The indefatigable Barry Woods has left this comment over on Lewandowsky’s “Shaping Tomorrow’s World” blog on “seepage”. It features IPCC lead author Professor Peter Thorne, who is none too happy about Lewandowsky’s latest “seepage” paper and pulls no punches in his pushback.
Barry Woods at 05:32 AM on 17 May, 2015
Professor Peter Thorne (IPCC lead author) commenting on an article about all this in the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/15/are-climate-scientists-cowed-by-sceptics#comment-52286021
“As a contributor to the hiatus box in IPCC AR5 and an author and reviewer of several relevant papers frankly this whole thing is depressing and shows extreme naivety as to what constitutes the scientific process and the accrual and acceptance of scientific knowledge. Indeed the only relevant part is the final sentence. That as climate scientists we have to develop thick skins.
To maintain that as scientists we should not investigate the pause / hiatus / slowdown (there I used the phrase …) is downright disingenuous and dangerous. It is important to understand all aspects of climate science and that includes recent and possible future decadal timescale variability and its causes. We all experience climatic variability so we should understand it. The large volume of papers on the hiatus will undoubtedly have served to improve our knowledge of climate variability and the climate system and will almost certainly lead to improved climate projections in future through improved climate modelling.
If it had been decided to ignore the hiatus then those benefits and insights would not have accrued. So what if some of those papers resulted from segments of society asking questions about this? First, its an entirely reasonable and policy relevant question because what has caused it has very real implications as to what we should do vis-a-vis short-term adaptation decisions. Second, even if it weren’t a reasonable question, then it would still be entirely reasonable to address it to explicitly head off mis-conceptions.
So, this whole thing is a side-show and as such depressing.”-Peter Thorne
http://icarus.nuim.ie/people/thorne-peter
rgbatduke
May 18, 2015 at 10:55 am
Thanks Prof Brown, for bringing precision and sanity to my world. Go DUKE
We saw “The Musicman” this weekend and the biggest difference between Prof. Hoarold Hill and Lewandwosky, Oreskes & Mob is that the Harold Hill had more scruples and a stronger conscience.
And he knew the territory.
Oreskes gives me pause, the sadder Budweiser refresher for me.
================
IMHO, the “pause / hiatus / slowdown” actually disproves the foundational argument for catastrophic climate warming caused by human CO2 emissions because that theory relies upon the concept of positive feedback causing an acceleration of warming. All of the models reflect that theory by showing an upward non linear acceleration. The only difference between the models was the rate of positive change of acceleration. That is, the 2nd order derivative is above zero for all models. However, the slowdown is a negative 2nd order derivative because the rate of warming in the 1990’s was higher than the rate of warming (actually almost no warming at all) of the 2000’s right into 2015. Such a scenario is considered practically impossible in all of the global warming models. Therefore, they are ALL wrong. Models that based themselves upon positive feedback and acceleration of warming simply could not have predicted 15 years of zero warming – and surprise, surprise, they were utterly incapable of predicting the last 15 years of almost zero warming. The theory is wrong because the models based upon it all (bar 1 or 2 at this point) demonstrate zero predictive ability.
Rats in a sack , springs to mind .
But like mad Mann , we should do all we can to encourage Lew paper to ‘greater heights’
Rats in a sack! I love that! I agree in encouraging Lew to keep on a publishin’! I mean, what is more hilarious/arrogant/disturbing/idiotic than a bunch of social scientists telling the entire climate science community to stop using the word “pause” because THEY (and unnamed others) have determined that there is NOT one, and therefore talking about it “lends credence” to “phenomena that do not even exist”! I can’t make this stuff up! Here’s Ben Newell responding to Richard Betts-
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskySeepageII.html
Ben Newell at 17:55 PM on 18 May, 2015-
“Dear Richard
The phenomenon referred to in the final sentence is the “hiatus” or “pause” (which we and others argue/conclude is not one – hence “does not exist”)”
Lewandowsky is part of a more general movement in society. I believe Kirsten Powers recently wrote a book called “Silencing of free speech” or something like that. It is about a deliberate and pervasive effort to silence an open exchange of ideas.
