The Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. weblog today includes a letter from Dr. Joanne Simpson, recently retired. He calls her “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years”. It seems that she really spoke her mind on the subject of climate models and the problems of the changing measurement environment around climate monitoring stations.
The full letter is here on that weblog.
Excerpt:
Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly. […] The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models.
We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system. We only need to watch the weather forecasts. […] The term “global warming” itself is very vague. Where and what scales of response are measurable? One distinguished scientist has shown that many aspects of climate change are regional, some of the most harmful caused by changes in human land use.
No one seems to have properly factored in population growth and land use, particularly in tropical and coastal areas.
[…] But as a scientist I remain skeptical. I decided to keep quiet in this controversy until I had a positive contribution to make. […] Both sides (of climate debate) are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences.
I agree, enough of this sniping.
Witness the cordial exchange I have with Atmoz, a graduate student at the University of Arizona in Tucson. We see things differently, each of us has made some good analyses and each of us has made some mistakes, but we don’t insult each other over it.
Though I do wish he and others would remove the cloaks of anonymity. Science has never been advanced by an anonymous person, there’s always a real person with a name at the center of discovery and progress.
By the way Evan Jones, it is Dr. Davison and has been since 1954.
You really need to get over yourself. How is your “groupthink” going to be any better than anyone else’s? Why should be go somewhere just to be insulted and belittled as you’ve already done here without provocation?
A brief note of admiration for the refreshing viewpoint of stas peterson (23:53:39) on the 27th.
By the way Evan Jones, it is Dr. Davison and has been since 1954.
No disrespect intended.
A brief note of admiration for the refreshing viewpoint of stas peterson
Yes. He is well aware of the fact that a nation must become affluent enough to insure the wellbeing of its next generation before it cleans up its act. He’s also aware that the UDCs are developing to that point, same as the west did. I wish more folks were aware of that. (Historical perspective can be a useful predictive tool.)
Internet blogs, almost without exception, are centers of polarization and protectionism for the particular biases of their founders. They pride themselves on the number of visitors and followers they can muster. A prime example is P.Z. Myers’ Pharyngula which probably has the biggest following of all time. Here is a man who has completely abandoned science to dedicate all his energies to the defamation of all that is good and virtuous in the world. The Nazis had the Jews, Myers has the Pope, the President of the United States, and anyone else who believes there was a purpose in the universe. Like his cronies Hitchens and Dawkins, he has contributed absolutely nothing to our understanding of the one thing that has always been in question – the mechanism behind the two great mysteries of the organic world, ontogeny and phylogeny.
The reason these chance worshippers must behave as they do is because they finally realize that atheist Darwinism is a disaster as an explanatory hypothesis, but they cannot, probably genetically, accept the only remaining explanation which is a planned, goal-directed, now terminated, evolutionary sequence. They are living demonstrations of Einstein’s determinism, helpless victims of a determinism I share without reservation because everything that has ever been revealed about both ontogeny and phylogeny pleads for a role for one or more Creators in the distant past. Those that are unable to realize this are congenitally impaired. As the title of William Wright’s book declares, they are “Born That Way.”
“Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion.”
Albert Einstein
I speak as a physiologist. Physiology is the science of mechanism – how things work. Darwinism simply doesn’t work. It never has and it never will. Natural selection, population genetics, random mutation and sexual reproduction – none of these ever had anything to do with the emergence of a new life form, a process no longer in significant progress. The only role for any of these Darwinian postulates was and is still to this day to PREVENT evolutionary change and preserve the species for as long as possible.
“Evolution is finished” is one of the threads on my blog and I invite all to participate there and on the “global warming” thread as well, where you can offer your opinions on what I regard as the two most pressing issues of our time, an understanding of our origins and an understanding of what seems to me to be our impending extinction. Evolution in the past was a balance between creation and extinction, a balance which no longer exists. Only extinction remains. In my opinion those who knee-jerk reject such a scenario are fools just as are those who deny an anthropogenic destruction of the earth. They are both perfectly transparent to this investigator.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
“Mankind fiddles while earth burns.”
Incidentally, there is nor a shred of credible evdence that sun spots and their cycles ever had anything to do with the weather on earth. Milankovitch cycles have until recently determined earth’s weather and climate changes. Those cycles are now completely dominated by the ever increasing CO2 atmospheric levels that began a scant two centuries ago with the Industrial Revolution. Those who continue to deny this reality are fools.
