Guest post by David Middleton
Mr. Trump, if you read this post, please ignore these “scientists”…
To President-elect Trump
We, the undersigned, urge you to take immediate and sustained action against human-caused climate change. We write as concerned individuals, united in recognizing that the science is unequivocal and America must respond.
Climate change threatens… [blah, blah, blah]
[…]
1. Make America a clean energy leader. The vast majority of Americans – whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent – support renewable energy research and deployment5. Embrace the enormous economic opportunities of transitioning to an energy-efficient, low-carbon society6,7. Use part of your $1 trillion commitment to infrastructure development to expand democratized clean energy…
What the frack is “democratized” energy?
2. Reduce carbon pollution and America’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Apart from black soot, there’s no such thing as “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, etc. are carbon compounds. Just in case anyone is unclear on the concept…
A compound is a substance made from two or more elements
that have reacted chemically with each other.
Remember this definition as you might need it in the exam!
A compound is a completely new material that will often have
totally different properties from the elements that made it.
For example
The element sodium is a highly reactive metal.
The element chlorine is a yellow-green poisonous gas (non-metal).
When the two react together they
form a compound called sodium chloride.
Sodium chloride is common salt, which you eat with food.
You would not want to eat the elements!
[…]
M’kay?
The EPA, despite its bogus endangerment finding, doesn’t classify carbon or carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
3. Enhance America’s climate preparedness and resilience. In the past 5 years alone, storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires caused over $250 billion in damages10. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of these extreme events…
Enhancing “climate preparedness and resilience” is always a good idea… However, there is no evidence, none whatsoever, that climate change has, is or will “increase the frequency and severity of these extreme events.” Models aren’t evidence. Models with a 95% failure rate are, at best, a failed hypothesis.
4. Publicly acknowledge that climate change is a real, human-caused, and urgent threat. If not, you will become the only government leader in the world to deny climate science11. Your position will be at odds with virtually all climate scientists, most economists, military experts, fossil fuel companies and other business leaders, and the two-thirds of Americans worried about this issue1,2,12-15.
Note to “scientists”… We didn’t vote for Donald Trump because he was a lemming.
Climate change is real, always has been, always will be. Mankind’s activities do play an un-determinable role in it and there is no evidence that it is an “urgent threat.” There’s scant evidence that climate change poses a net threat to humanity… much less the planet.
5. Protect scientific integrity in policymaking. During your campaign, you said that your “administration will ensure that there will be [scientific] transparency and accountability without political bias16.”
[…]
Which he’s already doing… EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Cathy McMorris-Rogers, etc.
6. Uphold America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. Reneging from this treaty…
“America” did not make a “commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement” and it’s not a treaty. The soon-to-be-ex-President made a commitment and then refused to submit his personal commitment to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.
Now that we have addressed their six points, let’s take a look at some selected signatories of this open letter, to better understand their point of view…
Susan Joy Hassol, Director, Climate *Communication*
Good for her!
Richard Heede, Co-Founder & Director, *Climate Accountability* Institute
Richard Heede is the Principal of Climate Mitigation Services, a consultancy focused on climate stewardship from emissions inventories to profitable action. Climate Mitigation Services conducts greenhouse gas inventories, develops protocols, defines emissions boundaries, and identifies technologies and strategies to profitably reduce emissions. Client sectors include municipalities, colleges and universities, corporations, international NGOs, architects, and homeowners.
Very sciency!!!
Dr. Edward Maibach, MPH, PhD, Professor, Department of Communication; Director, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
Dr. Maibach holds a BA in social psychology from University of California at San Diego (1980), an MPH in health promotion from San Diego State University (1983), and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University (1990).
The author if the 52% consensus, if I remember correctly.
Dr. Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Well, there’s at least one real scientist among the signatories… (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). To anyone who missed the sarcasm… There are a lot of real scientists among the signatories.
