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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Smokey says:
July 10, 2012 at 9:21 am
If what Ferdinand says is true, then CO2 is not well mixed in the atmosphere.
CO2 is well mixed in over 95% of the atmosphere, that is all above the oceans and above a few hundred meters over land.
For the first few hundred meters above land, many sources and sinks are at work: at night plants exhale CO2 + bacterial and fungal decay of vegetation + human sources. During daylight plants remove lots of CO2 quite fast. That makes that one can measure any level of CO2 midst a forest or field or town, depending of the time of the day and the amount of sunlight. And that is one of the reasons that many historical measurements are worthless for the knowledge of the real “background” CO2 levels of that time…
If you get over 500 meter over land, the differences are much smaller to unmeasurable. Only the enormous intake/outgassing as result of the seasonal temperature swings needs some time to be distributed with altitude and latitude (weeks to months) and between the NH and the SH (months to 2 years).
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/inversion_co2.jpg for CO2 flight measurements below and above the inversion layer and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
where you can see the difference between the CO2 levels during a few summer days over land at Giessen (SW Germany, semi-rural) and at three “baseline” stations: Barrow, Mauna Loa and the South Pole. All data are raw measurements (hourly averages for the stations, 1/2 hour averages for Giessen).
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)
The drunken believer will always be intoxicated on the desire for catastrophe, the skeptic has to accept that they will always be called names, it is the only defense a true believer has.
Greg House says: July 10, 2012 at 9:26 am
It is a matter of context, no? We don’t often discuss/define groups by their secretion/excretion processes, yet there is an appropriate context for that to occur. Your psychic perception in reference others’ internal context regarding “sceptic” is itself, ‘a different thing’. You have no clue what I mean if I call myself a skeptic, nor even the context to which that has applied for the past fifty years.
Steve Keohane says:
July 10, 2012 at 10:02 am
You have no clue what I mean if I call myself a skeptic,
=============================================
You mean it well, but the public perception might be different. Just use a dictionary.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sceptic : “sceptic archaic and US, skeptic [ˈskɛptɪk]
1. (Philosophy) a person who habitually doubts the authenticity of accepted beliefs
2. a person who mistrusts people, ideas, etc., in general”
Still no problem with that?
joeldshore says:
July 10, 2012 at 5:42 am
“I also have to admit that I am confused… Because someone with no integrity or code of ethics stole private e-mails…”
I challenge the confused Joel Shore to post evidence showing that the Climategate emails were ‘stolen’. Seems to me they are still there. Someone with access simply copied them.
It is clear to even the most casual observer that the email dump was an inside job. A hacker would have posted all the emails. A hacker would not have parceled them out over years. A hacker would not have redacted information, which was done to protect the insider’s identity. And Steve Mosher told me definitively who the insider was [I don’t recall the name, it was a while back and only part of a larger conversation. But Steve was certain].
So the ball is in Joel Shore’s court: he needs to provide convincing evidence that a hacker “stole” the emails – or we will know that Joel Shore himself is the one with “no integrity or code of ethics.”
REPLY: Ditto that, and while Joel is at it, I’d like to hear why he isn’t disturbed by the demonstrations of “no integrity or code of ethics.” in the emails themselves. Sheesh. I have it on good knowledge that it wasn’t a hack, but was an inside whistleblower at UEA. No, I can’t share. – Anthony
FerdiEgb says
….the CO2 levels should be at ~290 ppmv, but we are already 100+ ppmv higher.
etc.
Henry says
You really don’t have to worry about a thing…I’ve got it all under control!
More CO2 does not change the trend, which is…..amongst other things,
the fact that it is globally cooling,
currently.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/john-neilsen-gammon-skeptics-are-not-deniers/#comment-1029004
Has anyone gone to RealClimate and posted any of this? Would be interested to see if it would stay up or be snipped.
@ur momisugly Greg House
“The most ridiculous thing is when “skeptics” argue that they do not deny AGW. No, it is irrelevant, that there is something you do not deny, because they do not call you denier for that. They call you “denier” for what you deny, like the catastrophic consequences. You do deny the catastrophic consequences, don’t you, so what is the problem?”
The problem is, that to deny something happening in the future is linguistically speaking non-sense. The verb deny is always connected with situations (events, facts, rights, responsibilities, etc.) connected with the past or the present, not the future., even a “consequence” can only be denied (however foolishly) after it has taken place. or while it is taking place. Holocaust deniers did not deny that Jews would be murdered in the future, but that they had been murdered in the past. If Greg House can point to a catastrophy happening now or having happened in the past which he thinks is due to global warming, let him tell us about it now, with the required proof of the human responsibility. Few sceptics will deny the event or the proof, if these can be seen to be incontrovertible, if not, they will debate, provide counter arguments, counter proof, etc., but not flatly deny.
So Greg House has shown, against his apparent will, the ridiculousness of the use of the term “denier” for those sceptical about future CAGW.