“Mankind fiddles while earth burns.”
John A. Davison
REPLY: Perhaps, but how do you exaplin the LIA coinciding with the Maunder Minimum? We’ll find out for sure soon.
Tim Flannery played a serviceable 2B for the Padres back in the ’80s. Shame to see he retired to become a weather quack.
Yes you will, whoever you are.
Referring to the Maunder Minimum –
“The role that sunspots played in those changes, however, is still challenged by some, for despite the coincidence in timing, no testable physical mechanism has yet been identified that would allow sunspots to affect the temperature of our planet.”
Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers, page 43.
“Mankind fiddles whle earth burns.”
and
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
P.S. Why do you insist in logging me in as nosivad when I use my real name, something most of your clients do not do? Anonymity is one of my private peeves. Incidentally so was it Dr. Simpson’s.
John A. Davison
REPLY: Try typing your name in the form sir, it only logs whatever is typed in, nobody is changing it. It posts exactly as entered in the form, perhaps your autofill in your browser is doing it for you?
As for a “testable physical mechanism”, yes it has been tested, and recreated in the lab. GCR to cloud nucleii to cloud cover modulation. See Svensmark. Folks, lets help out the good doctor here.
Dr. Davison: I do not believe their is any overriding “purpose” to the universe. (I see no evidence.) My attitude regarding that is “so what”? I also suspect strict causalism may be the case. (I think that quantum “randomness” etc. are just translating “I can’t predict that (this week)” to “it is random”. )
I do not believe evolution is at an end; “my pigeons” argue otherwise: Evolution under pressure of natural selection in response to environmental change (in this case, improvement) on at least three levels. In the NYC pigeons’ case, the change is striking (size, robustness, coloration). I have also noticed, however, that pigeons of the Ruhr valley show almost no color variation whatever–they display a ubiquitously tortoise-shell ringlet patterning. (There is also the expanding field of genetic manipulation which is not “natural” but none the less real.)
The LIA may not be directly scientifically linked to its five [sic] solar minimum phases, but it is directly coincidental with them so far as I know. As for CO2, it is definitely a greenhouse gas and creates a warming offset. But as to the manner or degree, that is simply not known. It might be a very small offset. (For instance, we have no tropospheric heat bubble as predicted by models.)
“There”, not “their”. Oops.
Is the Dr. Davison who posted at 02:58:06 on Feb. 29th the same Dr. Davison who, earlier in this thread, called us:
unfulfilled, unpublished, cowardly snot bags
I ask because the two posts do not appear to have been written by the same person. Your current level of civility is appreciated. I don’t deny that there are a few who post here who have a tendency to get a little snarky with those who share your views; but the majority of us are here to learn and share ideas.
Incidentally, there is nor a shred of credible evdence (sic) that sun spots and their cycles ever had anything to do with the weather on earth.
If by “not a shred of credible evidence”, you mean that there is no empirical proof, then I’d say you are technically correct. According to NASA:
Just out of curiosity, Dr. Davison, do you believe that some other mechanism was responsible for the Maunder Minimum, or do you just believe that a link between the sun spot cycle and temperature has simply not yet been proven? If the latter, why do you appear to blindly accept the, as yet unproven, link between increased atmospheric CO2 and temperature, when that link is based almost exclusively on GCMs?
Davison still thinks C02 drives the climate. The laws of physics say otherwise. But, Davison doesn’t care about that, because he is an ideologue.
“The Weather Makers” is nothing but climate porn, without a shred of scientific fact. Only a complete moron would believe what is in that unmitigated pile of trash.
Bruce Cobb if that is actually your name.
Tim Flannery, the author of “The Weather Makers” is a fine naturalist, a first class researcher and an honest to God scientist. Why would I pay any attention to what a bunch of unpublished blowhards such as inhabit this flame pit have to say. You guys are just like the Darwinian actheists. Not one of you has ever published a word on the subject to you profess to know all about. I’ll bet 95% of you are Darwinian mystics anyway.
