Update 5 pm Eastern: 1,000 comments on thread at http://judithcurry.com, and some very “feisty” discourse in this new era of civility.
Since my post on the “RealClimate’s over-the-top response” of Gavin and the Team has been getting a lot of discussion, I thought it only fair to mention that Dr. Judith Curry dropped in to leave a note. She said:
For more fun and games with Gavin, see my latest post at Climate Etc “Hiding the Decline” http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
Judging from comments like this one:
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“I’m calling it like I see it”
How brave of you.
My point is that by lowering yourself to insult, you block off all sensible discussion of specific technical points – if you are so certain in your thinking that no further discussion is required, then fine. No more discussion will occur. But it would have been far better for you to have had the character to allow for disagreements without being disagreeable (did you not pick up anything in Lisbon?).
…
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It seems there’s a veritable free for all going on there. Gavin’s having a little trouble managing in a format that he doesn’t get to manage. See:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
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This is a huge development. “Hide the decline” has not gone away. Sceptics were not permitted a genuine discussion of the issues. The Warmista used every trick in the book to hush up the matter, including the three big whitewashes. It seems to me that sceptics should jump at this opportunity to have a genuine discussion of the important issues raised by “hide the decline.”
The tide has definitely turned! I can remember just a few years ago nothing at all like this was happening. The truth will set you free!
I love the imagery of the handle of the ‘not to be named’ graph being made from treeometer data and the blade from thermometer data. Especially as all school kids know tree rings are not solely reliant for growth on temperature but also rainfall and sunlight.
I
What a thread! To see people you have only heard about fighting it out in plain view and admitting their doubts and apprehensions regarding the dubious science of the hockey stick was priceless!!
The consensus wall is crumbling. The “too smart for you” warmista’s are expressing a desire to rejoin those on the other side who seek to honour the scientific method and their own commonsense.
I suspect that the latest political developments (funding cutbacks) might have something to do with this latest outburst of openness amongst the professional elite but maybe I am just a cynic.
Maybe Josh can make a cartoon of Gavin clutching a rail of the Titanic while that back end is coming up out of the water…..or fiddling while Rome burns….. or something else along those lines.
😉
Gavin to Judy:
Why would anyone need a “cite” for thinking that something is rubbish? Example:
a: I think the moon is made of cheese
b: Well that’s makes no sense.
a: No sense? Got a cite for that?
The way Gavin is behaving is almost like a villain from one of those B grade hollywood action films who when the game is up at the end of the movie, is so desperate that he pulls a gun and takes a hostage (Judith Curry).
mmmm maybe a project for Ban Ki Moon!
Its funny how you describe as “Gavin having a little trouble” getting shouted down by a bunch of self-important, deaf-to-reason types. Gavin makes a good point – Judith’s words on reconciliation have proven to be empty. The only people she’s shown any attempt at “reconciliation” with are those with an anti-AGW slant – and she has acheived it by, essentially, agreeing with them or simply refusing to disagree with them.
Few people have done more to polarise the current “debate” than Dr Curry.
Mark T says:
February 22, 2011 at 11:55 pm
> Even more interesting, IMO, is that Gavin … chose to wade into the quicksand on this one. … Even JC is basically calling him an idiot.
She’s doing a really good job letting Gavin do that to himself and letting her commentors have a chance to engage Gavin in a dialog that would never happen at RC.
juakola says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:48 am
> I see Judith’s comment is no longer there. Or at least I couldnt find it.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/22/realclimates-over-the-top-response/#comment-605122
[Reply: It’s there, I just re-read it. ~dbs]
Gavin didn’t hang around for long. Is that all we’re going to get from him? Looks like he’s not being allowed out to play with the big boys any more.
Ken Hall says:
February 23, 2011 at 3:59 am
Call it dismissive sarcasm. Gavin wants her to reply so he can attack the reply. Judith’s comment doesn’t give him that chance and implies he said nothing that is worth her time. She’s patting him on the head and saying “There, there, little boy, I know you’re upset, but perhaps you should have stayed home today.” Besides, she knows others can handle a rebuttal, and she’s giving them a chance they never had at RC.
Reading that blog by Dr Curry and the comments, it is encouraging to note that the old, arrogant ploys by Dr Schmidt et al (“read this, that and the next before you talk to me”, or “go away and think”) don’t work any longer. Commenters are answering right back.
I think The Team, Dr Schmidt especially, are still living in the pre-2009 days, where they thought they could dazzle everybody with their BS.
Times have changed, and they are re-fighting the battles of the last war – like the hidebound French generals in WWII who prepared for WWI ….
Dave H
You too are fiddling while Rome burns. You fail to see that some among the global warming aggregate don’t want to get along with the other side. They are not intending on rapport.
Ken Hall says: 3:59 am
“Good one Gavin, brilliant argument.” WTF?
Ken, the reason Gavin got SO upset was the patronising responses like this from Judy – this isn’t caving in, as you seem to believe, it’s simply a very condescending “there, there, Gavin, don’t you worry you little head about it”.
Dave H,
Did you read Dr Curry’s exchange with Schmidt? She was more gracious than he deserved. And Steve Mosher traveled to Lisbon for the express purpose of attending a reconciliation meeting. Guess what? Gavin and the rest of his scare crowd stayed away like spoiled children.
