Note: This will be the top post for a day or two, new posts will appear below this one.
Readers may recall my original post, Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature. followed by Dr. Paul Bain Responds to Critics of Use of “Denier” Term (with thanks to Jo Nova, be sure to bookmark and visit her site) Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, commenting as rgbatduke, made a response that was commented on by several here in that thread. As commenter REP put it in the update: It is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration. I would say, it is likely the best response I’ve ever seen on the use of the “denier” term, not to mention the CAGW issue in general. Thus, I’ve elevated it a full post. Please share the link to this post widely. – Anthony
Dr. Robert G. Brown writes:
The tragic thing about the thoughtless use of a stereotype (denier) is that it reveals that you really think of people in terms of its projected meaning. In particular, even in your response you seem to equate the term “skeptic” with “denier of AGW”.
This is silly. On WUWT most of the skeptics do not “deny” AGW, certainly not the scientists or professional weather people (I myself am a physicist) and honestly, most of the non-scientist skeptics have learned better than that. What they challenge is the catastrophic label and the alleged magnitude of the projected warming on a doubling of CO_2. They challenge this on rather solid empirical grounds and with physical arguments and data analysis that is every bit as scientifically valid as that used to support larger estimates, often obtaining numbers that are in better agreement with observation. For this honest doubt and skepticism that the highly complex global climate models are correct you have the temerity to socially stigmatize them in a scientific journal with a catch-all term that implies that they are as morally reprehensible as those that “deny” that the Nazi Holocaust of genocide against the Jews?
For shame.
Seriously, for shame. You should openly apologize for the use of the term, in Nature, and explain why it was wrong. But you won’t, will you… although I will try to explain why you should.
By your use of this term, you directly imply that I am a “denier”, as I am highly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (not just “anthropogenic global warming”, which is plausible if not measurable, although there are honest grounds to doubt even this associated with the details of the Carbon Cycle that remain unresolved by model or experiment). Since I am a theoretical physicist, I find this enormously offensive. I might as well label you an idiot for using it, when you’ve never met me, have no idea of my competence or the strength of my arguments for or against any aspect of climate dynamics (because on this list I argue both points of view as the science demands and am just as vigorous in smacking down bullshit physics used to challenge some aspect of CAGW as I am to question the physics or statistical analysis or modelling used to “prove” it). But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors in a rational discussion of an objective scientific question, is there.
Please understand that by creating a catch-all label like this, you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science, where evidence and arguments are considered and weighed independent of the humans that advance them, where our desire to see one or another result proven are (or should be) irrelevant, where people weigh the difficulty of the problem being addressed as an important contributor (in a Bayesian sense) to how much we should believe any answer proposed — so far, into the realm where people do not think at all! They simply use a dismissive label such as “denier” and hence avoid any direct confrontation with the issues being challenged.
The issue of difficulty is key. Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all, if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years — one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on the planet would look at that complete record — or even the complete record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene — and stab down their finger at the present and go “Oh no!”. Quite the contrary. It isn’t the warmest. It isn’t close to the warmest. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA and MWP restored, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!
Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80 to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone. We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern civilization. The Earth’s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.
There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase that might be associated with a “tipping point” and hence “catastrophe” (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe, a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the other way, into the phase that we know is there — the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale, would truly be a catastrophe. Even if “catastrophic” AGW is correct and we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth’s transition into cold phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the temperate breadbasket of the world.
Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don’t have any such thing. We don’t have anything close to this. We cannot predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000 years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline “thermostat” for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the “anthropogenic” component of any warming.
This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just love to tell stories) but there aren’t any particularly successful theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one tried to actually write “the” partial differential equation for the global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms — if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand! Global Climate Models are children’s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.
The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the probability of the “C” increasinginly remote.
These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the reason you used “denier” in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real reason you used the term is revealed even in your response — we all “should” be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of “catastrophe”. In particular, we “should” be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.
The problem with this “end justifies the means” argument — where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their arguments at the political and social level — is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman’s rather famous “Cargo Cult” talk:
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
In particular, I quote:
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a
friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government
advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether
drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it
would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a
result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re
being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the “Hockey Team” embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails? Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann’s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term “denier” have any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman’s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?
And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be that people don’t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money, and their choice!
Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe — and as I said, prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record — then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of dollars of other people’s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a “threat” that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the one the IPCC anticipates.
Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.
For shame.
Hi Joe: It’s interesting that you use this argument because it’s in a long line of the pseudo-science that has been to prop up Hansenkoism.