It appears that about 333 of the 800 “scientists” are students…
Hannah M. Teicher, M.Arch., PhD Student, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jennifer Thomas, PhD Student, Physical Oceanography, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University
Annelise Thompson, PhD Student (artificial photosynthesis), Department of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology
Daniel Traficonte, PhD Student, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Galen Treuer, PhD Student, Environmental Science and Policy, University of Miami
Rebecca Trinh, PhD Student, Biological Oceanography, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Anna Trugman, PhD Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Department of Geosciences, Princeton University
Cascade Tuholske, PhD Student, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brendan D. Turley, PhD Student, School of the Earth, Ocean, & Environment, University of South Carolina
Alexander J. Turner, PhD Student in Atmospheric Chemistry, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
John J. Turner V, PhD Student in Renewable Energy, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of New Hampshire
Samantha Tushaus, Assistant Researcher, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ashlee Tziganuk, PhD Student in Urban Planning, Arizona State University
Natalie Umling, PhD Student in Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina
Sital Uprety, PhD Student in Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Sarah Vitale, PhD Student in Geological Sciences, University of Connecticut
Dr. Britta Voss, PhD in Aquatic Geochemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Charlotte Wagner, PhD student, Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Nicholas Waldo, PhD Student in Environmental Engineering, University of Washington
Rich Walker, PhD Student, Program in Ecology and Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Wyoming
Jessica Wang, PhD student, Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Jonathan Wang, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University
Daniel Watkins, PhD Student, Atmospheric Science, Oregon State University
Lance Watkins, PhD Student and Center Lead, NASA DEVELOP National Program, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, Arizona State University
Katelyn Watson, PhD Student in Geoscience, Boise State University
Caroline Hagan Webb, PhD Student in Hydrology and Geophysics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Davis
Nick Weber, PhD Student, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington
Jennifer Wei, PhD Student, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Thomas Weiss, PhD Student in Paleoclimatology, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Ethan Welty, PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program and Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder
Meagan E. Wengrove, PhD Student in Coastal Processes, Department of Ocean Engineering, University of New Hampshire
Katherine Wentz, PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program and Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder
Scott Wieman, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
Catherine Wilka, PhD Student in Climate Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Elise B. Wilkes, PhD Student, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
Emily Williams, MA/PhD Student in Geography, University of California Santa Barbara
Andrew A. Wong, PhD Student, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Anna Wuttig, PhD Student in Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lilia Xie, PhD Student in Inorganic Chemistry (materials for energy conversion), Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert M. Yantosca, Senior Software Engineer, Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, Harvard University
Walter Yerk, PhD Student, Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University
Suzanne Young, PhD Student, Department of Integrative Biology, University of South Florida
Karen Yu, PhD Student in Atmospheric Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Emily Zakem, PhD Student, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
José I. Zenteno, PhD Student of Environmental Science and Management, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara
Xuemei Zhai, PhD Student in Biological Oceanography, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Natalie Zielinski, PhD Student in Oceanography, Texas A&M University
Marika Ziesack, PhD Student, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University
Katelyn Zigner, PhD Student, Department of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara
If anyone is counting, I didn’t list all of them. A word count of “student” returned 333 samples.
Learn to dig ditches or serve coffee. Take your pick.
All little off-topic, but the Trump team appears to have chosen ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for their Secretary of State nominee according to Fox News. Some appear to be concerned with Tillerson’s ties to Russian President Putin. Outside of that though, Bill McKibben and the #ExxonKnew fanatics must be going into emotional convulsions right know given that they believe the oil giant hid what it “knew” about climate change years ago.
This should get veeeery interesting……
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/12/trump-to-nominate-exxonmobil-ceo-tillerson-secretary-state-transition-sources-say.html.
And to think that in the 90s I loved SciAm. But then they became a far-left ideological soap box and I cancelled my signature.
Sad!
That and National Geographic
Just like the weather channel. I as operational meteorologist encourage all my friends and relatives to avoid the channel like the plague.
31,487 Scientists signed the Global Warming Petition
See a summary of the peer reviewed research on which these scientists base their signatures
The list includes 2,000 medical doctors – yeah, they know a lot about AGW.
Chris Actually medical doctors know far more about the health and longevity consequences of ALL types of climate change. i.e. they are expert in understanding that COLD KILLS far more than heat. See: “An inconvenient truth from medical research: cold is far worse than global warming at killing people”
Furthermore medical doctors are trained in thorough examination of the evidence and are far better at understanding climate trends, causes and consequences than most politicians and government bureaucrats. I recommend you do some homework before making such superficial pronouncements.
David, knowledge about the roles of cold and heat as it relates to sickness and mortality has nothing to do with atmospheric sciences. Absolutely nothing.
“Furthermore medical doctors are trained in thorough examination of the evidence and are far better at understanding climate trends, causes and consequences than most politicians and government bureaucrats. I recommend you do some homework before making such superficial pronouncements.”
No, they are not. That’s like saying doctors, because they can examine evidence (I guess of disease – you watch way too much House) can apply that logic to any other field. Heck, let’s use doctors when analyzing bridge collapses – that makes more sense than using civil engineers. And let’s use doctors to assess space rocket failures – much better than those corrupted scientists.
Chris, has anyone ever told you you’re an idiot?
The Global Warming Petition Project (GWPP), the 2008 petition mentioned above that supposedly has 31,000+ signatures of “scientists,” is bunk. Most of the signers are engineers or scientists in fields that have no relationship to climate science – metallurgy, veterinary medicine, surgery, nuclear engineering, and the like. A science teacher with a BS in geology who has never worked as a geologist or a computer programmer who has never read a single peer-reviewed climate study is considered equal in expertise to climate scientists with PhDs who have worked in as climate scientists for decades. That’s absurd.
