If you try really really hard to ask questions a certain way, then you’ll get the answers you want. ~ charles the moderator
Scientists misread data on global warming controversy
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Well-publicized troubles have mounted for those forecasting global warming. First, there was last year’s release of hacked e-mails from the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia, showing some climate scientists really dislike their critics (investigations are still ongoing). Then there was the recent discovery of a botched prediction that all Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 in one of the Nobel-Prize-winning 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Instead, the glaciers are only shrinking about as much as glaciers everywhere, twice as fast as they did 40 years ago, suggest results from NASA‘s GRACE gravity-measuring orbiter.
The recent controversies “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science,” according to atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Cicerone was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month on a panel calling for more communication and release of data to rebuild lost trust for scientists. IPCC chiefs have made similar calls in the handling of their reports.
Scientists see reason for worry in polls like one released in December by Fox News that found 23% of respondents saw global warming as “not a problem,” up from 12% in 2005. Also at the AAAS meeting, Yale, American University and George Mason University released a survey of 978 people challenging the notion that people 18 to 35 were any more engaged than their elders on climate change. Statistically, 44% in that age range — matching the national average — found global warming as either “not too important” or “not at all important,” even though they grew up in an era when climate scientists had found it very likely that temperatures had increased over the last century due to fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases.
But what “if” (apologies to Kipling again) scientists are misreading those poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent public-relations black eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake? What’s really happening, suggests polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, is “scientists are over-reacting. It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.”
Krosnick and his colleagues argue that polling suggesting less interest in fixing climate change might indicate the public has its mind on more immediate problems in the midst of a global economic downturn, with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.7%. The AAAS-released survey of young people, for example, finds that 82% of them trust scientists for information on global warming and the national average is 74%.
“Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade,” he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
Read the rest of the story here.
“Climatologist”.
As I pointed out on another thread, a “climatologist” needs to have a thorough understanding of many disciplines before he or she can claim to understand climate. Chemistry, physics, math, statistics, and also they must know about data gathering, have some idea what’s going on with computer programming, records, record storage, etc. It really is a gargantuan task.
There are parallels, though. One thing you learn when restoring or working on cars is that you can’t just understand an engine. You need to have knowledge of physics, working with glass, upholstering, painting, and a big list of other skills.
If you’re the I.T. guy at a medium company (like me), you’ll need to understand programming, processes, accounting, documents, paperwork, dealing with government, wiring (network cabling), and another list of skills.
So far, the “climatologists” I’ve seen don’t seem to have the skill set required to make the sweeping, certain proclamations that they have. How can you possibly be doing this work if you don’t understand records? Or archiving? It makes no sense. The idea is that what you can’t do yourself you have other people to do. Which means swallowing your pride and actually LISTENING to the input from those looking after records, or programming, accounting, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc. And stop wasting valuable productive time by dabbling in politics… that would help.
There is not a single person in this world who knows all there is to know scientifically. There may have been a time when someone could… like back in Newton’s day, maybe even Franklin.
R Gates opines that AGW is a hypothesis! At long last we see such an acknowledgement from the pro-AGW side! It is not a theory, far from it, and it is refreshing to see a pro AGW advocate noting this crucially important point relating to the status of the science relating to AGW.
A hypothesis is a mental construct, usually based on an understanding of relevant physical theory, about causal relationships between observed physical phenomena. It requries “verification” through independently verifiable and consistently reproducable experimentation or observation, specifically aimed at defining the causal relationship, and ensuring that such causes are unique to the posited relationships . And if the AGW hypothesis, namely that anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to the post 1850 global mean temperature increase at a 0.n to n.0 degree C magnitude scale, can be so “verified” in independent and consistently reproduceable observations and experiments, the hypothesis may then become a “theory”.
Currently, there is no independent and consistently reproduceable experimental or observational support for the AGW hypothesis. Rather, so far, there is conflict in the experimental and observational data – some data supports the hypothesis, and much doesn’t. And, unfortunately for the AGW advocates, it is a very difficult hypothesis to verify because of the complex dynamics of the climate, and because of the need for extensive time windows, of the order of several hundred thousand years, for example, to gain a more robust definition of what constitues a natural background to the current variability in global mean surface temperatures.
So let us note, AGW is a hypothesis, awaiting robust experimental and observational verification.
