Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Judith Curry posted here on WUWT regarding rebuilding the lost trust we used to have in climate science and climate scientists. This is my response to her post, an expansion and revision of what I wrote in the comments on that thread.
First, be clear that I admire Judith Curry greatly. She is one of the very, very few mainstream climate scientists brave enough to enter into a public dialogue about these issues. I salute her for her willingness to put her views on public display, and for tackling this difficult issue.
As is often my wont in trying to understand a long and complex dissertation, I first made my own digest of what Judith said. To do so, I condensed each of her paragraphs into one or a few sentences. Here is that digest:
Digest of Judith Curry’s Post: On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust
1 I am trying an experiment by posting on various blogs
2 Losing the Public’s Trust
2.1 Climategate has broadened to become a crisis of trust in climate science in general.
2.2 Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. Trust in the IPCC is faltering.
2.3 The scientists in the CRU emails blame their actions on “malicious interference”.
2.4 Institutions like the IPCC need to ask how they enabled this situation.
2.5 Core research values have been compromised by warring against the skeptics.
2.6 Climategate won’t go away until all this is resolved.
3 The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming
3.1 Skepticism has changed over time.
3.2 First it was a minor war between advocacy groups. Then, a “monolithic climate denial machine” was born. This was funded by the oil industry.
3.3 Because of the IPCC reports, funding for contrary views died up. It was replaced by climate auditors. The “climate change establishment” didn’t understand this and kept blaming the “denial machine”.
4 Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere.
4.1 Steve McIntyre’s auditing became popular and led to blogs like WUWT.
4.2 Auditors are independent, technically educated people mostly outside of academia. They mostly audit rather than write scientific papers.
4.3 The FOIA requests were motivated by people concerned about having the same people who created the dataset using the dataset in their models.
4.4 The mainstream climate researchers don’t like the auditors because Steve McIntyre is their arch-nemesis, so they tried to prevent auditors publishing in the journals. [gotta confess I couldn’t follow the logic in this paragraph]
4.5 The auditors succeeded in bringing the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted the auditors.
5 Towards Rebuilding Trust
5.1 Ralph Cicerone says that two aspects need attention, the general practice of science and the personal behaviours of scientists. Investigations are being conducted.
5.2 Climate science has not adapted to being high profile. How scientists engage with the public is inadequately discussed. The result is reflexive support for IPCC and its related policies.
5.3 The public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. More efficient strategies can be devised by recognizing that we are dealing with two groups: educated people, and the general public. To rebuild trust scientists need to discuss uncertainty. [“truth as presented by the IPCC? say what?]
5.4 The blogosphere can be a powerful tool for increasing credibility of climate research. The climate researchers at realclimate were the pioneers in this. More scientists should participate in these debates.
5.5 No one believes that the science is settled. Scientists and others say that the science is settled. This is detrimental to public trust.
5.6 I hope this experiment will demonstrate how the blogosphere can rebuild trust.
Having made such a digest, my next step is to condense it into an “elevator speech”. This is a very short statement of the essential principles. My elevator speech of Judith’s post is this.
Climategate has destroyed the public trust in climate science. Initially skepticism was funded by big oil. Then a climate auditing movement sprang up. They were able to bring the climate establishment to its knees because people trusted them. Public and policy makers don’t understand the truth as presented by the IPCC. To rebuild trust, climate scientists need to better communicate their ideas to the public, particularly regarding uncertainty. The blogosphere can be valuable in this regard.
OK, now what’s wrong with Judith’s picture?
Can The Trust Be Rebuilt?
First, let me say that the problem is much bigger than Judith seems to think. Wiser men than I have weighed in on this question. In a speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854, Abraham Lincoln said:
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
So it will not be easy. The confidence is forfeit, that ship has sailed.
The biggest problem with Judith’s proposal is her claim that the issue is that climate scientists have not understood how to present their ideas to the public. Judith, I respect you greatly, but you have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. The problem is not how climate scientists have publicly presented their scientific results. It is not a communication problem.
The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The lack of trust is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of lack of substance. Results are routinely exaggerated. “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”. Advocacy is a common thread in climate science papers. Codes are routinely concealed, data is not archived. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and censor opposing views.
And most disturbing, for years you and the other climate scientists have not said a word about this disgraceful situation. When Michael Mann had to be hauled in front of a congressional committee to force him to follow the simplest of scientific requirements, transparency, you guys were all wailing about how this was a huge insult to him.
