Texas A&M Regents Professor and Texas State Climatologist
From his Climate Abyss blog at the Houston Chronicle, Texas State Climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon takes an extended interest in Dr. Robert Brown’s comment-turned-essay on WUWT.
Skeptics Are Not Deniers: A Conversation (part 1)
Robert Brown, a Lecturer of Physics at Duke University, had an essay up on Watts Up With That?. It was originally a comment, but Anthony Watts made it a full post, noting “as commenter REP put it in the update: ‘it is eloquent, insightful and worthy of consideration.’”
The comment came in response to the controversy over the use of the term “denier” in a Nature paper by Bain et al. as the category name for people who either “believed climate change was occurring, but that humans were not contributing substantially to it, or did not believe the climate was changing”.
Bain, in attempting to explain himself, digs a deeper hole. First he notes that those he would call skeptics and those he would call deniers are two distinct sets of people: “So in my mind we were ultimately challenging such “denier” stereotypes. But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics.” But then, he proceeds to refer to skeptics as those who believe AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is not occurring, which is precisely fits the definition of “denier” given in his Nature study!
Brown’s comment offers a different characterization of most skeptics, at least those who frequent WUWT, including himself: “they do not ‘deny’ AGW…What they challenge is the catastrophic label and the alleged magnitude of the projected warming on a doubling of CO2.” This seems to be cleanly outside Bain’s “denier” definition, but since Bain equated deniers with skeptics, Bain is tarring them both with a broad brush.
I must note here that Brown’s definition of “skeptic” also arguably fits most surveyed members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, of whom 57% regard global climate change as at most moderately dangerous.
The rest of Brown’s essay is a defense of (his own) skepticism, as he has defined it. It actually is very high-quality, as such things go, so it’s worth discussing.
So as to have an actual discussion, rather than merely a critique, I sent him my immediate responses, and he responded to them, and I responded to his responses, etc. Our conversation remained interesting (at least to me) even as it grew longer and longer. So I’m posting it in six parts, to be released in six consecutive days.
Here’s Part 1. The numbered points are summarized by me from his WUWT post. Note that none of the issues really get argued through to resolution, but you get a good sense of where we’re coming from.
See the full post at:
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/07/skeptics-are-not-deniers-a-conversation-part-1/
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eyesonu says:
It was Nielson-Gammon who quoted this study first, not I. I just gave the full context for his out-of-context claim.
I also have to admit that I am confused by your logic here. Because someone with no integrity or code of ethics stole private e-mails between climate scientists and published them on the web where a few out-of-context quotes have shown us that these scientists who are being harassed by other people sometimes say some impertinent things in their private e-mails, we can now disregard everything that scientists have to say?
Donald A. Neill, I am going to bookmark your comment as I feel it summarises the situation brilliantly.
John Neilsen-Gammon, you deserve much kudos for engaging in a civilized dialogue with climate skeptics. May I encourage you to continue and to urge others to do the same.
Evidently, though, we might disagree with you over what constitutes evidence. The existence or otherwise of a consensus is not evidence. Opinions are not evidence regardless of the eminence of the people holding those opinions. Assumptions are not evidence. The output of computer models is not real data and is not evidence of anything other than the assumptions and parameters built into the models. ONLY measurements and observations are evidence. Note also that evidence of an effect is not evidence of its cause.
…….they do not ‘deny’ AGW…What they challenge……
Henry says
Come on you guys. There is no AGW. There never was, at least not measureable…
There is only GW and GC and it occurs natural.
My findings are clear and repeatable:
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
The above results show that it has been cooling since 1995.
The nature of past global warming- and current global cooling rates is that of a parabolic curve, suggesting a natural process. Obviously the actual “global” cooling is still so little as to go largely unnoticed: it is only about 0.2 degees K since 2000, which probably falls within the error of normal thermometers.
However, I do predict that more cold is on its way. Earth’s energy store is big, but soon it will tell everyone that there is not much left. The only AGW I foresee in the future is the massive removal of snow in the winters to come. (Removal of snow is not a natural activity and it might stop – fortunately – some more deflection of sunlight that in the past often led to an ice age).
Legatus says:
July 9, 2012 at 10:32 pm
1) Twice the carbon dioxide (at twice the atmospheric pressure to boot) as now
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Source link? If there is evidence of higher CO2 200kya that would be significant.
