Judith, I love ya, but you're way wrong …

T.Nessus (10:56:57)

@Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (07:48:15)
Thank you for that dissertation and for trying to pull it into
a broader perspective (WG3 “responses” and policies based on it).
Anthony and/or Willis, just curious,
do you have any comments on her text?

Good question, T.Nessus. Sonja’s framework is much larger than mine. I am looking at the science, and she is looking at the science itself plus the political and social issues that surround the science. She also speaks a different language than mine, that of a political science professor, and it’s a language that I am not fluent in.
In general, I agree with what she says. I would comment on a couple of things:

Having followed the science debates since the late 1980s and would agree with John Christy (made recently in ‘Nature’) that ‘scientists’ ignorance of the climate system is enormous’ and with Willis Eschenbach that well-meaning and thoughful people like Judity Curry should stop ‘trying to pass off garbage as science’ [ though I would not put it as strongly: they should examine their paradigm more closely and check the reasons for being so well funded to provide needed answers.]

First, I put it that strongly because if someone told me to “examine my paradigm” I’d probably think I had suffered a wardrobe malfunction. Hey, I’m a reformed cowboy.
Next, John Christie’s statement “Scientists’ ignorance of the climate system is enormous” is the most important takeaway message of all of this. Currently we are working under the most simplistic “theory of climate”. The theory looks like this:
∆T = λ ∆F
where T is temperature, F is forcing, and lambda (λ) is climate sensitivity. Delta (∆) means “the change in”. So in English, this means:
The change in global temperature is equal to the change in forcing times a constant.
Now, to me, that claim is clearly false. The idea that in a complex chaotic system there is a simple linear relationship between forcing and temperature is an ultra-simplification, one that can only be seen as a tinker-toy model of the system.
This difficulty is worked around in practice by invoking “ceteris paribus”, a Latin phrase meaning “other things being equal”. But in a complex chaotic system, other things are never equal. This makes the simplistic “climate sensitivity” analysis suspect at best, and useless at worst.
I have offered an alternative hypothesis about how the climate works here. It may well be wrong, I’ve been wrong more than once twice I care to think about. But whether my particular hypothesis is right or wrong, we need a new theory of climate to replace the bozo idea that the temperature of the planet is linearly related to the forcing.

I am not sure whether his solution, for climate scientists to police their own back yard, is realistic. I would go for demanding a different public funding system for science and a dissociation of policy-making from science still in the basic research phase, that is attemting to prevent the misuse of science by policy-makers so called. This would include much weaker links between government bodies, for example energy, environment and foreign ministries, and basic climate research bodies like CRU or even the UK Royal Society.

In most scientific fields, the scientists themselves are very aggressive in rooting out errors. In climate science, for a variety of historical and political reasons that I’m sure Sonja could explain much better than I, this is not happening. The most egregious errors sail through the peer review system and go unremarked by other scientists. Michael Mann used the Tiljander proxies upside-down, and that wasn’t noticed until Steve McIntyre publicised the mistake. That is worrying enough … but what shows the seriousness of the situation is that Mann made the exact same mistake in his next paper, and once again it sailed through peer review and went unremarked by other climate scientists. See here, here, here, and here.
In business, Mann would have been fired years ago. In engineering, those kind of errors are simply not tolerated. In graduate school, his advisor would have boxed his ears. In another science field, other scientists would have publicised his errors far and wide.
But in climate science, Mann is still a rock star, preening and posing for the cameras and complaining how he is being Swiftboated:

RO – Did you feel embattled at times? Like in the bunker?
MM – We are in a battle — the scientific community. I mean the climate science community has been in battle for years. There’s an organized, well-funded effort to discredit us. And not just our science, but individuals. There’s been an increasing effort towards, so called “Swiftboating” of individual scientists. Smear campaigns run against scientists for the sole purpose of discrediting them, so as to discredit the science. So I think it is very clear that this is the method of attack that the climate-denial-lobby is using.