An insult to Mann? Get real. Mann is an insult and an embarrassment to climate science, and you, Judith, didn’t say one word in public about that. Not that I’m singling you out. No one else stood up for climate science either. It turned my stomach to see the craven cowering of mainstream climate scientists at that time, bloviating about how it was such a terrible thing to do to poor Mikey. Now Mann has been “exonerated” by one of the most bogus whitewashes in academic history, and where is your outrage, Judith? Where are the climate scientists trying to clean up your messes?
The solution to that is not, as you suggest, to give scientists a wider voice, or educate them in how to present their garbage to a wider audience.
The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard. When Climategate broke, there was widespread outrage … well, widespread everywhere except in the climate science establishment. Other than a few lone voices, the silence there was deafening. Now there is another whitewash investigation, and the silence only deepens.
And you wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s a clue. Because a whole bunch of you are guilty of egregious and repeated scientific malfeasance, and the rest of you are complicit in the crime by your silence. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes.
And you still don’t seem to get it. You approvingly quote Ralph Cicerone about the importance of transparency … Cicerone?? That’s a sick joke.
You think people made the FOI (Freedom of Information) requests because they were concerned that the people who made the datasets were the same people using them in the models. As the person who made the first FOI request to CRU, I assure you that is not true. I made the request to CRU because I was disgusted with the response of mainstream climate scientists to Phil Jone’s reply to Warwick Hughes. When Warwick made a simple scientific request for data, Jones famously said:
Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
When I heard that, I was astounded. But in addition to being astounded, I was naive. Looking back, I was incredibly naive. I was so naive that I actually thought, “Well, Phil’s gonna get his hand slapped hard by real scientists for that kind of anti-scientific statements”. Foolish me, I thought you guys were honest scientists who would be outraged by that.
So I waited for some mainstream climate scientist to speak out against that kind of scientific malfeasance … and waited … and waited. In fact, I’m still waiting. I registered my protest against this bastardisation of science by filing an FOI. When is one of you mainstream climate scientist going to speak out against this kind of malfeasance? It’s not too late to condemn what Jones said, he’s still in the news and pretending to be a scientist, when is one of you good folks going to take a principled stand?
But nobody wants to do that. Instead, you want to complain and explain how trust has been broken, and you want to figure out more effective communication strategies to repair the trust.
You want a more effective strategy? Here’s one. Ask every climate scientist to grow a pair and speak out in public about the abysmal practices of far, far too many mainstream climate scientists. Because the public is assuredly outraged, and you are all assuredly silent, sitting quietly in your taxpayer funded offices and saying nothing, not a word, schtumm … and you wonder why we don’t trust you?
A perfect example is you saying in your post:
Such debate is alive and well in the blogosphere, but few mainstream climate researchers participate in the blogospheric debate. The climate researchers at realclimate.org were the pioneers in this …
For you to say this without also expressing outrage at realclimate’s ruthless censorship of every opposing scientific view is more of the same conspiracy of silence. Debate is not “alive and well” at realclimate as you say, that’s a crock. Realclimate continues to have an undeserved reputation that it is a scientific blog because you and other mainstream climate scientists are unwilling to bust them for their contemptuous flouting of scientific norms. When you stay silent about blatant censorship like that, Judith, people will not trust you, nor should they. You have shown by your actions that you are perfectly OK with realclimate censoring opposing scientific views. What kind of message does that send?
The key to restoring trust has nothing to do with communication. Steve McIntyre doesn’t inspire trust because he is a good communicator. He inspires trust because he follows the age-old practices of science — transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting of results.
And until mainstream climate science follows his lead, I’ll let you in on a very dark, ugly secret — I don’t want trust in climate science to be restored. I don’t want you learning better ways to propagandize for shoddy science. I don’t want you to figure out how to inspire trust by camouflaging your unethical practices in new and innovative ways. I don’t want scientists learning to use clever words and communication tricks to get people to think that the wound is healed until it actually is healed. I don’t want you to learn to use the blogosphere to spread your pernicious unsupported unscientific alarmism.
You think this is a problem of image, that climate science has a bad image. It is nothing of the sort. It is a problem of scientific malfeasance, and of complicity by silence with that malfeasance. The public, it turns out, has a much better bullsh*t detector than the mainstream climate scientists do … or at least we’re willing to say so in public, while y’all cower in your cubbyholes with your heads down and never, never, never say a bad word about some other climate scientist’s bogus claims and wrong actions.
You want trust? Do good science, and publicly insist that other climate scientists do good science as well. It’s that simple. Do good science, and publicly call out the Manns and the Joneses and the Thompsons and the rest of the charlatans that you are currently protecting. Call out the journals that don’t follow their own policies on data archiving. Speak up for honest science. Archive your data. Insist on transparency. Publish your codes.