They’re not interested in reconciliation. They’re not interested in anything but keeping their taxpayer funded gravy train on track. If you had read Mosher & Fuller’s CruTape Letters you would see in the emails that all the animosity started and was perpetuated by Mann, Schmidt and their cronies. They actively went after anyone who didn’t toe their line. They caused people to be fired and editorial board members to resign. They run RealClimate on time paid for with unwilling taxpayers’ money, and they censor like old time Soviets – censoring on behalf of the federal government!
You can’t keep poking your finger into someone’s chest, and call them vile names [“denialists”, etc.] without eventually getting some push-back. Now that they’re hearing other opintions that they can’t control, they’re panicking and lashing out.
Judith Curry has put herself in a tough spot. She is trying to at least get a dialog going. For you to say she has “done more to polarize the current debate” either means you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re just a scck puppet for the Schmidthead and his gang of tax suckers.
lol, they’re asking for citations and references of why intentional deception shouldn’t be done. They expose themselves for what they are more and more. The problem is character. It appears Gavin and minions are openly defending intentional deception. This dovetails quite nicely with the recent premise of “justifiable disingenuousness” from the Steig debacle.
They wonder why they have a credibility problem? They’ve no compunction.
I apologise unreservedly to Dr Curry if I missed her sarcastic patronising tone. If that what it is, then that is still a little disappointing and is providing fuel for her Alarmist detractors.
As steveta_uk says:
I would have been more impressed if it had been Dr Curry making that remark in reply, rather than the weak [climbdown or patronising sarcasm] response she made.
I look forward to her ripping Gavin a “new one” in her next follow-up article.
I think its most entertaining to watch Gavin in a discussion he can’t control or censor. He’ll stick to RC as the last bunker to hide in when things get unpleasant.
Oh, and Judith has blocked the poster known as “ianash”. The signal has improved immensely.
I don’t agree with Dr Curry on a lot of things, but she’s hitting her stride in calling the Hockey Team for continuing dishonesty and its behaviour towards critics who turned out to be correct.
Ken Hall says:
February 23, 2011 at 6:39 am
I apologise unreservedly to Dr Curry if I missed her…
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I don’t think she was quite prepared for the response from Gavin and gang. They are particularly apt at misdirection, hand waving, and red herrings. Dr. Curry was speaking towards the generality of a misleading graph. They made several attempts to move her discussion points to a different topic. Her glib response was appropriate.
Gavin and gang are basically asking for citations as to why it isn’t ok to present deceptive graphs. Personally, the alarmists’ show of character(specifically their lack of) on that particular thread stands by itself. These are the people much of the world trusts. And they vehemently argue the case for an intentionally misleading graph.
How does one respond to people that believe it’s ok to be deceptive when presenting science? It isn’t about citations, references or making one’s own constructions. It’s about credibility. Gavin and gang have shown why they deserve none.
Well that is a tipping point – climate changer if ever there was one, 100 points to the actual scientists who took up the discussion, but at the end of the day the poor response by Gavin and the juvenile drivel of ianash. The guest appearance of the Dhog, who is looking/sounding frayed and tattered and a little more unhinged than usual. or is he trying to look more adult and restrained than ianash and the flit in and out of the likes of Tim Lambeth and others, sounds alarm bells for alarmist climate faux science. I think I even heard the fat lady singing in among the screeching from the RC faithful who clearly had lost the plot.
It is really sad that it has to end in such a mess and disorder, rather than an honourable back down in the interests of Science – Time to Mann up, declare unconditional surrender with an apology for being misleading and at least TRY and recover some credibility.
Then lets get back to discussing irritations like weather, politicians and dictators.
There are multiple issues, not just a choice of how to present a graph:
1.Subjective choice of trees/sites for sampling
2.Post-hoc dropping of “non-responders”
3.Linear response to temp assumption (which is actually known to be false.) which makes the inverse problem undefined.
4.Ignoring six sigma outliers like Yamal larch which heavily affect the result
5.Hiding adverse verification statistics (R-sq of 0.05 means you have nada)
6.Unjustified weighting (bristlecones 400x others)
7.Proxies different orientations (+ vs – temp indicator) in different time periods of the recon.
8.Choosing graph baseline to emphasize post-1980 “warm”
9.End point padding—even worse with instrumental data
10.Hiding the decline as discussed above
11.Thick red line for instrumental data to make it look “hot” and to hide lines underneath that are going down.
12.Repeated use of “robust”, “similar”, “reliable” with no quantification
Judith has now completely exposed why ‘hiding the decline’ was misleading. She wrote that the graph where the instrumental record is spliced on the end of the tree ring record, does not make clear to the reader that this is because the tree ring data is diverging from instrumental data.
Every attempt by people like Gavin Schmidt to try and defend it sounds more and more like a cheating politician trying to defend a policy decision. The public can intuit when they are being lied to, and the more the politician – I mean Gavin Schmidt – try and spin their way out of it, the more angry the public become.
In accountancy, financial statements are required to give a ‘True and Fair’ view of the economic reality of the business, and to favour economic substance over legal form. Hiding the decline is neither a true nor fair view of the tree ring record. We all know it, and Schmidt knows it.
Some of the funniest moments are always when Tim Lambert references Deep Climate as an authority. They must be… never mind. Either way, folks like Tim are so hung up on actual authority that it must be a real treat to know DC is the best he can do.
Mark