The problem with living in a model universe is that the Earth is NOT a model universe and all simple mathematical approximations are in gross error of even the simplist direct observations. Take for instance the IR receptive, reflective or energy storage capacity of clouds, as mentioned in this WUWT post….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/07/new-paper-shows-negative-cloud-feed-associated-with-sam/
As a resident of the Gulf Coast i have seen 18″ of rainfall in a 24 hr period. Rain that weights 64 lb/cu ft on the ground and is ALWAYS cooler than the Earth. Raindrops have excellent aerodynamics and travel at 200 mph. The ONLY way that this heavier than air droplet can stay in the air is for there to be a net upward velocity of 200 mph….OR….the capacity to evaporate raindrops at the cloud base and send the warm vapor to the cloud top. This causes the vertical shear winds within clouds, something you cannot appreciate in a 120,000 lb passenger jet at 400 mph, but is VERY apparent in a 1600 lb Cessna 150 at 100 mph.
As a student pilot i got caught out at 7500 ft by broken, but rapidly bunching cumulus clouds and made a decent only by penetrating a dozen of these one mile wide monsters for 5000 ft to the cloud bottom. Read “Science Goes Over-Under, Inside-Out” for a description of what is really going on within clouds when witnessed from a minimumal survivable observation point. It is time to end this expensive “model science” and return to open, emperical based obseration and measurements.
Chris Hedges does a wonderful job explaining militant ideological extremism on both ends of the spectrum. The global warming religion, and its castigation of scepticism (heresy) is no exception.
ferdberple says
Source link? If there is evidence of higher CO2 200kya that would be significant.
Henry says
here it is
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ice-core-graph/
This statement from Joel Shore
” Because someone with no integrity or code of ethics stole private e-mails between climate scientists and published them on the web where a few out-of-context quotes have shown us that these scientists who are being harassed by other people sometimes say some impertinent things in their private e-mails, we can now disregard everything that scientists have to say?”
Shows that he completely lacks any honesty or integrity and cannot be trusted about anything he says. What he has stated is a laughable falsehood, with no basis.
OVERSIMPLIFICATION
The physical sciences often have great success in simplifying things to law-like principals and quantifiable notions like energy, momentum, charge, etc . Dealing out categories of “the skeptical” versus “the deniers” to say nothing of “the gullible” or “the pretentious” is best left to the sociologists who understand simplification is not a realistic end; sociology, like climatology, is a cloudy subject.
ferdberple, slightly off at a tangent but, since you asked about the ice core CO2 history, I have come to regard this as the second hockey stick and no more reliable than Mann’s temperature reconstruction. I find the paper below very convincing :-
http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
The main points are :-
1. CO2 concentrations above current levels were frequently reported in studies published before the establishment of the global warming industry.
2. The air released from bubbles trapped in the ice is not the same composition as when the ice was laid down. Changes preferentially affect some gases more than others. Gases released by the crushing of ice at below zero temperatures show lower concentrations of CO2 than samples obtained by allowing the ice to melt.
3. The stability of CO2 readings from ice cores before the Industrial Revolution is spurious.
I am also suspicious of any CO2 reconstruction showing concentrations at certain times to be at or below 180 ppm because this would have resulted in serious global loss/degradation of plant life. This is something which is not observed in paleobotany.
Simple divide in this one, the curious and the uncurious.
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Joeldshore,
Your characterization of the e-mails is deceptive.
These e-mails are in context, are not private, and do show collusion and deception to support the e-mailer’s positions, as well as to punish those who dare to disagree with them.
Why are you relying on deception to make your case?
Heh, the curious and the incurable.
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One of the most dangerous aspects of Bain’s most recent response is he wants to limit who may engage in a discussion of AGW to the “properly credentialed.”
Since the same people who are pushing AGW regardless of the facts are generally affiliated with the groups that have a monopoly on who gets credentialed and why, this ends up being a form of censorship limiting access to facts. And then it also acts as a corruption mechanism. Push this and here are your credentials to climb aboard the grant/sinecure gravy train.
I don’t even consider myself a skeptic, let alone a denier. I’m a realist. The ones who are skeptical are the CAGW worshippers who disbelieve the reality that there is no global warming (oh, wait — i mean climate change, err… disruption).
joeldshore says:
July 10, 2012 at 5:42 am
I also have to admit that I am confused by your logic here. Because someone with no integrity or code of ethics stole private e-mails between climate scientists and published them on the web where a few out-of-context quotes have shown us that these scientists who are being harassed by other people sometimes say some impertinent things in their private e-mails, we can now disregard everything that scientists have to say?
I am confused as to why you believe repeating the long-since-revealed-as-baseless canards makes you think you have rebutted something.
Oh. Joel Shore — okay, not confused about that anymore.
Robin says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:24 am
One of the most dangerous aspects of Bain’s most recent response is he wants to limit who may engage in a discussion of AGW to the “properly credentialed.”
Since the same people who are pushing AGW regardless of the facts are generally affiliated with the groups that have a monopoly on who gets credentialed and why, this ends up being a form of censorship limiting access to facts. And then it also acts as a corruption mechanism. Push this and here are your credentials to climb aboard the grant/sinecure gravy train.