Once that is done, the rest will fall in line. And until then, I’m overjoyed that people don’t trust you. I see the lack of trust in mainstream climate science as a huge triumph for real science. Fix it by doing good science and by cleaning up your own backyard. Anything else is a coverup.
Judith, again, my congratulations on being willing to post your ideas in public. You are a rara avis, and I respect you greatly for it.
w.
PS – In your post you talk about a “monolithic climate denial machine”?? Puhleease, Judith, you’re talking to us individual folks who were there on the ground individually fighting the battle. Save that conspiracy theory for people who weren’t there, those who don’t know how it went down.
This is another huge problem for mainstream climate scientists and mainstream media alike. You still think the problem is that we opposed your ideas and exposed your errors. You still see the climate scientists as the victims, even now in 2010 when the CRU emails have shown that’s nonsense. Every time one of your self-appointed spokes-fools says something like “Oh, boo hoo, the poor CRU folks were forced to circle their wagons by the eeevil climate auditors”, you just get laughed at harder and harder. The CRU emails showed they were circling the FOI wagons two years before the first FOI request, so why haven’t you noticed?
The first step out of this is to stop trying to blame Steve and Anthony and me and all the rest of us for your stupidity and your dishonesty and your scientific malfeasance. [Edited by public demand to clarify that the “your stupidity” etc. refers to mainstream climate scientists as a group and not to Judith individually.] You will never recover a scrap of trust until you admit that you are the source of your problems, all we did was point them out. You individually, and you as a group, created this mess. The first step to redemption is to take responsibility. You’ve been suckered by people like Stephen Schneider, who said:
To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
That worked fine for a while, but as Lincoln pointed out, it caught up with you. You want trust? Disavow Schneider, and STOP WITH THE SCARY SCENARIOS. At this point, you have blamed everything from acne to world bankruptcy on eeevil global warming. And you have blamed everything from auditors to the claimed stupidity of the common man for your own failures. STOP IT! We don’t care about your pathetic justifications, all you are doing is becoming the butt of jokes around the planet. You seem to have forgotten the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Read it. Think about it. Nobody cares about your hysteria any more. You are in a pit of your own making, and you are refusing to stop digging … take responsibility.
Because we don’t want scientists who are advocates. We’re not interested in scientists who don’t mention their doubts. We’re sick of your inane “simplified dramatic statements”. We laugh when you cry wolf with your scary scenarios. Call us crazy, but we want scientists who are honest, not scientists who balance honesty and effectiveness. You want trust? Get honest, kick out the scoundrels, and for goodness sakes, get a clue about humility.
Because the truth is, climate science is one of the newest sciences. The truth is, we know little about the climate, we’ve only been studying it intensely for a couple decades. The truth is, we can’t project the climate of the next decade, much less that of the next century. The truth is, we have no general theory of climate. The truth is, we don’t know if an average temperature rise of a couple degrees will be a net benefit or a net loss. The truth is, all of us are human, and our knowledge of the climate is in its infancy. And I don’t appreciate being lectured by infants. I don’t appreciate being told that I should be put in the dock in a Nuremberg style trial for disagreeing with infants. You want to restore trust? Come down off your pedestals, forsake your ivory towers, and admit your limitations.
And through all of this, be aware that you have a long, long, long climb back up to where we will trust you. As Lincoln warned, you have forfeited the confidence of your fellow citizens, and you will be damn lucky if you ever get it back.
[Update: please see Dr. Curry’s gracious response below, at Judith Curry (04:34:45)]
[Update 2: Dr. Curry’s second response is here, and my reply is here]
[Update 3: Dr. Curry steps up and delivers the goods. My reply.]
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I am older than most participants here. I was already well into my 5th decade on this planet when the “coming ice age” was being promoted in the 1970`s. On the issue of trust it can never be restored until those who created this AGW monster are purged and maybe even punished. The only way they can ever get a semblance of forgiveness from me and others who have endured their scaremongering for so long is to do a complete and total mea culpa and do it quick because you have already inflicted great damage to all of us.
And Willis, I have waited a long time for you, where have you been? Many, many thanks, you have made an old man feel young again…I think I will dress up and do a little flirting today.
Reply: That is most awesome. ~ ctm
Judith: “So my point is that serious skeptics should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about, but should investigate a specific topic, do some work, read the literature, analyze data.”
That argument doesn’t really work for me Judith.
Worth noting how “climatologist” does not appear to be a well defined discipline. It reaches across a number of specialist disciplines, and I see no reason to accept somebody who pins a “climatologist” badge on their lapel as qualification to hold the “key to the hypothesis”.
To understand the overall outcome, it is necessary to be aware of the different lines of detailed investigation and come to a view about how they fit together. Individual lines of specialist research have a duty to report their findings in an understandable way and to be impeccably honest about what has and has not been observed (worth mentioning as this is a large part of the problem you are now facing).