LASER is an acronym: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. I knew the guy who invented it. it doesn’t work for climate science because you and most others confuse EM energy with heat.
To create heat energy from EM energy you need to increase the absorptivity of a substance from its natural value, which may be very low, to much higher.
A LASER pulse does this by vaporising the material. But to do this you have to have intense radiation which does not exist in out World, except artificially.
Tell your mates I’m not a soft touch. Must do better.
… tragic thing about the thoughtless use of a stereotype (denier) is that it reveals…
And the wonderful thing about the thoughtful use of a stereotype is that it communicates a constellation of attributes very efficiently.
“Denier” is here to stay because it communicates very effectively.
I want govt policy based on mainstream science, not on the misguided views of backyard scientists or the warped preferences of industry lobby groups.
Carrick says:
June 24, 2012 at 8:54 am
You get roughly 1°C/doubling of CO2 from direct forcing, the physics behind that are essentially unassailable at this point.
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Wow.. I don’t find that credible. The Physics might be fine, but they do not take into account the dynamics of the earths climate. It may well be that the cloud feedbacks, convection feedbacks, wind feedbacks, negate 95% of that 1 C warming.
Greg House says: “Robert, just prove that the cooling of a warmer body can be slowed down by transferring energy to this warmer body from a colder body without external work. In our case it would be transferring energy by radiation. Is there any genuine experiment proving that?”
I am not a physicist but I would be convinced by the following experiment. It can be done in a physics laboratory for a few dollars.
We need a vacuum chamber, with its walls painted black.
In the middle we have an upright iron rod A, heated by an electric current, and connected to a thermometer by which we can continuously monitor its temperature. When A has reached maximum temperature, the current is shut off, leaving a thermodynamically isolated system.
At some distance there is a fixed upright iron rod B.
Finally, we have a small black screen between A and B. This screen is fixed on a device, rotating about A (in every rotation, the screen should block mutual IR radiation for a while).
The temperature curve of A will be strictly decreasing to an equilibrium temperature. The question is of whether it contains wobbles corresponding with the rotation frequency of the screen.
Explain to me what’s wrong with this experiment or why it has never be done.
Greg House;
No, sad is both buying the scientifically unsupported AGW basics and not understanding, >>>>
Did you read up on the work of Stefan-Boltzmann and Planck as I suggested in another thread? I expect not, else you would be aware of the experimental work that they did, how they did it, what results they got, and that these represent the very experimental proof which you demand to support Bryan’s explanation. Bryan doesn’t need to perform any experiments to prove his explanation. He’s giving you an explanation of the experiments they did and the results.
You, have not studied their work, presume to explain it to those of us who have. When you’ve read their work to the point that you can discuss intelligently the experiments they performed and the results they got, then I will discuss the matter with you further. Failing that, one of us now resembles nothing more than a petulant child, fingers stuck in his ears, shouting “lalalala”. I will assume in advance that you will assume that the person is me.
Greg House says (June 24, 2012 at 3:06 pm): “I see. Roger Sowell asked for an experiment and you give him a “thought” experiment? (shock)”
Actually, I proposed that the experiment be done for real. Go back and read my comment.
“Why didn’t Roy Spencer made a real experiment, by the way?”
Because he has absolutely nothing to gain by proving (again) what he and other physicists already know (the remote possibility of convincing a few believers in voodoo physics isn’t much of an incentive).
So why don’t you do the experiment and claim your Nobel Prize? Slay the CAGW dragon? Make the cover of Time Magazine? You have far more to gain from your expected result than Dr. Spencer from his.
Mindert Eiting says:
June 24, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Greg House says: “Robert, just prove that the cooling of a warmer body can be slowed down by transferring energy to this warmer body from a colder body without external work. In our case it would be transferring energy by radiation. Is there any genuine experiment proving that?”
I am not a physicist but I would be convinced by the following experiment. …Explain to me what’s wrong with this experiment or why it has never be done.
=====================================================
Look, either you can provide a link to a real genuine experiment or you can not, so simple is that. Just fantasising is not enough.
Robert Brown says:
June 24, 2012 at 10:01 am
Water is the big problem, because its effect is enormously variable. As vapor it is (mostly, usually) net warming.
It is. However, it is important to note, that it is patiently not true, that the more water vapor you put into the atmosphere the more GHE you get.