Put another way, would you expect an electrical engineer to know how to remove a cat’s bladder stone, or a whale biologist to have an informed opinion on what steel alloy was the best for building an oil rig? Of course not. So you shouldn’t expect all these non-experts to have expert opinions on climate science either.
Even if you accept the GWPP’s warped criteria for a scientist/climate expert, the GWPP’s signers represent 0.25% of the people who could have signed the petition (as compared to graduation data collected by the US Department of Education since 1970). That’s a tiny minority. If you compare the number of signatures to the number of people working in the GWPP’s chosen occupations, the signers represent 0.44%, still a tiny minority (as compared to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2013). And the minorities are still small when you compare the signatures by category to the US membership of professional organizations for people in those categories, like the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. (source: http://scholarsandrogues.com/tag/gwpp-bls-doed2015/)
However you look at it, the claim that the Global Warming Petition Project somehow disproves the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming is false.
Brian, much of your comment is a repeat of the credentialism argument, that unless one has the imprimatur from the priesthood of climate science, that person is not qualified to comment on climate science. The field involves various computer models, but persons experienced with computer modeling are not really qualified to judge this computer model, because it is one of the sacred mysteries. . .. The field involves the use of historic data, but ordinary historians are not qualified to comment either, as it is climate science . . .
Brian, I stopped buying that sort of argument in Catholic confirmation class when I was 12. The instructor noted that I lacked faith, and I conclude that the sort of argument you are making is one of faith, not science.
Tom, my argument is twofold. Your response only addresses the first part of my argument, that only people with informed opinions should be considered in any question of whether there is a consensus or not. There is no evidence that the 31,487 signatures represent people who have taken the time to develop an informed opinion. The GWPP petition response card (here: http://petitionproject.org/gw_images/GW_Petition_Only_90dpi.png) requires no evidence of having an informed opinion as part of signing the petition. As an EE myself, I’m perfectly fine with engineers and other non-climate scientists having opinions on the subject of climate disruption – so long as their opinions have been informed by study, and not just by reading blogs or news articles. There’s no way to verify that any of the signers (besides the ones who have advanced degrees in the subject) have met that prerequisite.
The second part of my argument, which you didn’t address at all, is that even if we accept that everyone who signed the petition has taken the time to inform themselves, the number of signatures represent a vanishingly small minority when compared to the total population of potential signers – 0.25% of people with degrees in the GWPP’s own selected fields, 0.44% of people working in those fields (whether they have a science degree or not), and small minorities of the professional memberships of various professional organizations.
So even if you disagree with the first part of my argument, there’s no way to dispute the second. But please, try – I’ve provided the links to every source of data I used in the articles tagged at the link in my first comment.
Brian Angliss
Do you really know so little about the scientific method and logical arguments?
Have you really not fact checked the 97%?
Your appeal to “overwhelming scientific consensus” is an fallacious appeal to authority, NOT a scientific argument.
See Alex Epstein ‘97% Of Climate Scientists Agree’ Is 100% Wrong
Numerous other authors affirm Epstein’s shredding of the 97% assertion.
Under the scientific method, those proposing the catastrophic majority anthropogenic global warming model (politically redefined as “climate change”) bear the burden of proof.
Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman laid out the high standard for the scientific method in Cargo Cult Science, Caltech 1974. It’s
Thus every person able to read and understand can raise an issue of “inconvenient” facts. All those signing the Global Warming Petition have science degrees from America, qualify, and based their signing on the observed evidence (not politics or grant $). Those with PhD’s are further expert at original scientific research with strict peer review.
Remember, it only took a little child to declare the obvious: The Emperor has No Clothes!
For an introductory understanding of logical argument, I recommend that you obtain and study: The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-eight Lessons on how to Recognize Bad Reasoning. Best wishes on learning how to think.
David, rather than address my point about the expertise (or lack thereof) of the signers, or my point about the tiny minority of people represented by the GWPP and how both of those points mean that the GWPP isn’t a consensus-countering petition, you chose instead to focus on a single point in my conclusion. That’s called a “red herring,” and is itself a fallacy.
Furthermore, your claim that I’m making an appeal to authority, but your understanding of the fallacy is lacking. The acutal fallacy you’re claiming I’ve made is known as an appeal to misleading authority, and there’s nothing fallacious about appeals to authorities when a) the authority is an expert on the subject at hand, b) the authority is unbiased, c) the authority’s opinion is unrepresentative. You can certainly claim that any individual may be disqualified by any or all of the three points I mentioned, but unless you’re going to prove that point, your fallacy is not applicable. If you’d like an even longer-winded explanation of why you’re wrong, I’ve written extensively only this and other logical fallacies I’ve come across in a series titled “Climate Illogic.” Rather than link directly (I don’t want this post to be moderated out for too many links back to my own site), Google it and the website I mention in my original comment and it’ll pop up.