The hypothesis of catastrophic global warming has suffered a series of bad results for quite some time now. When this happens, there is a characteristic retreat into the long grass amongst proponents, with arguments like, “there is a massive amount of evidence elsewhere – this changes nothing”.
How long is that supposed to continue before we should consider the catastrophe hypothesis to be worthy of rejection?
I would class a “serious sceptic” as one who already considers the hypothesis to be rejected – or in more vague terms, not worthy of acceptance.
There are numerous reasons to take this position:
The hypothesis is poorly defined in terms of expected observations. (And I’d say it has a tendency to change.)
Attempts to pin it down to specific predictions have been abject failures.
There was a serious blow with the failure of the Hockey Stick and re-instatement of the MWP. There is no evidence to suggest Recent Warming is unprecedented in the Holocene.
The hypothesis based on unphysical arguments of positive feedback which leads to claims amplification of temperature changes. (Climate sensitivity would otherwise struggle to get above 1dC per 2XCO2).
These unphysical arguments were vested in the predicted “big red spot” signature of radiative forcing. But the pattern of warming is nowhere to be seen (What does that tell ya?).
The divergence issue which (if we are honest) completely destroys tree rings as a proxy for pre-instrumental temperature measuirement.
I could continue – I’m sure there are failed lines of investigation worthy of a place on the above roll call.
If you want to define a class of opinion as “serious sceptics”, the definition needs to be no greater than “those who consider the hypothesis of catastrophic AGW to be either been actively falsified, or not positively supported in evidence”.
To accept your qualification of “serious sceptics” would leave NOBODY in a position to take the overall view.
Judith Curry (13:32:51) :
I take it from your answer to my Yes/No question that you still support the IPCC view you have re-iterated, even though it has been shown that those Scentists that disagreed with the IPCC view were stifled and misquoted.
It has also subsequently been shown to be a completely false picture, there were no increases that had not been seen before, so to use that data to support AGW caused by CO2 was completely wrong and fraudulent.
I’ve just come across the concept of Post Normal Science! It’s great because it explains the “science” that the AGWs are using. I read about it yesterday for the first time in the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Watts up with This/That.
Climate science is not Normal Science! It’s the Post Normal Science of Dr Jerry Revetz of Oxford University, who describes himself as having grown up intellectually within a Marxist environment.
So! When Judith says that “science is science”, she’s wrong and I hope she googles for Post Normal Science to find out what it is.
Normal Science looks for falsities in any given hypothesis. To do this, it allows free access to its data by anyone. It does not obfuscate; it does not lie; it does not “lose” essential data. It does not seek consensus and the settling of science, but submits to debate, academic confrontation and criticism.
An example of Post Normal Science’s failure to do this comes from Mann’s Hockey Stick. A Congressional Committee (see Wikipedia) has concluded that Mann’s unit did not call in statisticians to check the statistics.
Now, Normal Science would have said, “Even though I am so excited by my tree rings and my hockey stick statistics, I must, nevertheless, in the name of Normal Science, go across the campus to the department of Statistics and expose the statistics in my research on my beloved hypothesis to emotionally indifferent statisticians”.
He didn’t do this because he is a Post Normal Scientist and wanted to get there quickly because time is short and the danger is great. As a result, this “scientist” failed himself and his team, is likely to face fraud charges in the future, and has brought Normal Science down into the gutter of public opinion.
Please, Judith, as much as Willis “loves ya” and apologises for “ya”, please find out about Post Normal Science and function hereafter as the Normal Scientist you were trained to be.
Henry@Judith
You say you have 1000 pages worth a read.
My problem is: I think the the basic science is wrong and I suspect most people here are with me on that.
We know that Newton’s laws are right because we have proved them a number of different applications. We also know that Svante’ Arrhenius law or formula was proven wrong and we are still looking – & waiting for the relevant research that would give us the right formula.
Not that it matters anymore to me, (because I am now 100% with Willis on the papers he has written. Global warming is improbable because earth is a giant water cooling plant, & global cooling is more probable – as the historical records will show you ), but at this stage I am not even sure that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Namely, it also has certain cooling qualities, i.e. having a number of absorptions in the 0 to 5 um band it must cause cooling by deflecting sunlight. They recently determined new absorptions of CO2 even in the UV range. This is all stuff that nobody realised before. This radiation from the sun deflected by the CO2 is so apparent that our equipment can measure it as it bounces off the dark side of the moon back to earth.
So it does not matter, even if you bring us 10000 pages, if you say to us that CO2 causes global warming you first have to find us the right formula from the right data from the right testing that everyone must be able to verify…….