R. Gates (14:35:11) :
Quote:””Alarmism comes about when science mixes with politics…and it has a valuable role to play. It was a good thing that there was some alarmism when it was recognized that flurocarbons were depleting the ozone layer. Scientists found the link, and something political was done about it””
R, you’re not making sense.
It was hysterical alarmism that jumped the gun before the science was in.
Which is a perfect analogy of what is happening now. I don’t think it was what you were looking for though.
They were wrong about flurocarbons………………
Looks like another major mistake has been revealed…
Loss of soil carbon ‘will speed global warming’
Guardian – September 2005
Their findings, published in Nature today, show that carbon was being lost from the soil at an average of 0.6% a year: the richer the soils, the higher the rate of loss. When the figures were extrapolated to include all of the UK, the annual loss was 13m tonnes.
“There was no single factor other than global warming that could explain such changes in non-agricultural soils, they said. “These losses completely offset the past technological achievements in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, putting the UK’s success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a different light,” said Detlef Schulze and Annette Freibauer, of the Max Planck Institute, in Nature.”
Guardian has now revealed that this was wrong.
“A national survey of the soils of Great Britain, funded by the department for environment food and rural affairs, claims to have found no net loss of carbon over approximately the same period.”
If this incorrect data has been entered into the climate models it means they have all temperate soils as being a carbon source and not a carbon sink. That’s hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 per year they said was being released into the atmosphere which wasn’t. Staggering!
And I bet they aren’t taking into account earthworms either.
Mean earthworm density was higher under elevated CO2 and worms mixed soil at deeper depths. Mixing deeper low carbon content soil with shallower high carbon soil may result in a dilution of net carbon inputs in forest soils exposed to elevated CO2. (Sánchez-de León, 2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/08/sciencenews.research1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/carbon-dioxide-global-warming-soil
latitude, I highly doubt that CFC believers will ever understand that they were duped.
Banning Freon was more political than scientific. In fact, the replacement is likely more harmful, in more tangible and demonstrable ways.
But banning Freon made a lot of people feel good about themselves, gave them a sense that they had participated in “saving the world”, and pointing out that the science doesn’t back the scare is an exercise in futility.
Douglas Haynes (17:53:44) :
As a matter of fact, AGW is not even a hypothesis. It is merely a conjecture: click
The link above explains the difference, which should be understood by everyone reading this site. Proponents of AGW [and even more ludicrously, of CAGW] continually attempt to elevate their pet conjectures beyond hypotheses, and up to theories. No doubt one of them will soon refer to the Law of AGW.
Language has meaning, and nowhere more so than in science. By allowing AGW propagandists to unilaterally change the accepted meaning of conjecture, to mean hypothesis or theory instead, it is for one reason: to attain power:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
Kudos to Douglas Haynes for pointing out that R Gates is not using “theory” for what is a conjecture. There may be some slight wiggle-room by the AGW Humpty Dumpty numpties for calling their AGW conjecture a hypothesis. But that is quite a stretch, as Dr Glassman makes clear in his excellent dissertation on the differences between a Conjecture, a Hypothesis, a Theory and a Law.
Charles,
As the science actually gets stronger on AGW the rhetoric from climate change deniers gets stronger, and their transparently political attacks on the science become more transparent.
Grow a sense of irony!
Reply: Oh you nit pickers (thanks, fixed) ~ ctm
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Wait a second, wait a second, isn’t that knit pickers with a ‘k’ ?
” Rockmike (03:32:56) :
“Unfortunately most major industry leaders have already made their methods the most convienent and anything cheaper they bought and buried. We haven’t advanced enough as a society to yet look past out own lives or our own times. One possability would be to take steps to put laws or regulations that keep technological, economical, ecological, and humanitarian progressions from never being added to our society or civilization. (examples: Electric car from the 50’s bought by GM and buried,”… (etc)
=================================================
Rockmike, the first thing your post brought to my mind was Puff the Magic Carburator. I personally know two people who swear that their late uncle built Puff (which got 100 mpg) in the ’50s, and sold the patent to a car company that immediately buried it. I’ve never been able to get out of them WHY the “uncle” didn’t build another one for his own use, given that patents only restrict the SALE of the patented object. The “uncle” could have made all he wanted to give away to friends and family, and never violated the sale prohibition. Also, patents have a statute of limitations on them, and he could have remade them later. But the “uncle”, being dead, could not answer the questions.