Epstein and the other authors who have made similar arguments are all wrong. If someone polled physicists about gravity, you wouldn’t expect that they’d talk about how it is or is not real. That’s the point we’re at with these kinds of studies – when a conclusion becomes well accepted by the scientific community, the community stops explicitly mentioning it. Here’s a great paper on this exact subject: Shwed and Bearman 2010. It’s well worth the read. Note that it found that the reality of global warming stopped being seriously contested in the early 1990s.
Brian Angliss Remarkable expertise on fallacies!? e.g., Your c) is backwards! I did address your points by pointing out 3 categories of persons who could give evidence overturning the “consensus”. I highlighted the Feynman’s high standard for the scientific method which you appear not to be familiar with. Science is not a democracy, so your % of petition signers/population is irrelevant. Are you really unfamiliar with “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn? He demonstrates that the consensus by ALL experts is repeatedly proven wrong by the next scientific revolution. e.g. ALL the Aristotelian experts on Aristotle’s science were overturned by Galileo’s experiments.
Have you studied the reports by the Apollo NASA engineers and scientists with The Right Climate Stuff? http://www.TheRightClimateStuff.com
NASA’s Apollo engineers ONLY used validated models. They found IPCC models were NOT validated. So they developed a physics based model that they did validate over the available recorded temperature data. e.g., See: Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014 etc. Yes we have seen global warming since the Little Ice Age. Statistician Doug Keenan’s $100,000 prize showed that a known positive or negative trend cannot be found in time series with random variations. Thus the IPCC’s case has NOT been validated. It is still an open scientific question.
Yep, I got point c) backwards. Typos don’t disprove my point, however – your claim that the consensus argument is an appeal to misleading authority is incorrect.
I have read some of the documents produced by The Right Climate Stuff. It’s largely wrong, however (climate models have been validated against volcanic eruptions for one, and ECS isn’t strictly model based – it’s also paleoclimate-based, and the paleoclimate records point to higher sensitivities, not lower), and their approach is out of date given how aerospace engineering is largely done these days. After all, it’s almost impossible to conduct validateable experiments on spacecraft when there is only one or two ever made. Validation is always preferable, but it’s not always possible. In those cases, statistical Monte Carlo models are required. And I say that as an EE who has worked in aerospace for the last 10+ years and whose designs fly or die by statistical models.
I haven’t read Kuhn personally, no, but if you’re presenting it fairly and accurately, then Kuhn’s argument only applies to radical revolutions. A scientific revolution of the type you describe (Aristotlean replaced by Copernican) are almost impossible in fields like physics these days. Relativity didn’t replace Newton’s Laws of Motion, but rather augmented and clarified them. The only recent example of a revolution of this type I can think of is from medicine – the discovery that ulcers are caused by a bacterium and not by diet. But medicine isn’t physics or chemistry, or even the various interrelated fields of climate science, where you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, radiometry, and the empirically measured properties of gases in order to generate an alternative hypothesis. There’s a reason there are no coherent alternatives to AGW – none of the alternatives come even close to matching all the data.
I won’t bother to address your Keenan comment except to say that just because you can do something with math doesn’t mean it’s physically possible, and mere statistics are no substitute for physics. I have seen engineers devise models that produced a negative resistance who I sent back to the drawing board because that’s a clearly non-physical answer that means they screwed up somewhere.
I have a question for you, though. You were the person who posted about the GWPP in the first place. And yet now you’re saying that it doesn’t matter because “science is not a democracy.” So why bother posting it in the first place, if not to imply that consensus arguments are wrong? Is it too much to expect some logical consistency from you, David?
Finally, your most recent response included at least five distinct claims, none of which actually address the numerical calculations I presented in my original comment (0.25% of the graduates, 0.44% of the people working in the GWPP-specified fields) except to dismiss them as meaningless (thus my question above). Instead of addressing that point, you’ve fallen back on a rhetorical technique known as a “Gish Gallop.” It’s an attempt to win a debate by forcing your opponent to spend far more time debunking your claims than you take making them. It probably wins you debates from time to time, but it’s still dishonest.
Brian Angliss The CFD models used to design aircraft have been thoroughly validated. Search NASA Validation CFD. You assert “you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, . . .” Not so. You only have to 1) find bias and negative feedbacks not included in IPCC. 2) recognize that by fitting > 100 parameters in Global warming models you can fit any historic data but still not achieve accurate forecasting. Study postings at JudithCurry.com on “uncertainty”. There is far more to actually upholding the scientific method and testing models than grant driven consensus.