Judith, try to go over to RealClimate, and post this there;
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf
And ask them for comments….
Judith Curry (13:32:51), thank you for continuing the discussion. My comments interspersed.
I generally agree. However, the problem is two-fold. First, the uncertainties and the level of certainty are very poorly represented. Second, when the science is clearly faulty, merely describing the science (no matter how accurately it is described) doesn’t help us.
Here’s WG1 Chapter 8
Anyone who thinks that agreement between the models makes it less likely that significant errors are being overlooked is not a scientist. All it means is that the programmers’ theories agree with each other. It means nothing about whether the programmers’ theories contain errors.
Here’s another example:
Outside of climate science, even the dumbest modeler knows that in a model tuned to the past (as all climate models are tuned) the ability to hindcast the past is meaningless. In the US, brokers are required to put something into their claims like “Past performance is no guarantee of future success.” Despite that, the IPCC still claims that the ability to hindcast the past is a valid metric. Not.
More importantly, there is not a single discussion of the following in the IPCC Chapter 8:
1. Propagation of errors in the models. In any iterative model, this is a very important issue.
2. A listing of all of the “parameters” of each model, with justification for their values and an estimate of what an error in that parameter would lead to in the final result.
3. The effect of the simulation of viscosity dissipation in the models.
4. The approximations of the Navier-Stokes equations, and any discussion of whether they converge.
5. Verification and Validation, which is a part of software engineering that is routinely done on all mission-critical software.
6. Software Quality Assurance, which again is a crucial part of software engineering for any important software. These last two are routinely used on software for everything important from elevators to jet airplanes to space missions. In WG1 they don’t even rate a mention.
All of these issues have been raised, time after time, by people concerned about the models. Yet they are totally untouched in the IPCC WG1 … so yes, you are right, the WG1 does accurately represent the state of the science. That means that, like the science, the FAR has more holes than swiss cheese. It doesn’t include a single word about important issues that have been raised by scientists who haven’t drunk deeply of the poisoned koolaid of believing in untested, unverified models. And by claiming that e.g. the WG1 results about models are good science, you appear to be just as suckered about the climate models as the rawest newbie … not too encouraging …
Note that these and a host of other crucial issues were raised either by IPCC scientists by IPCC reviewers, but they were left on the cutting room floor. By and large, their comments were just blown off … perhaps you could address that issue.
… [snip of some good stuff regarding hurricanes, which was not an issue in my mind] …
You’ve got the cart way, way before the horse. “Dangerous climate change”? In a real world, scientists would start by a) establishing that there is something happening outside the natural variations that need to be explained, and b) showing that humans are responsible for that abnormality, and c) showing that this might in some sense be dangerous. Since none of these have been done yet, any discussion of “dangerous climate change” is a dangerous fantasy.
My point, on the other hand, is that scientists should not make blanket statements about things they know nothing about. Climate scientists weighing in on the accuracy and reliability of computer models is a prime example. And for Michael Mann’s stupendous statistical ignorance to become a central part of the IPCC Third Assessment Report is a crime against science. So I agree with you, and I would only hope that you would apply the same standards to scientists as to sceptics.
Next, I note that you still have not touched a main issue. This is the necessity for climate scientists to clean up their own backyard. You seem to be happy to stand up for transparency in the abstract … but when Michael Mann and Lonnie Thompson and Phil Jones and a host of others (including Science and Nature Magazines) not only are not doing transparent science but flatly refuse when asked to follow scientific norms, where are the climate scientists who (like you) claim that transparency is important?
Instead, what we hear is ‘oh, the CRU emails don’t reveal anything about the science, it’s just scientists being harsh about each other in private’. Where is the outrage, where is the indignation, at the wholesale corruption of the scientific process that has occurred in climate science and is highlighted in the CRU emails? The IPCC routinely ignores the reviewers comments, and you and the mainstream scientists say … nothing. Phil Jones says he won’t reveal his data because he’s afraid that someone will find errors in it, and that is greeted with … silence. Lonnie Thompson still hasn’t archived his data, and the mainstream scientists … yawn.
If you mainstream climate scientists want to restore trust, you have to speak out strongly. And not just vague platitudes about the need for transparency. You need to kick asses and take names, and post the names prominently on some metaphorical bulletin board. You need to speak out against whitewash “investigations” like those of Mann and of the CRU, not in theory, but in practice.
Finally, nobody likes to be duped, nobody likes to be suckered. For most people, being conned is much more upsetting than a direct insult. You mainstream climate scientists still seem to underestimate the anger of the populace about the result of you pushing (or ignoring) deceptive, shoddy, agenda-driven science. You’ve lied and concealed and ignored egregious malfeasance so much that not only do most people not believe you, many people (like me) are very angry about it. Vague platitudes won’t fix that.