Electric cars… do you have any idea how NON-green those things are? They DO have to be recharged when not in use, and the regarging would at LEAST triple your power use. This isn’t a cell phone, it’s a freekin’ CAR.
Did it ever occur to you that IF GM actually did what you said, that perhaps they couldn’t overcome the power usage problem?
Further, rechargable batteries are based on lithium, which is an extremely rare item. A full HALF of it is mined in Bolivia alone. We will run out of lithium a LONG time before we run out of oil… and then when everyone has dead cars sitting in their driveways, how will you recharge your laptop and cell phone when the batteries wear out? Save lithium batteries for the SMALL items! 😉
So, even if GM actually DID deep-six an electric car decades ago, there could have been a very good reason for it… that reason probably being that they couldn’t figure a way around the obvious (to me) problems.
The sinister, eeeevile, corporate plots to keep us from advancing are not all that they’re cracked up to be. Puff the Magic Carburator is a myth, and I suspect that a lot of the other “corporate plots” are also myths.
So lighten up. Corporations are not evil. They are in business to make money to feed their kids, just like you are. New technology that would give them an edge over their competitors would be used, not concealed.
R. Gates:
Here’s the hypothesis the AGW proposes: Human activity, specifically the production of CO2, is altering the climate.
Any argument or practice which specifically eschews the Scientific Method as applicable in testing this hypothesis – as exampled by the ipcc’s “Climate Science” – cannot possibly prove this hypothesis.
Only some vast mass conspiracy on a global scale by hundreds, if not thousands of scientists involving the measurements of everything from sea level, to arctic sea ice and satellite data would be needed to bring about any “hoax”.
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax by denying its possibility, the latter which you also present as nothing more than an untethered postulate.
Re: Mike D. (Mar 6 17:22),
Ditto
J.Peden (20:27:20) :
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax
Sure I can.
And I can invite you to put your money where your mouth is.
Rockmike (03:32:56) :
Unfortunately most major industry leaders have already made their methods the most convienent and anything cheaper they bought and buried.
The word use or word meaning problem with this kind of “conspiracy” claim is that what has allegedly existed and been “buried” must be distinguishable from what has “never existed” in the first place. In other words, if you can never seem to find what has been “buried”, it’s logically the same as it having “never existed”, and therefore ‘it’ can’t have been “buried”.
Electric golf carts have existed for quite some time, and back in the ’50’s there were plenty of electric “Street Cars”. But the kind of batteries necessary to run individual automobiles up to the level of function required for the multiple uses of automobiles, have simply not been adequately developed.
Or are the adequately developed batteries instead “buried” somewhere – right there with the cancer cures and the fountain of youth?
J. Peden said:
“You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax by denying its possibility, the latter which you also present as nothing more than an untethered postulate.”
I completely deny the supposed “fact” that AGW due to rapidly escalating CO2 is pseudo-science. There is solid physics behind the GH forcing mechanism that CO2 and other gases play in the troposphere…and thank goodness they do, or we’d all be…well, non-existent. What real honest to goodness scientists, thousands of them, are seeking to find, through all the natural variation is the data that shows a rapid build up of CO2 since the industrial revolution will cause the earth to warm more than it would have through natural variation alone. There is nothing pseudo about this effort or the science behind it. But even if this data is found, the AGW hypothesis will never be proven in an absolute terms, but only in probablistic terms, with a very high degree of certainty. And of course, no matter how much data or proof is offered, certain mindsets will never accept it, and that’s just human nature.
Re: R. Gates (Mar 6 22:18),
You mean like the following example?
August 23, 2000: email 0967041809. S Schneider
Then Tom Karl chimes in..
But Schneider isn’t satisfied with “possible”, so he goes for “quite possible”, then (probably thinks) what the heck, go the whole hog.
Keep in mind, the discussion is about a 34%-66% range, a just as likely as unlikely scenario. But if these wags had of kept going, we could have ended up with “absolutely positively certain.” lol
Is this the type of “probablistic term” you were thinking of?
Thanks to John P Castello
“Anu (21:36:43) :
J.Peden (20:27:20) :
You cannot deny the fact that CO2 AGW is a pseudo-scientific – “Climate Science” – hoax
Sure I can.
And I can invite you to put your money where your mouth is.”