You ask questions about the rape culture on college campuses, you are a rape denier. You ask questions about climate temperature methodologies or models you are a science denier. You question tax policies for the rich and and you are against growth and innovation, you question entitlement programs and you hate poor people. You are against teacher led prayers in school and you have declared war on Christians. You question the effectiveness of public education and you are anti-education. When Elizabeth Warren challenges Obama trade policies, she is an “Elizabeth” and not a “Senator”. And on and on it goes.
When the norm is to marginalize or impugn anyone who challenges a controversial subject or any public subject for that matter, it is an express train to a society of stupid. When exactly did we decide to make important decisions by cutting off ideas and discussion before they start? I do not know, but Lewandowsky certainly likes his role in perpetuating stupid.
I found it depressing. So-called scientists, arguing that they should avoid skepticism.
unprintable, unprintable!&/§%*%#%§$=!!!!
Viking said: “Except for an extremely simple system, only a computer model will be capable of the analysis. ”
Ancient people have created sophisticated models without computers. The human mind is not limited to the tools it has.
Paul, ancient people did not do any significant time domain analysis of complex physical systems. First of all, the scientific first principles were only discovered in the last 200 years or so. Even after their discovery, it was too tedious until about 50 years ago.
For example, integrating the Biot-Savart required adding up millions of vector values, which are calculated from a vector cross product.
The human IS limited by the tools it has available.
I’m torn as to whether the situation is sad or funny.
Watching the usual consensus pushing crowd turn out to rip on a Climate Scientist (they can’t be wrong remember?) because a social scientist says the topic he worked on for AR5 is a figment of so called D#nier imaginations is sad.
For years an adequate defense has been “you aren’t a climate scientist” has been good enough to dismiss any criticism… Apparently so long as it disagreed with their chosen political motives. Here we have a social scientist dismissing the work of a climate scientist and apparently qualifications no longer matter. That’s sad to.
On the other hand tons of scientists have been complicit in what is a massive politically motivated machine that doesn’t support science, it supports science that supports certain political and economic actions. This machine has lobbied for funding, attacked their enemies and made a lucky few eco-super stars. After years some of these scientists who have been complicit or silent in the face of watching this machine eat rivals and colleagues are being cannibalized. That’s kind of funny.
I’m not a scientist but I’m fortunate enough to know many, several of whom are involved in Climate Science sensitive fields. I’ve witnessed their distress at being attacked, having their jobs threatened and being slandered by activists when they publish, what they feel, is honest science that even alludes to minimizing or undermining a portion of the catastrophe we supposedly face. I don’t know Thorne personally, but I can’t find him ever attempting to defend in any significant way a colleague in distress from those above forces. Given that I don’t feel sorry for him in the least. He’s too important to lose his job and his level of professional achievement is such that even if this incident roadblocked him forever, he would still have gone further then most could ever dream. Therefore I won’t lose any sleep. He won’t end up homeless regardless of how bad the machine he seems to have stood by and watched chew up other scientists reams him.
Last of all it is both funny and sad that skeptics are supposed to be conspiracy theorists. Meanwhile proponents proclaim manipulation by an ultra secret group of, by their own words, small individuals able to warp and distort the best scientists and high integrity organizations on the planet. Apparently believing the Koch brothers are reaching out and distorting the science presented by UN organizations and scientists across the world isn’t a conspiracy. Seems textbook to me.
Read Peter Thorne’s follow-up comments too –
“… In particular the ‘statistical practices’ sentence is an assertion with precisely zero basis in reality. As such, it is highly offensive.
This paper and the resulting discussion is very definitely not a way to win friends or influence people.