I’m sure they’ll consider members of that august body, the
League of Extraordinary GentlemenUnion of Concerned Scientists, as “properly credentialed.”“…and now, Kenji Watts will present the peer-review minority report.”
“with no integrity or code of ethics stole private e-mails”
Sounds like Peter Gleick is at it, again.
kim says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:18 am
Heh, the curious and the incurable.
Heh.
Bill Tuttle says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:46 am
Exactly!
Robin says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:24 am
Henry says
true. exactly.
they (still) don’t understand that all the profs and all the dr’s who still believe in AGW are simply all wrong.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/john-neilsen-gammon-skeptics-are-not-deniers/#comment-1029004
dcfl51 says:
July 10, 2012 at 6:55 am
I find the paper below very convincing :-
http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf
Completely outdated. Since the first measurements were made on ice cores, the drilling and analytical methods changed dramatically. The late Jaworoski’s knowledge of ice cores ended in 1992. Most of his objections were already refuted in 1996 by the work of Etheridge e.a. on three Law Dome ice cores. Three different drilling techniques were used and CO2 was measured top down in firn until bubble closing depth and in ice at closing depth and deeper. At closing depth CO2 measured in still open pores of the firn and aready closed bubbles in the ice were similar. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
The main points are :-
1. CO2 concentrations above current levels were frequently reported in studies published before the establishment of the global warming industry
Most “high” levels were found where cracks allowed the intrusion of drilling fluid. At the same depth, different tests show a huge range of CO2 levels, from in the same range as the samples up and down the ice core to much higher. Thus the “high” levels were caused by contamination and don’t reflect reality,
2. The air released from bubbles trapped in the ice is not the same composition as when the ice was laid down.
Besides that the bubbles contain a mixture of CO2 levels from several years (8 years for the high accumulation Law Dome to 600 years for the Vostok ice core), there is very little migration in coastal ice cores and virtually none in the much colder inland ice cores. Thus the composition still is the same after 800,000 years…
Gases released by the crushing of ice at below zero temperatures show lower concentrations of CO2 than samples obtained by allowing the ice to melt.
It is the opposite, therefore ice melt measurements for CO2 are abandoned en mostly the ice crushing method is used. That gives the same results as the more accurate method of total sublimation and mass spectrometric analyses, which are used for isotope measurements.
See e.g. http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf and
http://www.awi.de/de/forschung/fachbereiche/geowissenschaften/glaziologie/techniques/high_precision_d13c_and_co2_analysis/
3. The stability of CO2 readings from ice cores before the Industrial Revolution is spurious.
Where is that based on? Many ice cores with quite different average temperature and precipitation rates show the same (within +/- 5 ppmv) CO2 levels for the same average air age. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg
I am also suspicious of any CO2 reconstruction showing concentrations at certain times to be at or below 180 ppm because this would have resulted in serious global loss/degradation of plant life.
Land plants have the advantage of living on land: near ground CO2 levels over land are average some 40 ppmv higher than in the bulk of the atmosphere (as what is measured in ice cores), with night levels even hundreds of ppmv higher. Thus al least a few hours in daylight there is sufficient CO2 to cause some growth…
HenryP says:
July 10, 2012 at 6:34 am
ferdberple says
Source link? If there is evidence of higher CO2 200kya that would be significant.
Henry says
here it is
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/ice-core-graph/
The graphs only shows CO2 levels of maximum 300 ppmv. We are near 400 ppmv today…
Further the temperature-CO2 ratio is about 8 ppmv/°C in the Vostok (and Dome C) ice core, over 420 (and 800) kyr. At the current temperature, that means that the CO2 levels should be at ~290 ppmv, but we are already 100+ ppmv higher.
Of course, the ice cores do average the CO2 levels over a long period of 600 (and 560) years, but even 10 years at +100 ppmv or 100 years at +10 ppmv would be measurable in the ice cores. The current increase of 100 ppmv over 160 years anyway would have been visible in the record.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“…near ground CO2 levels over land are average some 40 ppmv higher than in the bulk of the atmosphere (as what is measured in ice cores), with night levels even hundreds of ppmv higher.”
There has been an ongoing discussion about whether CO2 is, or is not, well mixed in the atmosphere. If what Ferdinand says is true, then CO2 is not well mixed in the atmosphere.
It doesn’t matter to me either way, but you can’t have it both ways. CO2 is either well mixed, or it isn’t.
JPeden says:
July 9, 2012 at 11:56 pm
Scepticism is at the very heart of the practice of real science. It is necessary to every step, …
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Yes, I agree, but if you call yourself “sceptic” it is a different thing. Example: defecating is natural and necessary, but would you call yourself “defecator”? I do not think so.