David, what I said is “Validation is always preferable, but it’s not always possible.” Pointing out a single example of a validated model does nothing to negate the truth of this statement, nor does it have any impact on my point that climate models have been validated by running them against volcanic eruptions and historical data.
You seem to be confusing a few critical points, however. I said “you’d have to posit radical errors in quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics, radiometry, and the empirically measured properties of gases in order to generate an alternative hypothesis.” Global warming theory is not based on modeling – it’s based on data and known physics. You could take away modeling entirely and the data and physics would still say that global warming was real and caused by burning fossil fuels, and that effects like deserts getting dryer, droughts going longer and floods getting bigger would still hold. And the climate sensitivity would still be between about 2 and 4.5. Modeling is only necessary for projecting how the future will change.
Nor does your comment change the fact that no alternative presented to date comes even close to matching the data. That’s the problem – for solar or geologic heating to be the cause (the only two hypotheses that could produce sufficient energy to match the observed increase in global temperature), carbon dioxide would have to not be a greenhouse gas, and yet that property of carbon dioxide is well observed and explained by quantum mechanics. Thus my claim that we’d have to have a radical problem with quantum mechanics for AGW theory to be wrong.
Finally, I’m absolutely certain that there are errors and biases in the models used by scientists to inform the IPCC (this may be a personal pet peeve of mine, but the IPCC does no actual science, so the “IPCC models” are models run by others but referenced by the IPCC). No model is perfect, after all. The question is whether those errors and biases substantially alter the conclusions.
When I run an electrical model, there are all sorts of effects that I leave out. Each effect I ignore makes the model more “ideal” and less realistic, but depending on what my needs for the model are, that may be OK. Usually I use an ideal model to determine if my circuit approach is mostly correct. Then I add features that improve the realism to determine if the circuit can survive temperature variation, radiation, and multiple years of operation. Eventually I have a model that works well enough to use statistics to project whether my circuit will work, usually to a 99+% certainty and a 90% confidence, under all conditions the circuit is supposed to see. But even my models don’t need to explicitly model bathtub electronics failure profiles over life, air pressure, how humidity affects the surface resistance of the PWA, and dozens of other factors – those are third or even fourth order effects that have no impact on the performance in 99.999+% of designs.
Climate models work the same way. In order for your criticisms to matter, you need to demonstrate that the models are missing meaningful physics for the purpose the model has been designed for (as opposed to some other purpose you would like the model to be designed for).
I don’t bother with Curry’s website – her criticisms have largely been found to be baseless, and the few times she’s found anything meaningful, others have incorporated them, analyzed them, and found that even making her corrections did not significantly affect their results.
Brian Angliss. Re: “The question is whether those errors and biases substantially alter the conclusions.” By ignoring uncertainty, you fail to recognize how very weak is the physics backing today’s climate “consensus”. It is easily inverted by ignored physics. e.g. see Bevan Dockery finding global CO2 lagging and tracking temperature changes. (Murry Salby has shown similar results.) This shows short term changes that correspond to CO2 lagging temperature over the interglacial/glacial temperature changes.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/16/climate-change-debate-latest-results/
Your confidence in ignoring Curry’s website is at your scientific peril. She provides the best understanding of uncertainty and the wide range of issues dismissed or ignored by the IPCC. Most “climate scientists” have not studied or fail to recognize the massive uncertainties in climate modeling and consequent nullification of the significance of their results.
For the international standard on uncertainty see the Guide to Uncertainty in Measurement. BIPM. http://www.bipm.org/en/publications/guides/gum.html
(PS I would never hire a scientist let alone an engineer with such a cavalier attitude towards uncertainty.)
“I don’t bother with Curry’s website”
More fool you.
“her criticisms have largely been found to be baseless”
Bollocks.
“However you look at it, the claim that the Global Warming Petition Project somehow disproves the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of global warming is false”
So by the same token, the “97% scientific consensus” must also be false, as only a tiny percentage of those scientists covered by the “consensus” will have the requisite qualifications in climate “science” too.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I’m afraid that’s incorrect, Catweazle666. The bulk of the consensus studies performed to date have controlled for expertise in various ways. For example, Cook et al 2013 not only reviewed the abstracts of peer-reviewed climate papers, but also asked the authors to rate their own papers. The authors’ own ratings showed a much higher percentage of “agreed with consensus” than the abstract ratings did. That means that the abstract ratings likely underestimate the degree of consensus. And remember, this is a consensus of agreement in the peer-reviewed literature, not of individual scientists. However, it’s probably reasonable to assume that the majority of authors agree with the content of the papers they write or co-write.
Doran & Zimmerman 2009 explicitly looked at different levels of expertise and found that the more expert someone was, the more strongly they had been convinced by the data that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Anderegg et al 2010 went even further and controlled for possible “pal review” by only looking at the top five (IIRC) cited papers of each author, and again the greatest amount of consensus was found among the people with the most expertise.