That’s just a stupid bet as it is likely that the next 5 years will be slightly warmer than historically. We are on a steady upward climb from the last ice age. Get back to me when we average 22 degrees and then I’ll bet on a decline. It’s a bit like betting on the population of the world not increasing in the next 5 years.
Sceptics like me don’t say the world won’t get naturally warmer – but that we aren’t responsible for unusual warmth which will be catastrophic.
cheers David
The thruth is that nature operates in cycles. And now we are heading into a cooler cycle, nomatter what the Carbon Cult is saying.
So, what is it, voters in the UK?
Will you accept that the Government can just CUT you out of the grid next time the grid cannot take it? How many minutes can you take, when this happens?
It is in fact BIG OIL=BIG GOVERNMENT in Norway that will profit from this. Its Statoil, remember?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7386628/How-will-David-Cameron-keep-the-lights-on.html
Warmists often suggest that climate skeptics must believe in a conspiracy in order to account for the prevailing scientific consensus on AGW. But these warmists presume that current science is working according to an out-dated and idealistic picture of a free market in ideas by disinterested and idealistic practitioners and gatekeepers, which is not how science functions nowadays. Nowadays, it is much more susceptible to fads, bureaucratic inertia, cheating, monetary inducements, and groupthink than previously. Here are extracts from an article by a scientist and scientific administrator with inside knowledge of the dark side of science:
Excellent. (It’s a link to one of the Global Warming questions on Intrade.) Here’s a more useful link, to all ten questions there on the topic:
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/index.jsp?clsID=20&grpID=7620
David L (03:38:19) :
But David, sports news is so much more important than Climategate.
And when you combine sports news with local news, well, there just is no stopping the discussions.
Here in Denver the media has the perfect storm of all these factors with the local Baal worship of the Broncos mixed in with gang violence; the murder of one Denver Bronco; the involvement of several others including bad boy Brandon Marshall, who apparently was involved, somewhat at the margins with the alleged killer in a New Year’s party, …
See http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14519564?source=pop_section_news
On this blog, we spent hours discussing minutia such as concentrations of CO2. In Denver, thousands upon thousands of hours are spent discussing the color of an SUV and its impact on the murder. The TV and newspaper are filled with all these details.
Why?
Because it sells paper and TV advertising.
And what about Tiger? Now that is at the heart of a truly international religion, golf. How could it be otherwise?
At the local watering hole I scandalized everyone present when I suggested golf is only a pastime; certainly entertaining, but hardly worth the emotional energy being poured into the fall from grace of its current patron saint.
I can still drink beer there, but I can tell I’m being watched closely for anymore wayward behavior. Anymore social gaffs like that and who knows how much further I’ll fall in the index of social acceptability.
Roger Knights (03:01:51) :
Roger,
Your comments and quotes are some the best things I’ve read in a long time. Excellent posting.
Thank you.
James F. Evans (08:18:43) :
“… in the politics of science, “I don’t know,” is a dead-bang loser.
It takes ethics and courage to resist the temptation to over-state your case.
Don’t kid yourself, going along with the crowd is just as easy in science as anywhere else — maybe easier — and more necessary to your professional survival.
But, “going along to get along,” isn’t a profile in courage or the fulfillment of objective scientific responsibility.
Sadly, this corrosive desire to “fit in” has corrupted many a scientist….”
Unfortunately the latest fad in industry is being a “Team Player” I can think of nothing worse for the advancement of science than turning whole generations of scientists into “yes man slaves” and thanks to John Dewey and his education theory of “codependency” that is exactly what has happened.
Summary of Dewey’s Philosophy of Instrumentalism – http://wilderdom.com/experiential/JohnDeweyPhilosophyEducation.html
* Dewey’s philosophy was called instrumentalism (related to pragmatism).
* Instrumentalism believes that truth is an instrument used by human beings to solve their problems.
* Since problems change, then so must truth.
* Since problems change, truth changes, and therefore there can be no eternal reality.