The IPCC reports are, as you point out, an excellent reflection of the current state of climate science — that is to say, they are full of errors, bogus numbers, exaggerations, phony citations, and hidden data and methods. If you want to restore trust, saying something on the order of ‘But the IPCC is trustworthy, it is honest’ doesn’t help at all. The distortions of the IPCC are a major reason we are in this anti-carbon lunacy.
My best to you,
w.
Australia is the dryest continet for about 40 000 years.
Find out why and what can be done about it.
Mitic CLIMATE ENGINEERING FOR AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT.
Using huge 12m tides for erosion assisted excavation of land channels and maintenance after
Huge tidal erosion can revive paleo old dormant mighty rivers, creeks and lakes.
AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE MELIORATION MODIFICATION TO PRODUCE MORE
CLOUDS AND RAIN ACROSS AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT.
Erosion trigger channel + huge tides = huge erosion of land tidal channels = low cost excavation with erosion = land desalination = more clouds = more rain = cooler climate = huge carbon sink
Ask the farmer that got trouble with erosion because of rain
what erosion would huge 12m tides do.
Ask the scientist how big will evaporation be in bone – dry scorching hot desert if tidal system of canal and channels is made by erosion assisted excavation.
1. evaporation from saline tidal water, canals, channels, tidal lakes, tidal marshes
2. transpiration from mangroves and other sea water tolerating plants
3. transpiration from rain forest around, ( tidal evaporation 1 and 2 = more rain = rainforest 3)
Ask the engineer if it can be done.
.
Ask the economist would project be economical
if less: cyclones,floods, droughts, bushfires,
much more hydro energy
Greener deserts, more clouds,
more water in rivers lakes and soil
Cooler Australian climate.
for more see: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Submissions/SubmissionDocuments/SUBM-002-010-0001_R.pdf
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/en/submissions/cprs-green-paper/~/media/submissions/greenpaper/0929-mitic.ashx
Thanks, Willis. You made my points, but you’re obviously much more credible than I, so maybe Judith should just take this discussion off line with you. Or maybe you two ought to go back and forth and the rest of us can watch.
My main points were the ones you amplified if she wants credibility with us: (1) she’d directly engage the substantive points you make about the failings of climate science, yet she says nothing to that point, and (2) she’d be speaking out to her climate science colleagues about the failings of climate science, which she has not done as far as we have been told.
Bottom line, it seems as though she thinks we’re wrong and that climate science is fundamentally OK (although she seems to imply that, yes, maybe the policy guys exaggerate…). Still, if she’s serious she’d engage the substance points made on this blog, but she doesn’t.
That’s why I admonished her to “dig deeper.” That’s why I referred to “12 Step.” Like an alcoholic who doesn’t like being called one, she’s saying, in effect, “I’m really OK, let me show you…”
Judith: address the substantive issues Willis raises about climate science, point by point. Stop the bobbing and weaving. If you won’t or can’t do that, then we can’t help you and climate science will continue to lose the respect of not only us “common folk,” but also of the rest of the (serious) science community. The IOP is just the beginning.
33noa333 (23:33:28) : Mitic CLIMATE ENGINEERING FOR AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT. … Using huge 12m tides for erosion assisted excavation of land channels and maintenance after …
Fascinating! Thank you. One day when woe-is-me has died off (or been locked up) such a vision splendid will capture the spirit of the new pioneers. I would wish to be with them.
To no one in particular –
I have returned to this entry a number of times, mainly because of the intense interest it has drawn – the number of comments.
An observation or two:
– We are known by the company we keep. And we are often labeled as ‘this’ or ‘that’ based on the perceptions others have of that company. A form of pre-judice.
– The reputation of a group can poision any report before the first word is ever typed- and the public’s view toward many/all who participate in writing that report. The group here is the UN. On this side of the pond, the UN has a very dicey reputation and this seriously clouds the view toward reputable scientists and experts who participated in the IPCC ‘affair’.
– Participants at IPCC-type affairs have very little, if any, control over the goings on, but they are treated as if they do and they are forever tagged by the public as if they wrote every word. Their reputations are generally forever stained. The good Doctor has this problem.
– Trying to defend -or even explain- anything that happened during their participation, or any aspects of the ‘report(s)’, meets with condemnation and ridicule. The more they try, the deeper they dig, the less they succeed. Don’t try! Put it behind you! Move on with your life and work!