At this point the scientific consensus on global warming has been tested using scientific, statistically valid polling techniques at least 6 times. The methodologies have all been different and yet in every case the expert consensus has been found to be between 90% and 100%. This is called “replication,” and it’s the gold standard for science.
And the GWPP? It’s not a statistically valid poll, there’s no way to verify any level of expertise of the signers, and even if there was, the numbers show that the signature are a tiny minority, not a counter-consensus.
Rubbish.
Read the studies yourself. If you don’t know enough about polling to understand the methods and how they differ from each other, study up on polling (the American Association of Public Opinion Research is a good starting point with lots of good white papers on the topic) and then read the studies. And then look at what the GWPP did with their petition and ask yourself if their petition looks anything like a statistically valid public opinion survey.
BTW, Art Robinson was kind enough to comment briefly at Scholars & Rogues after I published my first analysis. I asked him to provide a rationale for the degrees he identified as “climate related” – he never responded. If he had, perhaps we could better understand why fields that have no apparent connection to climate change (metallurgy? nuclear engineering? really?) or why there doesn’t appear to have been an any attempt to verify that the signers were well informed. I also asked why he has never said how many letters he had to mail to get his 31,487 signatures. The normal response rate for direct mail campaigns is 4%, which would imply that he had to mail more than 750,000 letters to get a paltry 31,487 responses. If that’s even close, it would distract from the GWPP’s false anti-consensus message.
I see no point in debating with an individual so uninformed as to believe “consensus” has any place in science.
Have you derived Newton’s laws of motion for yourself from first principles? If not, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of physicists.
If you smoke, quit on the advice of your doctor, or never started for health reasons, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of epidemiologists who discovered the links between smoking and cancer.
If you avoid eating arsenic because it’s toxic, then you’re relying on the authority and consensus of scientists.
I’m not sure it’s possible go through a day without relying on the authority of experts and the consensus of scientists in some way. So while consensus may not have a place in the scientific method, is surely has a place in our lives and in communicating science to lay people.
And ultimately that’s the point of the GWPP – to cast doubt upon the overwhelming consensus of scientists who have been convinced by nearly 200 years of scientific thought and mountains of data from around the world.
Brian Angliss, I think you are deliberately misstating the nature of the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy. Doing so is to cite the authority, and ignore the evidence they have to support their position. If the evidence is wrong, so is the authority, regardless of their positon. You are also doing something of a “tu quoque” fallacy, as the GWPF is alleged to be using your own favorite arguments.
Tom, I’m not misstating anything about appeals to misleading authority. Authentic authority is derived from evidence and is usually verified via a third party of some kind (a university when it bestows a degree, journals when they publish a paper, et al). The fallacy is when the authority is not authentic due to the reasons I listed above.
My point was that, unless you have the ability to review the evidence yourself, pointing to an authority who has reviewed the evidence and who knows enough about the topic to review the evidence correctly is the correct and reasonable thing to do. And in every case I mentioned above, if you haven’t done the analysis yourself, then you’re relying upon the authority and consensus of people who have.
For the record, though, it’s pretty easy to derive the laws of motion from first principles using modern technology and a little basic calculus.
As for your claim of tu quoque, I can see why you might think that. I don’t agree, however, for two reasons. First, catweazle666 essentially resorted to an insult rather than address my argument. There was little to no reasoned criticism there. Second, my response directly related to his consensus point, although I did pull in the question of authority myself given it’s related. I didn’t criticize him directly as he did me, so I don’t think tu quoque applies.
As an aside: Maibach hired Cook, who may be thinking “what have I gotten myself into.”
Maibach was one of Shukla’s RICO 20.
I thought I recognized that name.
Sounds like it’s time to drain the swamp!
>>As climate change continues to increase the
>>frequency and severity of these extreme events…
Are they referring to the ever-increasing tornado frequency in the US, and the ever-increasing death toll they have created? Yes, that is a terrible, terrible, consequence of this evil global warming.
Oh, wait a minute…..
“As climate change continues to increase the
frequency and severity of these extreme events”
It makes one wonder what world these people are looking at. Not this one.
I imagine that they are looking at the total energy of tropical cyclones across the world, which have really increased since 1993. And this increasing cyclone energy is wreaking havoc, costing the US more and more in reconstruction work in recent years.
Oh, wait a minute……
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bVM78-aHdek/UOHJy3G0R-I/AAAAAAAACXs/KF9x3Yav57c/s1600/normhurr.31Dec12.jpg
Sciency America is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Nincompoops who repeat rhetoric and print rhetoric in their magazine, associated with an incorrect theory (CAGW, the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was caused by solar cycle changes, not changes to atmospheric CO2, if that assertion is correct the warming is reversible) is part of the reason why this scientific problem (what causes the glacial/interglacial cycle, what causes/caused cyclic warming and cooling in the paleo record with a period of 1450 years and a beat of plus or minus 500 years, why the planet has warmed in the last 150 years) has not been solved.