Smokey says:
July 10, 2012 at 10:35 am
So the ball is in Joel Shore’s court…
…with some added spin —
“…scientists who are being harassed by other people sometimes say some impertinent things…”
Like Ben Santer impertinently fantasizing about beating the crap out of Pat Michaels? *tsk* That young scamp.
“…in their private e-mails…
Any correspondence, written, electronic, or oral, originating from any publicly-funded organization is *not* private. If the taxpayers paid for it, it’s public property *unless* there is a compelling (read: national security) reason to classify it.
Jim says:
July 10, 2012 at 7:36 am
I am with you Jim – I like the term realist! But on the other hand I am quite happy to be called a denier!
I DENY that the evidence presented for AGW/CAGW or virtually any other type of GW is convincing.
I DENY that they have demonstrated a scientifically valid theory, let alone a proof.
I DENY that there is any scientifically based (i.e. reproducible) observational evidence to demonstrate the catastrophic type claims.
In short – I DENY being scientifically convinced or ‘swayed’ by the presented information.
I do ACCEPT that climate change is occuring
I do ACCEPT that a relatively small proportion of that may just be anthropogenic in ’cause’ but the vast majority of any change is MOST LIKELY natural based on current knowledge.
No amount of youtube videos, Al Gore special effects or whatever will PROVE AGW or CAGW without direct reproducible evidence and experimental observation!! Heck, if the proof were there – it would be as obvious as the nose on your face, based on vast amount of so called ‘climate research’ dollars spent !
Look at the Higgs boson story – a good few decades in the making – and it’s STILL NOT PROVEN (ok, ok – it virtually is – but you get my drift!) and all done on a couple of (very expensive) particle accelerators, NOT by a few dozen ‘elite’ in dispersed academic institutions manipulating data to get it to ‘show’ what they want via email discussion and dodgy statistics!!
Put simply – if you had a choice of getting on a jet plane built by the warmista scientists (with the attendant if/buts/maybes, etc) or one built by the scientists at CERN – which one would you TRUST as likely to be properly validated as actually able to fly! To my way of thinking, the human/world economic situation being ‘based’ on the warmistas arguments is no better than us all being shepherded onto a plane built by them! I for one am DENYING to board THAT plane!
Dr Engelbeen, thank you for the courtesy of your reply and for the links which you have given. I will read them with interest but there is too much material for me to absorb quickly and still reply on this thread.
I am willing to be persuaded to your standpoint if the evidence is good enough. But there are a lot of diverse criticisms in Jaworowski’s paper and I will need to be convinced on all of them.
For example, Jaworowski argues that there is supercool liquid water in the ice and CO2 is significantly more soluble in this than oxygen or nitrogen. This implies that the remaining air pockets will be relatively depleted of CO2. In his paper Fig.2 shows a chart indicating that CO2 concentrations in ice melted for 7+ hours are much higher than in ice subjected to dry extraction or 15 minute melt extraction. Presumably this is because the dissolved CO2 is released on melting due to Henry’s Law. I will be interested to read why this should be regarded as a false result.
You also state that high CO2 readings can be rejected because the relevant samples are contaminated by drilling fluid. Again, I will hope to read that rejection followed an analysis of samples for contamination and that the high readings were not simply taken as a proxy for contamination.
In addition to questions over the ice core records, there are also stomata studies and the direct CO2 readings collated by Beck. These suggest that CO2 levels have risen and fallen by relatively significant amounts over a matter of decades and that historical levels above those of today are commonplace. I am aware that you have commented on these issues previously, questioning their reliability. However, the more confirmatory evidence that has to be refuted, the more inclined I am to invoke Occam’s Razor.
[Moderator, sorry I’ve gone a bit off topic.]
Although phrased to the much larger general field of argumentation, I think this piece is very much on point to this controversy in climate.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/07/ad-hominem-is-the-strongest-form-of-argument-only-an-idiot-would-say-otherwise/
For me this the money quote
“With a thunderbolt of astonished clarity, I suddenly realized why this is, or, rather, what the great benefit intentional or not would be: if a man says that an opponent argues that price fixing causes rationing, or that politicians cannot be trusted to make decisions over your baby’s health, that man spreads his opponent’s message, even while denouncing it; but if that man denounces the opponent, saying he is a tool of moneyed power, or is a member of an ‘astroturf’ movement rather than a grassroots opposition, then no one who hears that man hears the message. All they know is that the opponent is a man of bad character.
It is simple, simplistic, and effective.”
The piece is not very long and I would recommend reading it all.
C.W. Schoneveld says:
July 10, 2012 at 11:57 am
@ur momisugly Greg House
The problem is, that to deny something happening in the future is linguistically speaking non-sense. The verb deny is always connected with situations (events, facts, rights, responsibilities, etc.) connected with the past or the present, not the future., even a “consequence” can only be denied (however foolishly) after it has taken place. or while it is taking place. …
So Greg House has shown, against his apparent will, the ridiculousness of the use of the term “denier” for those sceptical about future CAGW.
=======================================================
No, the future is predictable in terms of probability in many cases, just think of the next sunrise. And your linguistic tool will not help, because you confuse the actual future event that has not happened yet with the (alleged) proof that this event will happen. Of course there can be disagreement on whether the proof is there or not.
