Kid blogger Chris Mooney (at left) often writes fascinating articles for their sheer single mindedness of purpose – making anyone who doubts AGW in even the slightest look like fools. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times but generally never bother to respond. I do however, find it interesting that he gets to blog at Discover magazine, while at the same time writing hit pieces for Jim Hoggan’s paid public relations inflamers over at DeSmog Blog. Science and paid PR don’t mix.
But back to our story, Chris must have never been to Missouri, or taken a course where science is taught to be tested by replication and verification. Otherwise, he wouldn’t get so upset when the aptly named commenter “Nullius in Verba” (Take nobody’s word for it) asked to see the calcs behind what Mooney was writing about. It starts out innocently enough:
In the article is this passage about Kerry Emanuel’s “back of the envelope” calcs that prove the issue:
And then comes the obvious question, since the calcs were not included in the article, nor by any link nor citation. The response however, is the surprise:
See the comments yourself here
Hectoring? Wow! So much for the “discovery” in Discover magazine. Change the name to “Don’t Ask Magazine” perhaps?
I guess that makes anyone who asks to see proof of BOE calculations either from Missouri, a denier, or both:
OK I’ve had my chuckle and made my point. Ribbing aside, Chris Mooney really could do everyone a great service by simply answering the question, or writing to Dr. Emanuel and having him show it for him if he doesn’t know what those calcs are. Either way, next time Chris writes about how we all just need better communications, using trusted messengers, remind him of this over the top response.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE: After only 5 comments, comments for the article were closed. No discussion allowed. That’s really lame Chris.
A few weeks ago I likened the global warming debate to a “war” in that we would likely see a very rapid “turning point” not due to any significant change in strength of either side, but as a sudden realisation by the hoards on the global warming side that they were loosing, leading to an awful lot of “bandwagon” hitch hikers jumping off the global warming side.
With the comments on this blog and the BBC, what we are beginning to see is the “bunker” mentality of those warmists with secure positions who seeing their forces routing have decided to bolt the doors to keep out the sceptics who now dominate the battle field.
“UPDATE: After only 5 comments, comments for the article were closed. No discussion allowed. That’s really lame Chris.”
Well that is bizarre, as the article was written from the standpoint of debate rather than of exposition. The “hectoring” wasn’t even a provocation, but a fairly straightforward request based on the article itself.
to issue a warning is logically a warning against himself thus.
Let’s hope this is Mooney’s last theorem
Gareth Phillips says: June 14, 2011 at 12:08 am
this idea of people responding with high expressed emotion to any query which they view as not being “approved” is interesting. It suggests a firm denial of the nature of humanity and it’s inherent curiosity. Most sites ( including this one) will get pretty contentious sometimes, but it’s the immediate anger on a consistent basis which I find worrying in the pro-warming sites. It appears that unless you are 100% in support you must be a denier. No individuality, no interpretation, no doubt. There is a great PhD here
Very shrewd observation! I personally think “global warming” is largely a battle of two ideologies, or two different world perspectives: each of which forces us to view the “evidence” of global warming differently.
On the one side we have a group who whenever asked a question … will refer to someone else … someone they perceive as having authority on the subject. On the other hand, we see a group who almost invariably ignore the authority of those speaking and express the facts and argue from the facts.
At a deeper level, this “argument for authority” vs. “the evidence” causes one side to look at a graph and say: “something must be causing this behaviour and as we have no other ‘authority’ for the cause, that ‘authority’ must be the cause”. On the other hand we have a group saying: “what are the facts. Where is the evidence that anything is happening. Is there a need to incite some ‘authority’ as the cause?”
So, there is the one side that almost views the world as an “interlink hierarchy of authorities”, their world view is a society in which information flows from the highest possible authority downward to themselves, on the other side are people whose view is that “we are all able to view the evidence and given enough time and a good enough education we should all be equally able to interpret the evidence and determine what it means”.
One is a “social perspective” a hierarchical society in which we all respect the “authority” of the experts or the “authority” of mankind, versus a “egalitarian science”: using science both in the original Greek of “knowledge” so equity of knowledge (for those who seek it) and science in the modern senses of “evidence” a concept that we are all equal before the evidence, that indeed, the evidence is superior to all other authority. (the meaning of NULLIUS IN VERBA” (shortened from Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri – be sceptical of the experts)
I suppose from the above “verba” some psychiatrist could stigmatise either group as “anally obsessed introverted ID deficient mother lovers” or whatever, but as I think that’s all nonsense I won’t demean myself to attempt such even if it would prove humorous!
Chris Mooney should get a life, a proper one, blogging shouldn’t be allowed to annoying idiotic kids like him.
If that was ‘mild but firm’, perhaps Chris should try ‘harsh but squoooshy’.
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Addendum to above post. I implied one side saw their role as being merely a channel for information and the other saw their role as being very much a “questioner” of the information. Which leads onto a very neat analogy. The world of electronic is full of two big things: switches and gates and connective pathways (I’m ignoring R, C & L). You can’t create a circuit without both. Too many switches and the information just gets blocked, too many connections and it just leaks away (shorts).