There has been massive climategate inappropriate manipulation of data and analysis to push CAGW. The Trump administration can speed the end of climategate and the cult of CAGW which has continued unabated, by presenting a list and time line of the inappropriate changes to the GISS temperature ‘record’.
Try to imaging GISS data manipulation being presented in congress at the same time there is ‘unexplained’ cooling.
People have no idea how significant the cooling will be.
Come on man. There are cycles of warming in the paleo record that correlate to solar cycle changes. Each and every warming period was followed by cooling (sometimes abrupt cooling) when the solar cycle again changed.
http://www.solen.info/solar/
December 12, 2016
http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/440/1/012001/pdf/1742-6596_440_1_012001.pdf
These poor PhD students will have a very rude awakening in about 5~7 years when the disparity between reality vs. CAGW hypothetical projections exceed 3 standard deviations for 25 years.
When that happens, a large portion of them will be unemployable as the CAGW hypothsis will be tossed on the trash heap of failed ideas…
Perhaps they can find employment in the exciting food service industry….
How they’ll ever pay off $200,000 in student loans will also be a very rude awakening for them…
And so it goes, until it doesn’t…
It would be naive to expect those reliant on the public purse to give up trying to keep the money flowing. However those providing the funds need someone prepared to question where this funding is going and for what. I hope President elect Trump will be that person. Too much money is being squandered on irrational fear mongering.
You know, if I were a government scientist under the new administration, I would not be signing a letter like this.
If someone wants to make budget and personnel cuts in the numbers of Earth scientist, the Trump now has a ready-made list of applicants. Huge rationality FAIL, I would say…
R
But don’t you see, these noble souls are sacrificing themselves for you, for me, for all of us; even though we are clearly not worthy of their sacrifice.
This just goes to show you how much they believe in CAGW. No amount of evidence will convince them to the contrary.
And that is how I know they aren’t scientists, because scientists work with facts.
“Richard Heede is the Principal of Climate Mitigation Services, a consultancy focused on climate stewardship from emissions inventories to profitable action. ”
This guy is poised to make big money from continuing the global warming s c a m.
How many of these “chalk dust heroes” have any idea who Lysenko was?
Seems to me this bunch of nitwits just offered up themselves, in one convenient list, as people to ignore moving forward.
Its an over ambitious funding pitch just the same as Boeing’s Air Force One and Lockheed’s F-35 and hose two haven’t fared well.
I’d be curious to know how many of those 333 PhD student signatories have a faculty adviser who is also a signatory. Follow that up with an anonymous survey of how many felt pressure to sign.
I do hope Griff hasn’t been taken in by the now sadly normal hysteria of the BBC whenever there is any coastal storm damage along any part of the UK coastline and which they imply, sometimes implicitly sometimes explicitly, is because of human caused climate change.
To reassure him, the Thames Barrier (and much of the sea defences around south-east Britain) was embarked upon by people who understood that because of isostatic readjustment after the ice age London would inevitably face gradual increased threat from storm or flood surges. They were not living in some paranoid delusion that the Earth was out to get London, or any other port city, because of evil people using fossil fuel. They also understood that there were many other factors involved in changing sea levels, something sadly lacking in the green community.
In fact, England’s east coast has been suffering erosion for thousands of years. In the Middle Ages an entire city was washed away by storms. Now, thanks to the green movement we are allowing people’s homes and villages to continue to be washed away when we have the means to prevent it. By contrast, across the North Sea the Dutch have not only defended their coastline but actually reclaimed vast tracts from the sea. It is just a matter of resolution and putting people before daft green theory.
Griff is of course perfectly entitled to claim whatever he likes about global warming, but I do hope he isn’t taken in by the increasingly dishonest reporting of the BBC on anything to do with sea levels. Or a few other related topics for that matter….
I spent a little while looking up all the major flood events in the UK since 1990, making particular note of when the previous ‘record flood’ had been and how high it was, when mentioned.
I can assure you the situation has changed since the millennium…
If also you want to look at severe storms and coastal damage, you’ll find the same thing.
If you don’t like that, well then: I have some beachfront property I’d like to sell you!
I already have some, Grifter, and very nice it is too.
Further, despite all your alarmist lies, the sea level hasn’t risen any measurable amount in the last 35 years, not an inch.
Further, I fully expect it will go to my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and their children and grandchildren too.
But if you have some more and you’re that worried about it, I’m sure I can see my way clear to buying it from you.
How’s a tenner sound?
After all, if things are as bad as you say, that’s all it’s worth, right?