Bear in mind that the norm is to read the abstract then conclusions before deciding whether to read the remainder and frankly my take home has been that this paper is an unhelpful and unwarranted criticism of our significant work in the area. Work that I have no doubts has added substantially to the scientific knowledge basis. Sorry if that offends you somehow. My twitter feed says I am far from alone amongst my colleagues in concluding this.”
UK climate scientists hit back at Royal Society – which gave a generous grant to allow Dr Lew to settle in Bristol. That seems worth noting.
Our ex-Energy secretary, Ed Davey, used the term “plateau”.
Maybe he knows something that the IPCC doesn’t.
Chris
we can do more to ensure that we do not inadvertently allow contrarian, skeptical, and denialist claims to seep into our thinking, leading us to overstate uncertainty, under-communicate knowledge, or add credence to erroneous claims by spending undue amounts of time responding to them, much less ‘‘explaining’’ phenomena that do not even exist.”
I find it worrying that Lew, as a supposed ‘academic’, doesn’t recognise his ‘work’ as something that could just as easily have come out of the old USSR or National Socialist Germany. Simply change the targets of his venom in the above paragraph. The very last thing we want is for anything ‘contrary’ to ‘seep into our thinking’.
Lew is a worrying phenomena because I’m forced to support him via my taxes. Where exactly are we heading in a world where we are forced, by (tax) law, to support someone who believes that “The very last thing we want is for anything ‘contrary’ to ‘seep into our thinking’.”
That, “The very last thing we want is for anything ‘contrary’ to ‘seep into our thinking”, is something that ‘The Poison Dwarf’ may have come up with. Juden,nien danke! (simply take out the ‘Juden’ and replace it with ‘denier’)
BTW … Hillarious comments under Thorne’s criticism of Lew. Thorne – is now some kind of climate denier (along with Richard Betts).
_____________________________ mostly off topic __________________
If you happen to be American and are really, really bored at work right now then …
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/traumatised-by-the-election-result-a-psychotherapists-recovery-guide
Should pirk you right up. This is these people, parading around their living space, wearing their grand mothers panties while receiving live election results.
God bless The Guardian.
_____________________________
The methodology of the attack on people who do not agree with their views is nicely set out in papers John Cook has written. He even has a course for budding missionaries http://climatestate.com/2015/05/17/climate-denial-and-climate-communication-denial101/ It seems to me that the Lewandowsky paper fits into the same pattern of accusing the opposition of all the things the alarmists are actually doing. From accusing ‘deniers’ of not listening to scientific argument to claiming that climate scientist are embarrassed to make their case because they are constantly being told they are in the minority. Really? False claims of 97% come to mind.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
Two important issues here.
We see a credible climate scientist who participates in the IPCC circus making some critical remarks about the lack of scientific integrity in this particular issue of the published surface temperature averages, (strangely accepted as authentic), showing a significant current failure to follow the IPCC published trend projections.
What can be said? For anyone to suggest the “science is settled” is clearly nonsense. Absolutely no evidence to support that, heaps of evidence to support otherwise.
Regarding the actual departure of the real temperature from the projected graph – besides scientists arguing about it, what does it mean technically? Firstly an inability of the computer models, as created by scientists, to accurately forecast future temperatures. Perhaps, just perhaps, the longer future term trends will make this difference less significant than it seems. The point is that nothing in the computer modelling accounts for it, and there are other similar omissions anyway.
What we might be seeing is an unforeseen natural climate change that will prove IPCC projections, and more importantly, its political ambitions of supporting new government strategies becoming universally known as exactly that, without any scientific basis at all!
The author’s conclusion –
“So, this whole thing is a side-show and as such depressing.”-Peter Thorne”
Before I placed a bet on something as fundamental as whether we are in a temperature “pause” within a rising trend, or a temperature “peak” preceding a plunge into the next glacial period, I would look at two things.