A healthy society, a healthy debate, is a balance between a healthy respect for authority and a healthy level of challenge of the evidence.
Global warming is the result of a huge imbalance in this healthy equilibrium. Too many people who simply “pass on the information”, who see their way forward in life as being “better channels to inform everyone else” have got into positions of power preventing the “sceptics” that any society needs to function effectively. From the banking crisis where a healthy dose of scepticism was clearly needed, to the Swine flu “epidemic” to Global warming, it seems that modern society no longer has a place for the sceptic. We are instead to simple “take the word of the experts”
Obviously a government full of dour sceptics would be a pretty awful affair, but a government full of gullible “spin doctors” or “alarmists” or “information channels with no personal knowledge of anything except how to spin information”, is just as bad!
The reason Mr Mooney made this response is that he has no idea what he is talking about. Like many people in that position the answer is to get aggressive, rather pathetic for someone who is supposed to writing about something that in theory at least can be determined by mathematics.
As a person who studied Geology, Biology and Geography through A level in the 60’s in the UK the figures which are being bandied about as “true” and “cataclysmic” are nonsense so the AGW brigade resort to BS in a big way and their defense is to put up the shutters. I am so pleased these guys do not work in medical areas, we would have bodies everywhere.
BarryW says:
June 13, 2011 at 2:15 pm
That seems to be a basic ploy: Add “Everybody knows” or “It’s easy to calculate” in front of a statement then become affronted when anyone asks for proof.
I remember the Jesuit father head of mathematics department with 2 math phd’s going over proof in text when the “It’s easy to calculate” came up and he just stopped and stared at black board for rest of class – and came in next class with 5 pages of proof to get to next line of the text
I took the time to skim-read Mooney’s article in American Spectator and was quite concerned at the level of irrationality displayed in it. Something very childish was evident in the counting of the numbers of qualified scientists etc on each side of the political divide, rather like the infantile threats small boys make, such as ‘My father’s a policeman and he’s bigger’n your father too, so there!’
I have little idea of how the party politics of individual Americans affect their thought processes and behaviour, but articles such as this indicate a deep and worrying level of infantilsm is abroad in America if a significant number of people take Mooney and his writing seriously.
He looks aged 12. Who in their right mind listens to and believes a 12 year old.
Oh, this one is easy! I can provide it for you.
Because trillions of climate scientists all over the galaxy has found C02 to be the primary driver of global temperature changes and all other factors have been proven to be normally distributed and insignificant of influence, the following is sufficient.
Temperatures (T) is a function of an average (a), Co2 (C) and an error term e.
T = a + bC + e
When minimizing square errors
e^2 = (T – a – bC)^2
This gives an estimated temperature effect of Co2
b = cov(T,C)/var(C) >0
Because b>0 and Co2 is found by the US government to be a dangerous pollutant who’s levels is close to set the earth on fire, any activity X that leads to an increase in Co2 should be ceases immediately!
See, the science is settled.
Now please stop breathing and whatever else you are currently doing. It’s for your own good!
Oh, and by the way, to those DENIERS out there who doubt that there are trillions of climate scientists out there in the galaxy, I just wanted to inform you that this number is derived on sound scientific methods often used to calculate the extinction rates.
Hence, you take the number of climate scientists Y and divide it on the total area of the earth.
By then extrapolating this “believer per feet” measurement on the estimated total area of the galaxy, this gives you a number of, not millions, not billions but trillions of scientists supporting AGW.
How you deniers can ignore such massive numbers is beyond me!
This is their back-of-the-envelope calculation.
Temp rise = GHG forcing w/m2 X Response rate C/w/m2
3.0C = 4.0 w/m2 X 0.75C/w/m2
(Note GHGs are 4.0 when you add in the other GHGs besides CO2 which is 3.71 by itself)
Everything in climate science is designed to protect and conform with this back-of-the-envelope calculation. Even the 0.75C/w/m2 was “picked” so that it came up with 3.0C per doubling. All the climate models are programmed to produce a response similar to the equation. The radiative transfer calculations are adjusted to meet the 4.0 w/m2. 5.35 ln(C/Co) was derived to match the equation. Empirical data is ignored or adjusted to match the equation. It is an icon.
My impression of pro-AGW bloggers discussing their Back Of Envelope science:
Very convincing arguments..
Regards..
The first clue that the calculation was “crap” was the precision of the temperature increases- 2.7 F to 8,1 F.
Considering the wide range in possible temperatures, this was bogus precision- a more sensible range, giving only 1 significant digit, would be 3 to 8 degrees Farenheit. Obviously Mooney’s source took the original
1.5C to 4.5 C, multiplied by the 9/5 C to F conversion factor, to get the false precision of 2.7F to 8.1 F. Presumably the MIT students coming up with such figures are not “hard science” majors familiar with false precision, but economics and political science majors.