GHE depends on average IR optical depth, or rather, on its relation to SW optical depth. Now, even if there is no cloud formation in a region, distribution of water vapor is still very uneven. It is because different air parcels have different histories and their current absolute humidity is determined by their temperature the last time they have got saturated. Which bears little relation to their current temperature except it had to be lower. On top of that the very notion of air parcel loses its meaning rapidly with time, because there are turbulent flows in the atmosphere, which transform initially well defined air parcels into a fractal mishmesh, so that’s what one can observe at any specific time.
Now, it is quite easy to see that average optical depth of a grid cell at a specific frequency is not fully determined by its water vapor content, not even if no other atmospheric component happen to have any absorption at that frequency. To calculate average optical depth, all the higher momenta of its distribution have to be taken into account.
It is like a thin metal plate vs. a wire fence. The two may contain the same amount of metal per square meter, still, the former is completely opaque while one can see through the latter almost unimpeded.
I have seen no discussion of this problem in the climate science literature, except some vague notions that fractal dimension of atmospheric water vapor distribution may decrease poleward. Which means it gets increasingly transparent in IR even if the same level of absolute humidity is retained (until it gets saturated, that is).
It would be really nice to step beyond the current activist approach to climate science and get down to real business, that is, to start understanding what’s really going on in the climate system. For example how fractal dimension of water vapor distribution is influenced by adding some more IR optical depth by increasing the concentration of another (pretty well mixed) component like carbon dioxide? Is it increasing? Decreasing? Why?
I mean there are too many important (and interesting) questions no one seems to know the answer to, still, these guys keep pretending “the science is settled”. Is not it preposterous in itself?
Gary Hladik says:
June 24, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Greg House says (June 24, 2012 at 3:06 pm): “Why didn’t Roy Spencer made a real experiment, by the way?”
Because he has absolutely nothing to gain by proving (again) what he and other physicists already know (the remote possibility of convincing a few believers in voodoo physics isn’t much of an incentive).
====================================================
Really? I understand that you can not speak for him, but your explanation does not make sense. Because Roy Spencer intentionally wrote an extensive article specifically on the issue (http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07/yes-virginia-cooler-objects-can-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still/) and his “ thought” experiment is an essential part of it. Apparently his intention was to convince people.
The problem is that a “ thought” experiment is not an experiment at all, it is just a sort of fantasising or an illustration, a “ thought” experiment proves nothing.
So, the question remains: “Why didn’t Roy Spencer made a real experiment?”
Dr. Robert G. Brown posting shows that he is laboring under a serious misunderstanding about Bains article, where Bain is coming from, and how, if that is pointed out to him, he will realize his error and become a reformed man. I see where Bain is coming from, and why he has no intention of ever reforming, because I have seen it before. I have seen it under the name “Screwtape”, as seen in “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis, a series of letters by a senior devil to a young tempter about how to manage someones thinking. Bain clearly intends to manage other peoples thinking, first, because he is a sociologist and that is what sociology is all about, and more, because he made an entire article specifically to inform the pro AGW crowd on exactly how they should go about selling AGW to “denialists” so that they will accept it despite what any evidence says about it (thus also showing that he is clearly pro AGW and biased himself, whatever he may claim). Let us look at the similarities between what Screwtape says and compare:
Robert G. Brown writes:
Please understand that by creating a catch-all label like this, you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science, where evidence and arguments are considered and weighed independent of the humans that advance them, where our desire to see one or another result proven are (or should be) irrelevant, where people weigh the difficulty of the problem being addressed as an important contributor (in a Bayesian sense) to how much we should believe any answer proposed — so far, into the realm where people do not think at all! They simply use a dismissive label such as “denier” and hence avoid any direct confrontation with the issues being challenged.
Here, Brown believes that Bain will be swayed by realizing that “you quite literally are moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science. Why, because he has “Dr.” in front of his name, and posted in a purported “scientific” magazine, that he cares whether AGW is discussed or thought about with scientific rationality or not. He does not, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. He specifically says Actually, the paper is not about changing anyone’s mind on whether anthropogenic climate change is real. There are also skeptics insisting that the issue is ONLY about the state of the science – whether AGW is real – but on this point I disagree“. As you can see, he simply doesn’t care whether AGW is proven or dis-proven (“real” as compared to…what, exactly?), while simultaneously making this long article about how one may sell it, regardless of whether it is real or not, thus showing that he wishes to sell the idea even if it is false. The article is not about science at all, it is about tactics, nothing more. And the tactics do not involve moving the realm if discussion into the realm of science and reason, but as far away from that as one can get without anyone noticing. Let us look at what our ‘ol friend (fiend) Screwtape has to say about this:
(Screwtape) It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.