– Being part of such an experience as the IPCC “efforts” can destroy anyone. While, at first, we are generally flattered to be asked to participate, over time we are less and less certain, many of us feel mentally and emotionally abused in the process, and/or in the results and outcome. We got in over our head. We were “used”.
– It is unwise to think that we are “safe” in any situation. Especially one controlled by politicians and powerful corporations and mega-rich ‘investors’. The bigger the stage, the more dangerous the props, and if we trip -or even if we don’t- the farther we can fall. The guilty are rarely punished. The unsuspecting ‘innocent’ participants get the mob’s fury when we leave and go back home. And forevermore…
This is my first post here.
The three sided coin! I now see how the “66% certainty of increased hurricane activity due to global warming” was derived by Dr Curry and her colleagues (from IPCC GW1 as cited above). IF one takes any of the three positions: cooling, natural, warming AND allocates each a 1/3 chance of being correct, NEXT arbitrarily assigns percentage ranges of 0-33.3% to cooling, 33.3-66.7% to no significant change (or natural), and 67-100% warming, FINALLY pick a “likelihood” of 66% in that context, THEN one is in natural (aka neutral) territory in making the selection of 66% chance of increased hurricane activity due to warming.
This is science and logic alright…science FICTION and CIRCULAR logic! Thus, there is insufficient (i.e. NO) true scientific evidence to support any of the three outcomes, and the proponents of AGW are caught in a a logical do-loop that cannot reach a solution. I am now convinced based on the evidence I’ve seen presented over the years, both as a scientist and a layman that COOLING is the most likely scenario that we face in future generations.
Many, many Kudos and thanks to all [with a special hat off to the Brave and Honest (albeit entirely misled) Dr Curry] who have posted on this thread. After reading it thoroughly, I now find myself FREED from years of angst regarding the entire AGW Gordian Knot and have been provided the tools to slice right through it! I know now that WE DO NOT KNOW one way or the other whether this planet is warming, cooling, or staying just the same! We are also decades, if not millenia away (despite rapid advances in TRUE SCIENCE) from knowing or of having any mechanism for Climate Control.
The entire field of CLIMATE SCIENCE has been irreparably compromised and will take many years to recover any credibility whatsoever among the true scientific community.
Any changes in government policy using this “science” as a basis is flawed and inherently doomed to abject failure because the logic is based on quicksand.
Thank GOD the economic necessity of INDIVIDUAL and FAMILY survival will act as an overwhelming self-correcting force to quell the AGW policy movement eventually, and the BS meters will come back into normal range…hopefully very soon! Also, thank GOD for the internet and blogosphere, which are turning out to be the most valuable tools yet to ensure the survival of logic, democracy, and science!
Tomazo…BS Chemistry, MS Chemical Engineering, MBA
“Ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set ye FREE!”
All this unprofessional junk $cience was produced to profit and $ell a control agenda basically ignoring a solar grand maximum and periods of non-closely grouped together volcanic eruptions.
These deceptive, shoddy, agenda-driven mainstream climate scientists (and non-scientists) are in the same league as the p$eudo-$cience 2012 Doom$day Profiteer$ and all should be locked away together for causing many people of the world unneeded and sometimes extreme mental anguish.
Many of our vulnerable and young people are affected by these pseudo-scientists to the point of contemplating suicide. All you have to do is talk to them and/or read what they’ve written in various forums.
Judith, why don’t you and your group show some responsibility and try to do something about that mess? Then maybe the world would be willing to talk on the trust issue.
Dear Dr Curry,
I have delayed my comment until the thread is almost complete.
I commend you for your courage in choosing to face the WUWT wolfpack. Particularly after what happened, very recently, to Dr Jerome Ravetz and his “post-normal science” (PNS).
I will try to paraphrase the wolfpack’s response to his theory: If you are uncertain about the facts of a problem, and so you can’t be sure how big a problem it is, then you can’t know how urgent it is. Therefore, the situation where PNS is supposed to give us answers which normal science cannot – high uncertainty, high urgency – can never happen in reality.
I myself find this argument convincing enough to destroy Dr Ravetz’s theory. I suspect some others at least will have reached the same conclusion.
But you, Dr Curry, have not been eaten by the wolves. Not this time, at least; not quite. Though Willis the Wolf is still trying!
I don’t know your motives for asking Anthony to publish your post, but I can make a good guess – to compare and contrast the communities on both sides of the “climate change” debate. If that was your intention, you have your answer. You did a good scientific experiment!
On WUWT, there are more than 1,300 comments on your and Willis’s threads. Mostly good, and many excellent. Almost all polite (thanks, mods). On the Climate Progress response to your article, on the other hand, there are (were, when I last looked) 74. Mostly grandstanding or ad hominems.