Poor baby, it’s all the fault of the eeeevil well-funded auditors. Al Gore alone is spending $300 million to spread climate falsehoods, and we’re the “well-funded … climate-denial-lobby”? That’s a vile lie.
The heavy lifting in this has been done by Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts and Bishop Hill and myself and Jeff Id and Chiefio and Ross McKitrick and Lucia Liljegren and Steve Mosher and a host of other often eccentric independent individuals. We are not well-funded, mostly we have day jobs or are retired, and we don’t jet around the world on government grants. We are not a “climate-denial-lobby”. We are not organized, and we often disagree with each other.
But we do have one thing in common – unlike the majority of mainstream climate scientists, we are passionate about honest, transparent science. And unlike the majority of mainstream climate scientists, we speak out when we find errors and we take a strong stand against scientific malfeasance when we find it.
The CRU emails clearly revealed that Jones and Mann and the unindicted co-conspirators engaged in a smear campaign of the most repulsive and reprehensible kind against those who dared to oppose him. Now he claims to be the victim of such a campaign … right.
And Judith and others are puzzled why people don’t trust them? It’s because we see Mann’s shabby science and egregious falsehoods and despicable personal attacks go unchallenged by Judith and other mainstream climate scientists.
Now, I agree with Sonja that structural changes in funding and in the relationship between science and politics are needed as well. But as long as garbage like Mann’s work is not censured and castigated by mainstream climate scientists, none of that will make a difference.
She is right that climate scientists cleaning up their own backyards is not sufficient to solve all of the problems … but it is an absolutely necessary first step.

RichieRich (13:33:33)

Willis (09:29:09)
Thanks for your thoughts.
I’d have thought that, taken in the round, my response (07:36:44) would have convinced you that I don’t live under a bridge. But anyway…
Clearly, if one posts that the sky is blue, one is not expected to provide supporting evidence for ones statement as it’s blinking obvious to everyone concerned that the sky is indeed blue.
But I really don’t think your statement that results are routinely exaggerated falls into the same category as the statement that the sky is blue. “Routinely” means “as a matter of course”, “habitually”, “more often than not”. Are you seriously claiming that it is absolutely blinking obvious that the authors of the hundreds, if not thousands of journal papers published each year on the various aspects of climate science more often than not exaggerate their findings.
This is such a large and damning claim that it surely requires supporting evidence. And, I’m sure you’d agree that merely to point to a few papers by the usual suspects (Mann? Briffa? Hansen?) isn’t sufficient to constitute supporting evidence.

I can’t win on this one. You say you want evidence, but that pointing to a few papers won’t be enough. I’m not willing to do an analysis of a thousand papers to satisfy you.
However, the CRU emails certainly show that there was a concentrated effort by a core group of well-known, high-profile scientists to exaggerate their findings. Stephen Schneider’s advice to the faithful, “to offer up some scary scenarios” and make “little mention of any doubts”, is typical of the advice in the field. The reviewers comments to the IPCC demonstrate that usually the most exaggerated interpretations were taken, often over the objections of responsible scientists. The tinkertoy models are used to make claims of horrendous outcomes a hundred years from now. The IPCC used MER rather than PPP to make the situation look worse than it is. The Stern Report used ridiculous assumptions to claim huge costs of CO2. The cost/benefit analyses of warming typically include all of the costs and none of the benefits. A study in Nature Magazine claims that “on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’.” Here are links to things that are claimed to result from a degree or two of warming, viz:

Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, poppies more potent, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pressure changes, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), anaphylactic reactions to bee stings, ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk, anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear, Arctic tundra lost, Arctic warming (not), asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty, atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water, bananas grow, barbarisation, beer and bread prices to soar, beer better, beer worse, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds return early, birds shrink, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down, blood contaminated, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brain eating amoebae, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, British monsoon, brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened, building collapse, building season extension, bushfires, butterflies move north, carbon crimes, camel deaths, cancer deaths in England, cannibalism, caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened, childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase, coast beauty spots lost, cockroach migration, cod go south, coffee threatened, coffee berry borer, coffee berry disease, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), cold weather (world), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia, consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral fish suffer, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, cost of trillions, cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened, creatures move uphill, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change, cyclones (Australia), danger to kid’s health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague, deadly virus outbreaks, death rate increase (US), deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, dig sites threatened, disasters, diseases move north, dog disease, Dolomites collapse, dozen deadly diseases – or not, drought, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, earlier pollen season, Earth axis tilt, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down, earthquakes, earthquakes redux, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, pikas, polar bears, possums, walrus, toads, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species, not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches, salamanders, tropical insects) experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting, famine, farmers benefit, farmers go under, farm output boost, fashion disaster, fever, figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fires fanned in Nepal, fish bigger, fish catches drop, fish downsize, fish deaf, fish get lost, fish head north, fish shrinking, fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flesh eating disease, flies on Everest, flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, flora dispersed, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), football team migration, forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased, fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, geese decline in Hampshire, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, geysers imperiled, giant icebergs (Australia), giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacier grows (California), glaciers on Snowden, glacier wrapped, global cooling, glowing clouds, golf course to drown, golf Masters wrecked, grain output drop (China), grandstanding, grasslands wetter, gravity shift, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, great tits cope, greening of the North, Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, haggis threatened, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, health risks, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, homeless 50 million, hornets, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes, hurricane reduction, hurricanes fewer, hurricanes not, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice age, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, icebergs, illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada), industry threatened, infectious diseases, inflation in China, insect explosion, insect invasion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of alien worms, invasion of cats, invasion of crabgrass, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of king crabs, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, Italy robbed of pasta, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky, Kew Gardens taxed, kidney stones, killer cornflakes, killing us, kitten boom, koalas under threat, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, large trees decline, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers’ income increased (surprise surprise!), lawyers want more, legionnaires’ surge, lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, locust plagues suppressed, lush growth in rain forests, Malaria, mammoth dung melt, mango harvest fails, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Meat eating to stop, Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, Melanoma decline, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys at risk, monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days, more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountaineers fears, mountains break up, mountains green and flowering, mountains taller, mortality lower, Myanmar cyclone, narwhals at risk, National
Parks damaged, National security implications, native wildlife overwhelmed, natural disasters quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying, oaks move north, ocean acidification, ocean acidification faster, ocean dead spots, ocean dead zones unleashed, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up, Olympic Games to end, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, penguin chicks frozen, penguin chicks smaller, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, pines decline, plankton blooms, plants lose protein, plants march north, plants move uphill, polar bears aggressive, polar bears deaf, polar bears drowning, polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness, puffin decline, pushes poor women into prostitution, rabid bats, radars taken out, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees, reindeer endangered, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease, ruins ruined, Russia under pressure, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, salmon stronger, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, seismic activity, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sexual promiscuity, shark attacks, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, shrinking ponds, shrinking sheep, shrinking shrine, Sidney Opera House wiped out, ski resorts threatened, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall decrease, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snow thicker, soaring food prices, societal collapse, soil change, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders getting bigger, spiders invade Scotland, squid larger, squid population explosion, squid tamed, squirrels reproduce earlier, stingray invasion, storms wetter, street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement, terrorists (India), threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tigers eat people, tomatoes rot, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, toxic seaweed, trade barriers, trade winds weakened, traffic jams, transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed, trees in trouble, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, truffles down, turtles crash, turtle feminised, turtles lay earlier, UFO sightings, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina, Vampire moths, Venice flooded, violin decline, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, walrus stampede, wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, wasps, water bills double, water scarcity (20% of increase), waves bigger, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whale beachings, whales lose weight, whales move north, wheat yields crushed in Australia, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, winds stronger, winds weaker, wine – Australian baked, wine – harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine – more English, wine – England too hot, wine -German boon, wine – no more French , wine passé (Napa), wine – Scotland best, wine stronger, winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World War 4, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.

And you claim that exaggeration is not routine in climate science? Really? True, some of these are press reports based on science rather than the science itself, but I don’t hear the scientists denying these claims, and the scientific papers led directly to those press reports … coincidence?
So I stand by my statement that “Results are routinely exaggerated.”

Oh…here come the billy goats gruff.