The “jargon” which Bain is deliberately substituting here in place of reason or science is the terms “denier”, this is with the specific intent of “moving the entire discussion outside of the realm of science. After all, Bain specified “about the state of the science – whether AGW is real” that “on this point I disagree“. In his ‘apology”, he then says that he will substitute other words instead, in other words, disguise the jargon as other jargon, in the hope that no one will notice this time that it is merely jargon.
And notice “ few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not”. That was then, this “But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.” is now. Appealing to reason with many of these people simply won’t work, they simply do not even understand the concept, and do not wish to. They live in a completely different world. For them, the age of enlightenment is long over.
(Screwtape) If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable “real life”. But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is “the results of modem investigation”. Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!
Hmm, sociology, like…Dr Bain. Sociology is so much friendlier than science, after all, you can become famous without ever having to prove that your wonderful ideas are true, in fact, it is a discipline where it is impossible to ever be falsified. One wonders, why is someone, who is working in a discipline where his ideas are never compared, and can never be compared, to any actual facts in the natural world, posting in a journal called “Nature”?
Of course, Nature is “the results of modem investigation”, if it is in Nature, why, it must be true and “scientific”, right? Or has in now become just more jargon, like “peer reviewed science”, regardless of whether the peers actually review it, or are even peers (rather than pals) at all. And the fact that any contrary opinion to AGW, any attempt at falsification, is not allowed, and thus the idea cannot be falsified and is thus not, strictly, allowed to even be called science, is ignored. And lets not forget other jargon to, like “consensus of most scientists” (apparently even from scientists who have not consented at all). I’m sure you can all come up with plenty of other examples of similar jargon.
And then Robert G. Brown goes into a long list of actual, scientific, fact based reasons why AGW cannot be true, hoping to somehow persuade someone who specifically stated several times that he is not at all interested in the facts, “whether AGW is real”, at all. Why?? He specifically stated that he wanted to implement the policies of AGW, and stated the reason” to support action related to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), and where it would promote economic/community development (note the “we”). Why believe that someone who stated repeatedly that he does not care about the facts, and stated why, will suddenly start caring about these facts?
In reality, he does not wish to even see these facts, or to consider them, they make him…uncomfortable. You will understand it better if you realize that people like him not only lie to others, they lie repeatedly and constantly to themselves. They don’t wish to consider facts that might lead them to the conclusion that they have been wrong all along. That might lead them to consider why they were wrong, what motive they had for believed what was wrong, such as the idea that, if only we could set up the right system, the policies which will promote “a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), why this time, despite the verdict of all history, this new, all powerful government will not fall into absolute corruption this time! They simply don’t wish to consider that people are capable of corruption because, if they did, they would have to admit that they themselves are being corrupt right this very minute, doing and promoting all this for grant money and power and the approval of peers and the promise of much more of that to come. In short, to consider the scientific facts would lead them to thinking rationally, which would lead them to…guilt, and they will come up with any rationalization to get around that. After all, by now, most of them have covered up so many lies with other lies, and come up with so many rationalizations to explain to themselves why what they are doing is right (such as, say, firing any editor who dares publish a contrary opinion), that they dare not even think about that any more. And as they continue to take these actions that, secretly (very secretly) they know are wrong, their reasons for not wishing to even think about it become greater and greater, and their rationalizations to themselves as to why it is not wrong become more and more extreme and emphatic. I mean, look at Bains article, every time he publishes another attempt to cover up why he used the word “denier”, he reveals more and more of his actual rationalization behind it, when it is in his actual best interests to just shut up. He simply can’t help it, he has to keep up a continuous stream of rationalizations like this to drowned out the little inner voice of his which accuses him of doing it for the grant money and the approval of “peers”.
In short, this is really about two completely different mindsets:
On the one hand, there is the “age of enlightenment”, where mankind is fallible, but can be enlightened and improved (to an extent) by fact based, rational thinking and the free expression of ideas. It creates things like “The Scientific Method”, specifically invented with the idea that mankind is fallible, and thus to find out the facts of this universe, we must subject our ideas to criticism and cross checking.
On the other hand, there is the mindset which is mainly based on…guilt. It includes the idea that mankind is basically infallible, which we will all actually see if only we can set up the right system, the perfect society, which will usher in an era of utopian paradise. It creates things like sociology and economic systems to show that “it isn’t my fault”, it’s the system”. It believes that we should use any means to set up this system, to creating a society where we cared about each other more (warmth), including censoring “scientific” journals of opposing views, “hiding the decline”, and just generally lying, cheating, stealing (grant money), and if necessary, force (used by government to enforce AGW controls). And this will finally bring about the utopian paradise which will prove to me that that little inner voice that keeps saying “look what you did!” is wrong, it wasn’t my fault, it was the system, man!