First I would check the NOAA paleoclimatology page at:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data2.html
And I would consider this statement therein:
“however, full interglacials occur only about every fifth peak in the [solar] precession cycle. The full explanation for this observation is still an active area of research.”
I would ponder the graph on that page and consider that it could be argued that solar activity is falling from its fifth peak for this cycle.
Next I would look at one of many data sets which show temperatures rising since the end of the Little Ice Age, with a steady secular trend containing an inscribed 60 year (+-) oscillation or “wave”.
In the end I would reconcile myself to the conclusion that my final decision would simply be a random wager. Too many variables. Too little accurate history. Too many unknowns, both known and unknown.
Within that context, I consider the hippocratic oath, including:
“I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those …. in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.”
“I will apply… all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.”
“I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed…”
“I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings…”
I observe the Lewandowskys who would insist that models which cannot account for both the 60-year “wave” and the 5-peak cycle should become the basis for world order and draconian action, without further research or debate. I observe such activists, but I cannot take them seriously as scientists.
This seepage business looks like another angle to deny the existence of the hiatus. As such, it must take its place among the more than fifty articles of that type that Anthony Watts has recorded. Is it not obvious that they all cannot be right? Peter Thorne, who is a mainstream guy, thinks that ‘… this whole thing is a side-show and as such depressing.” It should be depressing to a mainstream guy since it is another dead end. First, we have the hiatus. Carbon dioxide keeps increasing but there is no warming. But the Arrhenius greenhouse theory requires warming. Absent this expected warming, the Arrhenius greenhouse theory is invalid and should be cast into the waste basket of history. The correct greenhouse theory to use is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory or MGT. It is based upon Miskolczi’s observations of NOAA radiosonde records. Miskiolczi showed mathematically that there exists a fixed greenhouse-gas optical thickness TauA which controls transmittance in the infrared. He then calculated that its value is 1.86756. His measurements using NOAA database of radiosonde observations showed that while TauA remained constant for 61 years carbon dioxide at the same time increased by 21.6 percent. Since this substantial addition of carbon dioxide to atmosphere did not increase absorption it did not create any warming either. That makes it an exact parallel to the hiatus we are living through right now: Carbon dioxide is increasing but there is no warming. What Miskolczi has done both theoretically and experimentally is show that the hiatus phenomenon is not only possible but has actually already happened in the past. Even more to the point is the existence of a hiatus in the eighties and nineties that has been hidden by fake warming thanks to the GISS-HadCRUT-NCDC global temperature monopoly. They call it late twentieth century warming. I proved its existence when doing research for my book [1] in 2008. The hiatus is shown as figure 15 in the book. There is also a wave train created by ENSO. The centers of these waves line up in a horizontal straight line, proving absence of warming. In addition, I also proved that the warming was fake in figure 32. That took care of the fakery of HadCRUT3. The other two I got later when I found that all three had used computer processing to bring their data together. It shows up as sharp upward spikes near ends of years, in exactly the same places in all three. According to MGT which uses the properties of TauA, addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not warm the air. When the global warming gang got wind of that in 2007 they blacklisted it. You could not mention it and grad students were kept ignorant of it. According to MGT, carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere will form a joint optimum absorption window in the infrared whose optical thickness is 1.87 (TauA). If you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will begin to absorb in the IR just as Arrhenius says, But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as this happens water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. The added carbon dioxide will of course keep absorbing but the reduction of water vapor keeps total absorption constant and no warming is possible. With that, the IPCC doctrine of positive water vapor feedback on the greenhouse-gas optical thickness is shown to be false.
[1] Arno Arrak, “What Warming?> Satellite view of global temperature change” Figures 15, 32
It seems there are two issues today that the western world must not question, discuss, debate or challenge. The first is the flawed global warming doctrine. The other is the contents of the islamic texts.
Why?
Because to question, discuss, debate or challenge expose some very uncomfortable and politically incorrect issues, which the custodians of such ideologies prefer to remain hidden.