Well played, sir, touché. My allegation of trollhood was routinely exaggerated …
w.
PS – If I were you, I’d pick another alias to hide behind. “RichieRich” hardly projects the image that I’d think you would want associated with your ideas …

RichieRich (15:47:42)

Willis (14:27:08)
If you don’t like billy goat gruff jokes, then perhaps you should be less hasty tossing about trolling accusations. They’re not pleasant…

Huh? I did like the joke, that’s why I said “Well played”.

…
Are GCMs really tinkertoy models? Whether they are or not I worry that if GHG concentrations reach, say, 840ppmv (three time pre-industrial levels) by the end of the century, then some real bad stuff could go down. Would 840ppmv worry you?

To date, I haven’t seen any evidence that there is any kind of logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature, and I have seen evidence that there is not. See the recent study of sea level in Madeira, which shows that sea levels were higher (i.e. the earth was warmer) 81,000 years ago, when CO2 levels were lower.
The models, of course, make the claim that forcing and temperature are linearly related. But a model is merely the beliefs of its programmer writ large. The models were totally unsuccessful in predicting the current 15 year hiatus in the warming … so why should we believe them?
Finally, I hypothesize (and provide evidence) that there is a thermostat which maintains the globe at a very stable temperature. The temperature of the globe has not varied by ± 1% over the last ten thousand years, and I don’t think that is a coincidence. I think that the clouds and the thunderstorms cool the earth when it gets hot, and disappear when it gets cold. So no, I am not concerned by the threat of the CO2 concentration varying by five hundredths of a percent.

In conclusion, I agree with you that poor record keeping and an unwillingness to release data are genuine causes for concern. And your last response persuades me that there is some unhealthy exaggeration going on. And though I’m not saying you’re wrong, I remain to be convinced that the majority of climate scientists routinely and knowingly exaggerate their findings.

I gave you a list of no less than six hundred things that are supposed to result from one or two degrees of global warming. Bear in mind that humans routinely live at average temperatures that range from zero degrees C to twenty-five degrees C. Now if those things did in fact increase with temperature, we should see them increasing from the pole to the equator. Looking at the list above, we see that acne, bad air days, and psychiatric illnesses should be rampant at the equator.
A slight warming is supposed to lead to more snow, and less snow. It’s supposed to lead to more fog in California, and less fog in California. It’s supposed to lead to more droughts, and less droughts. It’s supposed to lead to bigger fish, and smaller fish. It’s supposed to make trees more colourful, and less colourful.
Now, obviously all of those can’t be true. Somebody is exaggerating their results somewhere, somebody is drawing unsustainable conclusions from their data.
Is it “routine”? Well, it is certainly very widespread. For me, any projection of the climate is an exaggerated claim based on inadequate data, and the recent inability of the models and the projections to foresee the 15 year hiatus in the warming proves my point. So everything that you have read about what the future climate will look like is an unwarranted extrapolation from the data, aka an exaggeration.
Or we can look at it another way. As a result of the prevalence of exaggeration, bogus claims have become so common that even things that don’t pass the sniff test are published in scientific journals. The problem is well illustrated by the Nature Magazine study I referred to above, that a warming of a degree or two would wipe out 30% of all species on the planet. Yeah, right, that’s the ticket.
I read that when it came out, and I cracked up laughing. We have seen that size of change since the Little Ice Age … and to quote the title of my article on the subject, Where are the corpses? Not one bird or mammal has gone extinct during that time from the warming, not one. And if that amount of warming could wipe out 30% of the species, we should have lost half the species on the planet or more when we came out of the last Ice Age. Didn’t happen.
That is absurd on the face of it, and it is a measure of the amount of exaggeration in the field in general that not only was it not laughed out of the house, it was printed in Nature Magazine with a straight face … well, except for mine. I was laughing my face off at the credulity of Nature and of the mainstream scientists, for whom no claim is too outrageous to be believed. They swallowed it whole.
When people seriously say that a possible but far from established couple degree temperature rise over fifty years, supported solely by climate models that couldn’t predict fifteen year, is the greatest threat of our time, greater than terrorism, greater than economic collapse … well, RichieRich, at that point I have to say that exaggeration in climate science has jumped the shark.