Dr. Judith Curry was recently called a heretic by Scientific American due to her views on climate science and public policy. Here, in a post at he new blog, she shows her resolve to maintain her independence from consensus thinking and to ignore the slings and arrows.
She takes no prisoners with this missive where she asks a very direct and effective question:
Let me preface my statement by saying that at this point, I am pretty much immune to criticisms from my peers regarding my behavior and public outreach on this topic (I respond to any and all criticisms of my arguments that are specifically addressed to me.) If you think that I am a big part of the cause of the problems you are facing, I suggest that you think about this more carefully. I am doing my best to return some sanity to this situation and restore science to a higher position than the dogma of consensus. You may not like it, and my actions may turn out to be ineffective, futile, or counterproductive in the short or long run, by whatever standards this whole episode ends up getting judged. But this is my carefully considered choice on what it means to be a scientist and to behave with personal and professional integrity.
Let me ask you this. So how are things going for you lately? A year ago, the climate establishment was on top of the world, masters of the universe. Now we have a situation where there have been major challenges to the reputations of a number of scientists, the IPCC, professional societies, and other institutions of science. The spillover has been a loss of public trust in climate science and some have argued, even more broadly in science. The IPCC and the UNFCCC are regarded by many as impediments to sane and politically viable energy policies. The enviro advocacy groups are abandoning the climate change issue for more promising narratives. In the U.S., the prospect of the Republicans winning the House of Representatives raises the specter of hearings on the integrity of climate science and reductions in federal funding for climate research.
What happened? Did the skeptics and the oil companies and the libertarian think tanks win? No, you lost. All in the name of supporting policies that I don’t think many of you fully understand. What I want is for the climate science community to shift gears and get back to doing science, and return to an environment where debate over the science is the spice of academic life. And because of the high relevance of our field, we need to figure out how to provide the best possible scientific information and assessment of uncertainties. This means abandoning this religious adherence to consensus dogma.
You don’t get it Smokey, the scales of the Hadcrut do not match the scales of the Greenland data, so you can’t graft the series together.
I looked at all the graphs, they are all local temperature series and say little to nothing about global temperatures. Several of them stop at 1950, none of them show the current temperatures and none of them have the resolution to display the current temperatures.
And just because there is natural variability now and in the past doesn’t in the least prove in any way that there isn’t man made changes going on in the present.
Smokey,
My only concern was with a time-series plot where the x-axis was on a log-scale. That is objectively a bad thing, because it overstates variability for older events and understates variability for more recent events. Fitting a linear trend-line to it is also going to be misleading as the trend for the untransformed x-axis may be radically different in direction and magnitude.
Some of you follow-up graphs had this same problem. One tried to fit a polynomial to the log-scale x-axis.
The problem would be the same if the y-axis were giving rabbit population or Chevrolet sales figures.
Stick with linear-scale x-axes and then we can have a discussion about what the graphs actually mean.
Maud, I happen to agree with you that using a log scale, and similar alarmist tricks [like beginning the y-axis at an arbitrary, non-zero number] is ‘objectively a bad thing.’
For example:
click1 [bad] vs clickA [good]
click2 [bad anomaly graph] vs clickB [honest anomaly graph]
The actual fluctuations [when not dishonestly magnified by a small y-axis range] are tiny, entirely natural, and well within the planet’s past parameters during the Holocene.
Prof Richard Lindzen clearly explains the situation:
Astonishing but true. And much of the hysterical panic can be attributed to dishonest charts that jimmy with the y-axis. So let’s start using charts like clickA and clickB from now on, and dispense with scary looking charts like click1 and click2 that make a big deal out of natural temperature variability of a few tenths of a degree.
I like Judith Curry, but I don’t know if she agrees with me on where I found clear (scientific) answers lacking. For example, the amount of water vapor in the air is quted between 0.5 and 1 %. There is no precise answer to the figure? How can we possible talk about an increase of CO2 by 0.01% being relevant if it is already certain that water is a much stronger greenhouse gas than water? I refer to my previous comment
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/26/quote-of-the-week-judith-curry-asks-warmists-how-are-things-going-for-you-lately/#comment-517102
If you want to see my whole point of view you can look at my own blog, that puts all my reasons for doubts clearly together,
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
God bless you all!