Think about it, would you want to start down the road of rational thought, if you knew it might lead to rational self examination, and you were the one(or associated with the one) who crafted the hockey stick, turned off the air conditioning to sell it to congress, hide the decline, got the editor(s) fired, stymied the FOI requests, etc etc etc? No, of course not! Rational thought is the last thing you want, yours or anyone elses!
@mydogsgotnonose
I am not familiar with “Hansenkoism” but I do understand lasers and am confident that I understand the difference between EM energy and heat. I was responding to your inaccurate statement that “…electromagnetic radiation cannot transfer energy to a warmer body…” and providing a counter example, which you appear to have ignored but not refuted.
Your assertion that “To create heat energy from EM energy you need to increase the absorptivity of a substance from its natural value, which may be very low, to much higher” makes even less sense. The rate of energy transfer into the target depends on the target’s absorptivity (or albedo for the solid targets I work with) at the wavelength of interest and the incident EM flux. There is no need to “change the absorptivity of the target from its natural value”. As long as energy is deposited faster than it is removed by conduction, convection, or radiation the temperature of the target will increase – regardless of the temperature of the source.
Lasers may, or may not vaporize material in the target. The energy transfer does not depend on phase change.
Joe
Check out The Deniers : The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud–And those who are too fearful to do so, if you dare. It costs only a penny used. Or just check out the summary and reader reviews on Amazon, by clicking the link. Here’s a summary from the Publisher. (Note: there are more “deniers” now than there were when the book was published, over four years ago.):
Joe Shaw says:
June 24, 2012 at 5:12 pm
@mydogsgotnonose
I am not familiar with “Hansenkoism” but I do understand lasers and am confident that I understand the difference between EM energy and heat. I was responding to your inaccurate statement that “…electromagnetic radiation cannot transfer energy to a warmer body…” and providing a counter example,
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Lasers use external energy.
The interesting question is, whether a colder stone can warm or slow down the cooling of a warmer stone by means of its own radiation without external work.
Any real experiments on this issue?
Greg House says (June 24, 2012 at 4:33 pm): “Apparently his intention was to convince people.”
Of course not. A thought experiment proves nothing and convinces no one. His intention is to educate, and the thought experiment is a nicely simplified illustration of the accepted radiation physics explained in the article. In that sense it’s like Willis Eschenbach’s excellent “steel greenhouse” thought experiment here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
Now for those who doubt the physics in Dr. Spencer’s article, his simple experimental setup would be a great tool for proving their point. The results would be unambiguous. That’s why I’ve proposed before that doubters actually do the experiment, and that’s probably why nobody has actually done it, despite the potential rewards. WUWT?
Terry Oldberg says:
June 24, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Gunga Din:
In statistically testing a predictive model one compares the predicted to the observed relative frequencies of the outcomes of statistical events. If there is not a match, the model is falsified by the evidence. Otherwise, it is said to be “validated.” None of the IPCC climate models are susceptible to being falsified or validated in this way. As their claims are not falsifiable, none of these models merit the descriptor “scientific.”
While making no predictions, the IPCC models do make projections. The existence of projections supports the type of comparison that the IPCC calls an “evaluation.” In an IPCC-style “evaluation,” projected global surface temperatures are compared to a selected global surface temperature time series. This comparison does not, however, result in either the falsification of or validation of the associated model or models. Because we can neither falsifify nor validate them, these models are scientifically worthless. Confusion of “prediction” with “projection” and “validation” with “evaluation” serves to cover up this state of affairs.
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Thank you. I sometimes get lost in all the big words.
So to make a semantically long story short, the IPeCaC is full of it.
Gunga Din:
As you suggest, the IPCC is full of it. So are numerous other institutions and people. Among the latter are those who suggest that we have nothing to fear from our CO2 emissions.
“Denier” is such a misplaced term, used to express the natural detachment of a person with independent thoughts, from an environmental/social/redistribute wealth movement wrapped in religious overtones and associated vernacular. For a similar reason I think it is a mistake to acquiesce to the term “skeptic” that I believes gives too much deference to the dogma of the religion/movement.
Personally I view myself as an “independent thinker”. James Lovelock uses the phrase “freelance scientist” to describe his now contrarian views to what he once held. Both terms are better descriptors of how we who appreciate WUWT individually deal with the religion of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and associated fear mongering that some refer to as enlightened science.