Hi Chris;
I once studied English Literature and Journalism. That was several years before I taught graduate-level research in another field. Perhaps you could define the word “callow” for me. Discover magazine might also wish to define that word.
I’ve had more than my fair share of encounters with Chris Mooney due to his fanatic areligious belief that the the universe is just one big purposeless accident. That may be the case but the scientific evidence argues strongly against it. The so-called “illusion of design” has not been dispelled as we investigate nature at ever larger and smaller scales. Illusions have a characteristic of disappearing on closer examination but as we examine nature closer and closer the “illusion” of design just gets stronger and stronger. Any rational objective person armed with the facts is compelled to abandon the illusion and accept the appearance of design at face value – if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck. Chris is ideologically incapable of acknowledging evidence that goes against his personal beliefs. Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is no exception. Chris accepts it as a matter of faith in the same manner that religious folk accept the existence of a personal God by faith alone. Science is evidentiary in nature. Faith is for religion. When Chris encounters a rational informed person the only one Chris makes a fool out of is himself.
From Alexander Feht on June 13, 2011 at 10:48 pm:
“Why would anybody so much as discuss Arrhenius any more if t has been shown time and again that CO2 concentration changes follow temperature changes, not the other way around?”
Because of the proven potential for it to work the other way around. A temperature rise, especially during an ice age, gets both the water and carbon cycles moving faster. The atmosphere is part of the water and carbon loop pipelines so in good times for the biosphere there is more of both in the atmosphere. What’s different now than any time in the past is human industry pumping carbon out of ancient long term storage reservoirs and releasing it into the atmosphere. On the face of it this appears to be a good thing, especially in an ice age, because it speeds up the water and carbon cycles in a situation where nature alone wouldn’t have done so and where the starting speed was historically very low due to being in an ice age. Ice ages are not the norm for the earth when viewed against geological stretches of time.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
June 13, 2011 at 8:16 pm
“Maybe the students can, but a really top genius of a Heat Transfer Expert is Dr Adrian Bejan – he who writes the heat transfer textbooks they use at MIT. He can show you on the back of an envelope that the atmosphere works like an enormous heat engine that very effectvely self-stabilises, dumping any additional heat out into space, or retaining it if it is not so hot.”
No, that’s not the whole story. The ocean/atmosphere coupled system works that way and it only works so long as the surface of the ocean is mostly free of ice. If for any reason surface conditions foster expansion of ice the system heads towards a new self-stabilizing state where everything is frozen, the heat engine shuts down because its working fluid (water vapor) is frozen out of the atmosphere, and most of the warming sunlight gets reflected straight back into space by snow and ice instead of being the fuel the drives the heat engine.
Perhaps the back of the envelop calcs were something like this.
(Indoctrination + gullibility) x (Big Government Dollars)2 x (Banksta Trading Profits)2 = Alarmist Rants
The “2” is a squaring factor, and Alarmist Rants are measured in “Rantabels” similar to decibels.
Dave Springer says:
June 14, 2011 at 7:19 am
. Ice ages are not the norm for the earth when viewed against geological stretches of time.
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But Dave, wouldn’t you say that it’s a lot harder for the earth to stay warm………
1. Declare yourself on the side of the “Enlightenment ethic of using science and reason to forge a better society”
2. Demand people stop using science and reason to examine your claims
Speaking of heat engines there is less potential for work to be accomplished as the temperature difference between the hot and cold sides diminishes. There are three differentials at work. One is the differential between tropics and poles which gets a horizontal engine in motion from tropics to poles. Another is between surface and atmosphere above it getting a vertical engine in motion between surface and (usually) somewhere below the stratosphere. A third is the uneven heating/cooling of land surfaces compared to ocean which gets reversible engines going horizontally between oceans and continents. Then the earth’s rotation adds coriolis forces and makes things even more twisty.
Tapping the motion in the heat engines is a significant source of energy for us. Every hydroelectric power plant is pulling motive power from a natural heat engine. In fact when we dam it we have created storage battery of gravitational energy and the gravitational energy was added by the sun evaporating water at a lower altitude. Every wind turbine is likewise driven by a natural heat engine.
An interesting thing about extra global warming from CO2 is the effect exists primarily over land surfaces which is why the southern hemisphere as a whole is less effected than the northern. The land effect is because the ocean can’t absorb downwelling infrared except in a thin film at the surface just a few microns in depth. It increases the evaporation rate which speeds up the vertical heat engines. It self stabilizes because this increases the number of clouds which in turn decrease the amount of heat energy at the surface driving the engine. Clouds are a speed governor.
Another interesting thing about the northern hemisphere is there’s no continent at the pole. In the horizontal heat engine from tropic to poles the north pole is much more effective as a cold side for the heat engine. Warm water moving up from the tropics along the oceanic conveyor belt can dump heat fast when the water isn’t covered by ice so we get to a point where when the water gets warmer there is less ice and the water can cool much faster. Arctic sea ice is another governor. It’s sort of like the electric radiator fans on automobiles which increase the cooling capacity of the radiator on demand.