you simple know that the car you are in is moving faster.
Forget the genius of genuises,that was always an excuse for authority or genius by association beloved of theorists who use the astronomical arena as a dumping ground for reckless conclusions,Newton had a specific idea in mind when he resorted to distorting the main Western insight which put the Earth in motion between Venus and Mars and that idea now is wrecking havoc with Western civilization and especially at the juncture where planetary dynamics and terrestrial effects meet.
I have been through Newton’s attempt to use the predictive convenience of the Ra/Dec system as a bridge between astronomy and experimental sciences,actually know what he was trying to do and can for the most part use imaging to demonstrate what that late 17th century attempt of a mathematician to play an astronomer is now really being felt by the wider world.
rgbatduke says:
December 17, 2012 at 6:33 am
It is good that he mentions Newton’s ‘law of gravity’ as this original piece of fiction was really what started the modeling bandwagon rolling centuries ago and like ‘global warming’ when a theory/model can explain just about everything,then people know there is something radically wrong with the followers of the bandwagon.
“Wild rant, but you’re picking on the wrong person. First of all, Newton was the polymath supergenius to end polymath supergeniuses. The guy invented calculus just so he could invent physics, and then in later life he invented the modern system of banking and currency. He isn’t/wasn’t on the English pound note for F = dp/dt….”
And so on…
Dear God, I wish Dr. Brown had been available to teach me 35 years ago. Then, this forest geneticist.wouldn’t have stunk so badly at physics.
Thank you Dr. Brown, you make learning difficult subjects a little easier.
How can Lewandowsky claim that there is increased certainty of human caused climate change, when the Draft Summary for Policy Makers makes a number of startling admissions of exaggerations and errors in previous reports? For instance, admitting AR4 overstated the role of aerosols, or that there is nor proper evidence for an increase in extreme weather, or a lack of evidence for worsening hurricanes. Now there are many issues with the report, (such as confidently claiming that the missing heat is in the depths of oceans where thermometers rarely penetrate), but for Lewandowsky it must seem as if the IPCC is in denial. But no doubt, after 18 months of research he will find the statistics to “prove” he is right. After all he too that time to produce a paper from a biased survey called “NASA faked the moon landing:Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” with statistics to “verify” that we skeptics are nutters, despite in the actual results of a survey only 3 strong climate skeptics out of 125 accepted that conspiracy theory – and a least 2 of those were scam responses.
December 15, 2012 at 3:47 pm
December 15, 2012 at 3:36 pm | Dennis Nikols says:
_______________________________________
Ah! But, if that “leak” was to be obtained through deception and contained some forgery then it would be “honourable”.
—————————
Hold on now, let’s leave Petey out of this.
cn
LKMiller
Many modelers never left a school/college atmosphere and probably your pining for what is effectively Royal Society empiricism (physics) is useful as you seem to assume that it is some sort of intellectual height you have yet to attain – the simple answer is that it is not,it is a theorist’s illusion that some insight which is denied the rest of the population can be understood by mathematicians in a non geometrical way (equations).
Kepler’s look at the correlation between the annual motions of the planets and their distance from the Sun looks daunting at first to the eyes of those who are unfamiliar with the workings of genuine astronomy but linger a little longer and the statement becomes clearer –
“The proportion existing between the periodic times of any two planets is exactly the sesquiplicate proportion of the mean distances of the orbits, or as generally given,the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the mean distances.” Kepler
This statement becomes clearer as he writes –
“But it is absolutely certain and exact that the ratio which exists between the periodic times of any two planets is precisely the ratio of the 3/2th power of the mean distances, i.e., of the spheres
themselves; provided, however, that the arithmetic mean between both diameters of the elliptic orbit be slightly less than the longer diameter. And so if any one take the period, say, of the Earth, which is one year, and the period of Saturn, which is thirty years, and extract the cube roots of this ratio and then square the ensuing ratio by squaring the cube roots, he will have as his numerical products the most just ratio of the distances of the Earth and Saturn from the sun. 1 For the cube root of 1 is 1, and the square of it is 1; and the cube root of 30 is greater than 3, and therefore the square of it is greater than 9. And Saturn, at its mean distance from the sun, is slightly higher than nine times the mean distance of the Earth from the sun.” Kepler
Newton with his usual distortions mangled this insight by doing what he did to retrograde resolution – he cheated –
“That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean distances from the sun. This proportion, first observed by Kepler, is now received by all astronomers; for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or the earth about the sun.” Newton
Gerald Kelleher:
Newton was a genius. He will be remembered and honoured so long as there are people to do it.