None of them ever published anything on evolution either. Wesley Elsberry, P.Z . Myers, Larry Moran and especially Richard Dawkins, not one of them ever published a word on the only issue that has ever been in question, the MECHANISM of a long ago ended organic evolution. Only Dawkins even imagines that he did. He is the most deluded of them all, living in a fantasy world he created all by himself. All he and Myers now do is peddle coffee mugs, bumper stickers and T shrts all sporting the big red A. The reason they have to do this is because they know damn well that Darwinism is a flaming disaster so, rather than admit it, they lash out at the only conceivable alternative which is a planned evolution. They are “born that way” losers.
I love it so!
How does that grab you? I hope it smarts.
Hold your piece!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
“Mankind fiddles while earth burns.”
John A. Davison
What we “believe” means nothing. What matters is the hard data which clearly correlates increasing CO2 levels with increasing violent weather, high winds, world wide increases in precipitation, violent swings in temperature and polar melting. No other measured parameters show such correlation and certainly not sunspot activity. We should also remember that the other product of the combusion of fossil fuels is H2O. The obvious shrinking of the continents is sure not due only to thermal expansion. The oceans are being diluted by the fresh water from melting polar and glacier ice at a rate never before known in the history of the earth, a rate which Tim Flannery estimates to be thirty times that in the past.
The recent drop in temperature is exactly what is to be expected as polar ice melts. Every gram converted from ice to water at 0 C. absorbs 80 calories. Those calories come from the atmosphere. It marks the beginning of the end of civilization as we have known it. By the end of this decade sea levels will obviously be on the rise and anthropogenic global warming deniers will be scarce as hen’s teeth.
Trust me, but of course you won’t.
If you can remain civil come present your views on my blog –
john.a.davison.free.fr/
Come anyway, vent your spleens, force me to ban you, but be confident that whatever you put in print will remain after you are gone. So far that policy has kept the number of blowhards to a minimum. I predict none of you will show. Most folks don’t care for that policy and that suits me just fine. They prefer to present their venom while surrounded by cheering like minded cronies.
I love it so!
“Birds of a feather flock togerher.”
Cervantes
“If you tell the truth, you can be certain, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Oscar Wilde
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
MODERATORS REPLY:
Mr. Davison wrote:
You mean like this “hard data” study and press release from NOAA that says there is no link between Global Warming and Hurricanes whatsoever? See it all here:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/noaa-hurricane-frequency-and-global-warming-not-the-cause-of-increased-destruction/
Wow, who could possibly pass up a warm invitation like that? Especially after calling us all “snotbags” in your very first post?
We are still waiting for that apology, by the way. Also, you may want to consider investing in a spell checker, you have several misspelled words in your post, so combined with the insults you’ve been hurling, I now have sincere doubts that you are actually a college professor at the University of Vermont. It seems unbecoming of a professional to behave this way.
Anthony Watts — If you read the link to Prof Davison’s home page, you’ll find interesting reading. Apparently the U there regards him poorly by his own descriptions of his treatment at their hands. Make of this what you will.
***
Professor — Dr. Greg Cohran has published a paper discussing recent evolutionary evidence in Ashekenazi jews, specifically the heritability of intelligence. He’s pretty clever and makes a compelling case for it. The reason I mention Dr. Cochran in particular is that this guy is thinking that most diseases (e.g. cancers) are from infectious agents and due in part to his efforts and influence we now have antibiotics that can cure certain stomach lymphomas (with Dr. Paul Ewald) and vaccines for cervical cancer.
His approach is to look at disease from an evolutionary standpoint. As such there’s a boatload of physical evidence that Dr. Cochran actually knows what he’s talking about.
What do you have that counts as evidence? Produced any vaccines lately?
Thanks…
.
I find the tenor of your postings disappointing, Dr John A Davison, aka nosivad, and at such variance with the general civility and reason of the offerings here that you must pardon me that henceforward I will use the skip button when your name heads a post.
I took a look at Davison’s web site. Sorry to say I think he’s gone around the bend. Elevator doesn’t make it to the top floor any more. Lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Weather is not climate change. But surely we have enough evidence to kill the hypothesis that CO2 is the primary villain in global warming. Maybe the upcoming “Heartland” conference in N.Y. will get some positive press coverage but I am not holding my breath. We have got to stop the politicians somehow before they ruin the global economy. McCain is no better that the Democratic nominees in this respect. Until the IPCC acknowledge the work of Zaworowski, Beck, Svensmark ,Soon et al and allow for open discussion, how can such an organization be taken seriously?