What a shame and huge waste of money.
Gary Hladik says:
June 24, 2012 at 6:03 pm
His intention is to educate, and the thought experiment is a nicely simplified illustration of the accepted radiation physics explained in the article.
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So, no real genuine experiment is available, no link? Anyway, there was none in the Spencer’s article.
I guess, if there was one, he would simply include it in the article, right?
OK, let us not speculate, let us ask the warmists community: dear warmists, please, provide a link to a real genuine experiment on the issue.
Joe Shaw says (June 24, 2012 at 5:12 pm): “As long as energy is deposited faster than it is removed by conduction, convection, or radiation the temperature of the target will increase – regardless of the temperature of the source.”
That brings up a question I asked some time ago near the end of this comment thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/monckton-responds-to-skeptical-science/
“Is it possible in principle to use a solar furnace to reach a temperature greater than that of the sun’s “black body” temp, about 5,800 degrees K?”
I know there are optical complications when concentrating enough sunlight to do the job, and of course I have no idea what to use for the target, but could it be done in principle? I’ve looked this up on the Web, and the most common answer is “no”, e.g. here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=243387
FWIW, I say “yes”.
Here’s an actual experiment:
http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm
Note that at the top of the article there is a downloadable zip file with some credible criticisms of the experiment suggesting his extrapolation to a number for the atmosphere as a whole is too low. It matters not if you accept or reject those criticisms, not one of them suggests that his direct results are wrong.
And they were not zero.
I’m betting that I will STILL hear someone standing with their fingers in their ears screaming “lalalalala…”
davidmhoffer says:
June 24, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Here’s an actual experiment:
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What do you think this experiment proves and how is it related to what I asked for?
Greg House: Rather than constantly demanding experimental proof ad nauseam, why don’t you provide some that proves CO2 is not a greenhouse gas? Or some that proves there is no GHE? It’s easy to sit back and demand that everyone do your research for you. Why don’t you provide some that proves your apparently irrefutable hypothesis?
Greg House;
What do you think this experiment proves and how is it related to what I asked for?
>>>>>>
Knew it. Lalalalalalala…..
davidmhoffer says:
June 24, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Greg House;
What do you think this experiment proves and how is it related to what I asked for?
>>>>>>
Knew it. Lalalalalalala…..
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Maybe you should stop doing your “Lalalalalalala…..” because it suppresses your ability to think critically. (LOL)
You have just confirmed what I said earlier: if warmists are asked to support their claims by presenting real genuine experiments, only fakes and unrelated stuff come. Sad.
Greg House;
If you don’t understand how that experiment applies to the issue at hand, that isn’t my fault. It is yours. You demanded an experiment, and I provided one. If you believe the experiment isn’t applicable, then explain why.
But you can’t. You can’t because you understand neither your own question nor the answer. Go do the homework I suggested. Look up Stefan-Boltzmann Law and become conversant in it. Study Planck’s work and become conversant in that. You should probably delve in Wien a bit too. If you don’t understand calculus, you’ll have to study that first. When you are conversant in these topics, you will be able to understand how this experiment satisfies your question, or you will be able to refute it using sound logic based on the physics involved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien%27s_displacement_law
Once you understand the theory, you can do a google search for experiments that prove these laws, and you will find plenty of them because they are part of many university physics courses, and published on the web. You’ll find lists of materials, methodologies, apparatus and all else you need to reproduce those experiments.
You can become conversant in the issues, or not. You can speak from ignorance, or not.
@Greg House
“Lasers use external energy.
The interesting question is, whether a colder stone can warm or slow down the cooling of a warmer stone by means of its own radiation without external work.”
If we define the system of interest as the earth and its atmosphere there is external energy – coming from the sun.
As for an experiment, since we have been talking about lasers and stones, consider two stones in a vacuum chamber with cold walls that are initially in thermal equilibrium with the chamber. We now illuminate the stones with identical lasers. Do we agree that the stones will heat until their thermal radiation at the new equilibrium temperature exactly matches the energy deposited by the lasers? Now enclose one of the stones in an envelope that is transparent to the laser illumination, but which absorbs and re-radiates a portion of the IR spectrum. My hypothesis is that 1) the enclosed stone will reach a higher temperature than the unenclosed stone, and 2) increasing the optical thickness of the envelope will increase the equilibrium temperature.
I confess that I have not actually run this experiment. Now you have me thinking about how I could do it with the tools I have available, so thanks.
I am curious. What is your hypothesis?
Joe