You are not a genius. You – and I – will be forgotten within decades of your demise.
Accept it. Stop fighting against it because you cannot elevate yourself by attempts to demean Newton. And go somewhere else to display your dislike of it because this thread is not about you.
Richard
To elevate Newton as some sort of benefactor to mankind is to demean astronomy, astronomers and by association -terrestrial sciences for,even the followers of Newton themselves at one time readily admitted that they didn’t have a clue how he arrived at his results much as the prescient Allan Poe actually stated –
“The demonstrations throughout the book [Principia] are geometrical, but to readers of ordinary ability are rendered unnecessarily difficult by the absence of illustrations and explanations, and by the fact that no clue is given to the method by which Newton arrived at his results. The reason why it was presented in a geometrical form appears to have been that the infinitesimal calculus was then unknown, and, had Newton used it to demonstrate results which were in themselves opposed to the prevalent philosophy of the time, the controversy as to the truth of his results would have been hampered by a dispute concerning the validity of the methods used in proving them. He therefore cast the whole reasoning into a geometrical shape which, if somewhat longer, can at any rate be made intelligible to all mathematical students. So closely did he follow the lines of Greek
geometry that he constantly used graphical methods, and represented forces, velocities, and other magnitudes in the Euclidean way by straight lines (ex. gr. book I, lemma 10), and not by a certain number of units. The latter and modern method had been introduced by Wallis, and must have been familiar to Newton. The effect of his confining himself rigorously to classical geometry is that the Principia is written in a language which is archaic, even if not unfamiliar.” W.W.Rouse Ball 1908
The old world astronomy of Copernicus,Kepler and Galileo now receives a tremendous rejuventation from modern imaging power,time lapse footage,details clear enough to make planetary comparisons and things like that but it all hinges on interpretative skills which the vicious strain of empiricism inherited from Newton pursues a speculative/predictive venture.In short ,it is time to return to old insights with new tools rather than try to disprove conceptual junk such as the conclusion that the Earth is a greenhouse and humans have control over the temperature dial.
Nobody ever asks what the ‘theory of gravity’ represents but then again the wider population trust people who are paid salaries to project something that is genuine and not counter to daily life on this planet ,something the mathematical modelers do not and do so it the most aggressive behavior.In this section the final word must go to Poe once more –
“Than the persons” — the letter goes on to say — “than the persons thus suddenly elevated by the Hog-ian philosophy into a station for which they were unfitted — thus transferred from the sculleries into the parlors of Science — from its pantries into its pulpits — than these individuals a more intolerant — a more intolerable set of bigots and tyrants never existed on the face of the earth. Their creed, their text and their sermon were, alike, the one word ‘fact’ — but, for the most part, even of this one word, they knew not even the meaning. On those who ventured to disturb their facts with the view of putting them in order and to use, the disciples of Hog had no mercy whatever. All attempts at generalization were met at once by the words ‘theoretical,’ ‘theory,’ ‘theorist’ — all thought, to be brief, was very properly resented as a personal affront to themselves. Cultivating the natural sciences to the exclusion of Metaphysics, the Mathematics, and Logic, many of these Bacon-engendered philosophers — one-idead, one-sided and lame of a leg — were more wretchedly helpless — more miserably ignorant, in view of all the comprehensible objects of knowledge, than the veriest unlettered hind who proves that he knows something at least, in admitting that he knows absolutely nothing” Allan Poe
Greetings!
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about some places you’ve been to, here is the questionary . Thanks!
My best to you, gerjaison