Hi,
Anthony don’t be so hard on him (nosivad ). He hasn’t figured out that Firefox spell checks for him. Too much education maybe. Oh sorry maybe your favorite program IE…LOL I just had a wonderful response to my post on Tamino aka Hansen’s Bulldog.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
But “my pigeons” disagree. They clearly demonstrate a present evolution.
“Mankind fiddles while earth burns.”
Man progresses apace unto god-like power to stagger his present imagination. Power that he humself shall create. He shall remake his world. Neither you nor I can prevent this. It is Childhood’s End.
You are a biologist who believes in the end of evolution. Even as you witness the inflection point of the progress of man. A point where EVERYTHING gloriously evolves.
The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?
You’ve got a blank face, which irritates
Communicate, pull out your party piece
You see dimensions in two
State your case with black or white
But when one little cross leads to shots, grit your teeth
You run for cover so discreet, why don’t they:
Do what they say, say what you mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another.
The impression that you sell
Passes in and out like a scent
But the long face that you see comes from living close
To your fears
If this is up then I’m up but you’re running out of sight
You’ve seen your name on the walls
And when one little bump leads to shock miss a beat
You run for cover and there’s heat, why don’t they:
Do what they say, say what they mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another
One thing leads to another
Then it’s easy to believe
Somebody’s been lying to me
But when the wrong word goes in the right ear
I know you’ve been lying to me
It’s getting rough, off the cuff I’ve got to say enough’s enough
Bigger the harder he falls
But when the wrong antidote is like a bulge on the throat
You runs for cover in the heat why don’t they
Do what they say, say what they mean
One thing leads to another
You tell me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another
One thing leads to another
–Fixx
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
I now have sincere doubts that you are actually a college professor at the University of Vermont.
Hmmm. I think he is exactly what he says he is. (poor spelling is even occasionally a mark of genius. I have known brilliant minds who have literally “transcended” phonetics.)
I went to his site. I find him vaguely intriguing. Partly because he represents a point of view and philosophy to which I am so, well, alienated, for lack of a better word. He has a first-class mind, but with many serious faults. I also see in him a vague reflection of “me-gone-wrong”, and this piques my interest, after a sort of bemused, cockeyed fashion. He seems unhappy, which is unfortunate, for I somehow feel joy would have served him as a valuable ally. There is more I would say, but I will hold off for now . . .
Evan Jones,
I am no longer a professor at the University of Vermont. I resigned from that den of Darwinian ultraliberal mysticism in December 2000 to dedicate the rest of my energies to exposing the factions that continue the most idiotic debate in the history of science, a debate that that has produced absolutely nothing of significance with respect to our origins or to the mechanism by which that was achieved.
My work is published and now stands for all time right next to that of the several great minds that made it possible.
I am content with that. Incidentally I am quite happy, knowing that everything I have ever published, before and after I became interested in evolution in 1984, still stands without refutation in the professional literature.
If you think I am unhappy you sure haven’t read much of my internet rapport.
I greatly enjoy exposing exposing all the chicanery, bigotry and downright mendacity with which the internet is so rife. It is grist for my mill!
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly. […] The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. ”
I find that disturbing that scientists has to be very careful to guard what they say.To keep their position as a researcher.
I believe that science progresses best when there are open communication between people on the various scientific topics.
We saw a very good example over at Climate Audit.Where Lohele allowed comments/criticisms of his paper be posted openly.The many replies over his paper that was posted.Showed some problems that Lohele then modified.
Since this implies that censorship is going on.I think it is an example of political influence at work here.
————————
“Come anyway, vent your spleens, force me to ban you, but be confident that whatever you put in print will remain after you are gone. So far that policy has kept the number of blowhards to a minimum. I predict none of you will show. Most folks don’t care for that policy and that suits me just fine. They prefer to present their venom while surrounded by cheering like minded cronies. ”
Dr. Davidson you make it sound unpleasant your invitation.Why not better to discuss the topic at hand instead?
I have invited a few AGW believers to join and present their arguments in the forum I administrate over the last year.NOT A SINGLE ONE HAS DONE SO!
I made it clear that as Administrator.That my criteria is a reasonably civil debate.Still no takers.LOL
Since you have gone to all the trouble posting generally off topic stuff.It is indicative that discussing the topic of this thread itself is not important to you.
LOL