So it is not about denying the future, it is about denying the (alleged) present proof. You need a better argumentation.
Part II seems to be up:
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/07/skeptics-are-not-deniers-a-conversation-part-2
Mr. Layman here. The word to describe the CAGW (or any “Save the Planet”) on me would not be “skeptical” but “suspicious”.
They’ve shown little reason to trust their honesty. Because of their track record, it’s to easy to suspect that waht may have been an honest mistake was an attempt to deceive.
(It would take an “H” of alot to convince that Al Gore and Mann “et al” have not been attempting to deceive.)
Kev-in-Uk says:
July 10, 2012 at 12:59 pm
No amount of youtube videos, Al Gore special effects or whatever will PROVE AGW or CAGW without direct reproducible evidence and experimental observation!!
==================================================================
I read somewhere that Al Gore’s glaciers calving were special effects shots for the movie Day After Tomarrow.
I read somewhere that Al Gore’s glaciers calving were special effects shots for the movie Day After Tomorrow.
They used styrofoam.
dcfl51 says:
July 10, 2012 at 1:06 pm
It would take a complete blog to counter all arguments made by the late Jaworowski. That is not the place here to do that, but the problem is that these are recurrent points, again and again used to “refute” that ice cores are quite reliable samples of ancient air, be it averaged.
Take Jaworowski’s Fig 2:
Ice from Greenland cores shows much more CO2 when melted over a longer period than over a short period or when measured in crushed ice.
What Jaworowski “forgot” to tell you is dat Greenland ice is frequently contaminated with highly acidic Icelandic volcanic dust, which reacts with seasalt dust, including carbonates, thus producing in situ CO2 and more when dissolved…
While it is true that some liquidlike layer is formed at the ice-air surface which may dissolve some CO2, that is of little interest as any liquid layer, including CO2, is removed during the measurement under vacuum at the crushing tests or everything is removed and measured after cryogenic separation for the sublimation tests.
The same problems for the high readings. Simply read what Neftel himself said about that:
See: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/neftel82-85.pdf
Stomata data have their own problems: It is a proxy based on local CO2 levels over land in the previous growing season, see how these change in the main wind drirections by land use changes over the centuries… The same problem with many of the historical CO2 measurements: wrong time, wrong place. Both contradict each other for the period 1935-1950, where Beck’s compilation shows a 80 ppmv “peak”, not seen in any other proxy or ice core…
Gunga Din says:
July 10, 2012 at 3:05 pm
I can believe it! The truth is, that I was once a believer (not in the Mann et al sense – but in the accepted the ‘published’ material) and like many folk who find they were duped – I am totally distrustful of the ‘published’ stuff. The worst part of it is – that as a scientist – I accepted the published material – BELIEVING that the presenters had followed good scientific protocol, etc. My present anger, therefore, comes from the fact that I KNOW better, but didn’t have the time or inclination to check. This really sticks in my craw. You go to the doctor for medical advice – you do not expect to have to check his diagnosis? These people are supposed to be professionals? The fish in my desk top tank have a more professional attitude! So now, I have had to return to the first principles of the scientific method – which is basically to check the stuff for yourself – and the more I check, the less comfortable I become with the so called climate scientists…….enough said I think…
Smokey says:
(1) Well, the same could be said of the Heartland memos: Noone stole them. It seems to me they are still there. Someone just managed to fool Heartland into sending him copies.
(2) How the Climategate e-mails got into the hands that they did is still unknown and I’m not really going to believe vague statements by Anthony and Steven Mosher that they have good knowledge of how it happened but can’t tell us. (That sounds just like the sort of lines we were fed before the Iraq war about how if we only had access to the intelligence, we would be convinced of the danger that Saddam posed.) However, even if they were leaked by someone who had access to them, that is still in a sense stealing. I do not have the right to release private information that I might have access to at my employer and indeed could rightly get into serious trouble if I did so. Furthermore, it is known that the RealClimate site was hacked in an attempt to publish the e-mails there, another illegal activity.
The usual joel shore fail. Gleick admitted his crime.
[SNIP: I personally agree, but this is off-topic and will almost cerainly derail the thread. It is not necessary to respond to everything. -REP]
They label us so as to justify disregarding us.
Dave Wendt: A fellow named Lakoff has been saying that for a long time, and it seems that members of a particular political persuasion have taken that message to heart.
A character called “Zombie” at Pajamas Media just did a “book review” on the subject.
Back more directly on topic (and in connection with that), I totally understand the desire to assume the best of one’s opposition, for the sake of comity, but I do not believe that we can honestly look at the situation and say that the labeling is a matter of error of perception that can be easily corrected by a reasoned dialogue.
On the other hand, more power to those who try, I am capable of being wrong.
It never ceases to amaze one to see the contortions of reality the AGW fanatics seem to go through to justify fraud, lies and bad practices. Joel Shore is a prime example here.This shows that you can give someone education but it does not guarantee integrity or ethics.