From Andrew Agostino – http://www.ifets.info/journals/2_4/agostino.html
“John Dewey was an American philosopher and educator whose work has had a tremendous impact on progressive education as a whole… His theory of knowledge characterized as instrumentalist and related to pragmatism advanced the idea that in order to study learning, one must consider the context in the social world where learning occurs. He defined education as a nurturing, cultivating process where mature members of a social group accommodate newer members through specific, social interaction. The environment or “medium” sets up those ambient factors that encourage or hamper the development of human beings (Dewey, 1916)… Consequently, the environment encompasses all of those things that significantly shape activity. Dewey goes further to characterize the social environment as encompassing all those other human participants who are associated with the individual and whose expectations, demands, endorsement or condemnation of action frame the social situation. After all, no one can be engaged in an activity without taking into account the connection with the activity of others. This connection is fundamental to the understanding of the social environment because an individual’s actions will always be interrelated in meaningful ways to all others within the social medium… Once membership is established, the individual becomes cognizant of the emotional attitudes, beliefs, tools, goals of the group and pretty much begins to share the same supply of knowledge that the group possesses. Accordingly, this shared experience forms an emotional tendency to motivate individual behavior in such a way that it creates purposeful activity evoking certain meaningful outcomes. Prawat (1995) refers to this shared experience as ‘idea-based, social constructivism’, learners are engaged in discourse communities where they can come up with and apply functional ideas…”
This is the educational philosophy shaping the training of our scientists for the last one hundred years. The AGW scandals and the changes we have noted in “the scientific method” is the logical outcome of this type of education system. Truth is fluid and based on “evoking certain meaningful outcomes” Is it any wonder that skeptics, people who are not team players, are viewed as heretics and traitors to be punished harshly?
@max Hugoson (08:05:15) :
“In science, the method used to verify the validity of a theory is to compare the theory with actual observations. To verify the theory of man made global warming, we may compare the change in CO2 in the atmosphere to change in mean global temperature during the same period.”
“As a result, based on more than a decade long data, global warming is not man made.”
——————
While I agree with your conclusion, that global warming is not man made, my position is not heavily weighted in the temperature data (the data, of which is not only inadequate but is suspected to be skewed), but rather in the mathematical proofs afforded by established Physics, which lends to falsify the AGW hypothesis, especially the more alarmist positions (Al Gore, et al). Of course we should not ignore the temperature data, but it’s not the golden ruler that it’s purported to be. (Only 0.1% of the earth’s surface temperature is measured on a regular basis),
Be careful that you do not make the same mistake as made by the warmists!
While establishing correlation is important, it is NOT proof of causation. In order to establish causation based on observations, all other variables must be eliminated, or at least accurately accounted for. Then the observations must be repeated ad nauseum to establish statistical significance (i.e., to demonstrate that the observations are not due to random variability). For the climate, collecting data over just a few decades is inadequate. Establishing causation is virtually impossible to do in the laboratory for something as complex and macro as the earth climate system. (As far as the computer models go, well… garbage in, garbage out.) Since the variables cannot be eliminated, the best that can be done is too attempt to measure and quantify them. This quantification is a rather precarious endeavor for the climate, due to the high complexity, the large number of variables, and the immense quantity of data required to do so. AGW skeptics are not satisfied that climatologists have done this quantification properly and thoroughly, and therein lies much of the controversy.
Anu (21:36:43):
That is the kind of response I would expect from someone lacking any verifiable, testable, empirical evidence that CO2 will cause CAGW [runaway global warming].
Unless, of course, betting on next year’s weather is a pub game. Then it makes sense, because it’s being done for the fun of it.
So on on that basis I offer you the following $1,000 USD wager, to be placed at Long Bets. The total $2,000 to be paid to the charity of the winner’s choice. Here’s the bet:
There will be no “tipping point” causing runaway global warming, no matter how high CO2 levels rise within the next 50 years; global temperatures will be no higher than 3°C above February 2010, based on an average of all satellite measurements, now and in February 2060.
I’m offering you a full fifty years of rapidly increasing anthropogenic CO2 levels [think China, Brazil, India, etc.] to see if the result is runaway global warming.
For someone who resorts to wagers on the weather to give authority to his arguments, I’m giving you the opportunity to put up here and now, and possibly benefit the charity of your choice. And think of the fun you can have, telling people you’ve put your money where your mouth is.
There are very few things in the “modern World” that aren’t ‘academic’. The one that seems to still hold the most water for normal, everyday folks is ‘family’. Another is ‘job’. Another is ‘health’. Another is ‘bills’.
What we are about is very, very, very (yawn) ‘academic’. All that we say here will soon be forgotten. We need to enjoy the ‘academic’ moments for what they truly are: Brief excursions from reality and the things that really matter.