What advice would I offer you? Of all the commenters, I think Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has already offered you the best possible advice: “Examine [your] paradigm more closely”.
Put in my layman’s terms, that means you should ask yourself: “What am I, as a scientist, supposed to be doing?” And “How well am I doing it?”
Dr Curry, you have much to think about.
Cheers,
Neil
Steve Goddard
You heretic! Wash your mouth out and repent. How can the planet be unaware of the existence of the second manifestation of Jesus Christ?
Judith, here’s a perfect opportunity for you to speak out, and this is a perfect forum to do it. Phil Jones today:
Your comment? I don’t think I have to tell you mine …
w.
Those interested in an expansion of Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen’s analysis above, of how politics has driven the science, could do a lot worse than purchase a copy of Garth Paltridge’s The Climate Caper. He is also of the opinion that the problem is far more widespread than climate science, and goes to the funding of science generally.
Re: Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (Feb 26 07:48), PS, here’s the link to Dr. Boehmer-Christiansen’s comments.
I read Judith’s first post on CA. I was outraged. Still am.
Dr Curry,
I keep returning to this post which is Willis’ response to your post titled “On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust”.
The main reason I keep coming back here is that your post struck a deep resonant note within me.
I am quite hopeful that if we can dialog further into the future there will be reasonable prospects that we can give up stereotyping each other. I could give up stereotyping you as an AGW agenda driven biased gov’t funded atmospheric scientist and perhaps you can give up your stereotyping people like me. Please give up the “machine”, “denialist” and “big oil” stereotyping of us self-styled independent open mined rational thinkers [aka skeptics]. I will also give up the stereotyping our situation as “I am David [goodness/independence/individualistic] and you are Goliath [badness/dependent/collectivistic]’. OK?
Then we can get on with pursuing the actual scientific study of our atmosphere.
I do respect you as a human being for your intellectual achievement and hard work to become a well known professional academic. You can only get my scientific respect by the openness, clarity and falsifiability of each specific piece of your scientific products.
I perhaps I can get your respect by acting with integrity and civility.
John
It’s not just an academic disagreement.
There is a very human cost to over-dtramatised Climate Change speculation
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1254619/Baby-girl-survives-shot-chest-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0gw4V50ru
So we have (?):
The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard.
…in which one sees the accusation “pass off garbage as science” as if in this one sweep ALL science is found guilty, empty of value.
As if, indeed!
No scientist wishes to see garbage passed off as science. Mr Eschenbach, who may be a scientist, does not live up to the real, underlying, ethical responsibility (and one might add passionate ideal) of every scientist, to sift, to test, to prove out, and to uphold what is NOT garbage, but is the truth. And to show, by the evidence, why. And to note, and reject, by the same means, that which is not.
Let the “garbage” be “outed”!
Let Mr. Eschenbach be more responsible, and show some evidence…and not waste time with endless tortuous and tortured screeds wanting of material substance.
I love the cartoon at the head of the article! This IS what science, unfortunately, IS all about….and the challenge in science education is to encourage students (of all ages) to discover and accept the ambiguities and uncertainties in observation and interpretation that underlie all science.
After all, thermodynamics and quantum physics both suggest that an object dropped from some height may, possibly, fall UP. Not a high probability, but still….
Can we live with that? Can we live with the “x” percentage that describes our confidence level (never one hundred) that our interpretation is valid?
Welcome to the world, of which Paul Valery once wrote, “The world is ever more interesting than any of our ideas about it.”
Which may – at some fairly high confidence level – apply also to the declarations made in this column!
This all reminds me of the “smoking does/doesn’t cause cancer” nonsense of a few decades ago. Everyone it seems had logic and a lobbyist on their side.
After all that, one conclusion we came to is actually quite simple to get to;
It isn’t good for one’s health to be sucking filthy smoke full of hundreds of chemicals into their lungs. Period.
The same goes for the health of the planet. Period.
The title is a great tease, but in spite of all Mr. Eschenbach pours into his post, he never quite makes it plain why he thinks so. Pity.
However, I love the cartoon at the head of the article! This IS what science, unfortunately, IS all about….and the challenge in science education is to encourage students (of all ages) to discover and accept the ambiguities and uncertainties in observation and interpretation that underlie all science.
After all, thermodynamics and quantum physics both suggest that an object dropped from some height may, possibly, fall UP. Not a high probability, but still….
Can we live with that? Can we live with the “x” percentage that describes our confidence level (never one hundred) that our interpretation is valid?
Welcome to the world, of which Paul Valery once wrote, “The world is ever more interesting than any of our ideas about it.”
Which may – at some fairly high confidence level – apply also to the declarations made in this column.