10 vs 10,000
!!!!! SATIRE ALERT!!!!!
Brothers and Sisters,
Let us set aside our differences and just accept the fact that Mother Earth considers our species to be an Unrighteous Plague.
The time has come to put away our Sinful Contrivances and Unholy Machinery and embrace the simple lifestyle of our Humble and Virtuous Kin: the Amish.
If ever there were poster children for the “Green” Movement, it is the Amish.
So we should stop driving our fancy SUVs – don’t be vain and don’t be whiney, you don’t want them to get medieval on our hineys.
!!!!!! WE NOW RETURN TO NORMAL PROGRAMMING !!!!!!
+1 – Excellent
I liked that.
Undoubtedly many of these uber greeneys want to be Amish. So why don’t they just go there? Ah, yes, because they are hypocrites — they want to be Amish-plus — Amish with all the mod cons.
R
Loved that. Thank you, Freedom Monger! That’s a keeper. 🙂
When your bread and butter is fake news……
Carbon pollution
Renewable Economic Opportunity
Hottest year evah!
We found the hotspot!
Models and observations are in line
Data Homogenization is fine!
Social cost of carbon!
Extreme weather is on the rise!
Sea Level is rising faster than we ever thought!
They fooled half the population and treated the other half as dimwits. Now the dimwits get to run the show.
“Wind technician” is the fastest growing job category in America, and the solar industry has hired more veterans than any other sector .”
The reference:
Shah, J. Clean Energy Jobs Are Exploding in America. Why Don’t Mainstream Reporters Know? Greentech Media (Sept. 2, 2016). [link]
The relevant section:
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “wind technician” is the fastest-growing job category — expanding twice as much as the next-fastest growing job, occupational therapy assistant.
What did I find when I sent searching?
It was a projection to 2024. Not actual numbers.
And the numbers are pitifully small. An increase of 4800 jobs over the next 10 years. 1.3 jobs a day!
https://sunshinehours.net/2016/12/12/wind-service-technition/
Increasing from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase.
“And the numbers are pitifully small. An increase of 4800 jobs over the next 10 years. 1.3 jobs a day!”
Well, let’s see, Trump saved 1,100 Indiana jobs, and U.S. steel is contributing 10,000 new jobs because of Trump, and the richest man in Japan is contributing $50 billion and creating 50,000 new jobs in America because of Trump. And that’s just over the last few weeks.
Wind technicians will probably be required much less in the future, but that’s ok, they can take one of Trump’s new, well-paying jobs instead.
It’s only about 500, the rest of the jobs are still going to Mexico, at a cost of about $450K per job in tax subsidies. US Steel is projecting those jobs for the entire steel industry, not just itself, and that’s only assuming that all of the tax and regulatory changes that Trump has proposed actually get passed.
What none of these whiners get is that we are now living in the age of postmodern politics. DJT does not read – anything longer than a page. He will never see the letter – it will be sent to his climate lieutenants for interpretation and they will tell him it is BS. Even more, DJT as the BSer in Chief knows his BS and knows that anything coming from the press (I would bet money he has never opened an issue of SciAm) is automatically BS. Ditto any group of people who appeal to him as authorities.
From state level up, few if any politicians read any of the letters sent to them. The numbers are just too large. They all use staff members to categorize and summarize the letters. Then they read the synopsis.
“DJT does not read – anything longer than a page. He will never see the letter – it will be sent to his climate lieutenants for interpretation and they will tell him it is BS.”
I don’t know. If I were president-elect and were interested in the subject, I would trip on over to the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change, WUWT, and read what the experts and others had to say about this subject. What better place to go for unfiltered information? And it doesn’t take long to read the articles. (It takes a LOT longer to comment and keep up with same:).
Ole Trump may be reading us right now. I wouldn’t put it past him. He has a curious mind. Don’t pay attention to the smears of his intellect.
Hey TA,
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not dissing DJT’s intellect. I’m just saying that his methods are VERY different from any past politician. And I totally agree about tripping over to WUWT. I’m sure his people are reading this.
Just now I tripped over to the HuffPuff and saw that DeCaprio is front and center saying that “He met with Trump and he will do the right thing about climate change.” OK, in reality, he gave his movie to Ivana. Nothing about the meeting itself. Have you noticed that everyone who comes out of a meeting with DJT thinks that they have convinced the Donald to their point of view?
Lots of people have met with DJT: Romney, Christy, Guliani – How did it work out for them? DeCaprio is like a second-grader coming out of the principal’s office and claiming that he got recess extended to three hours a day.
“Have you noticed that everyone who comes out of a meeting with DJT thinks that they have convinced the Donald to their point of view?”
Yes, I have, and they all have great big smiles on their faces after coming out of Trump’s office.
You should have seen Carly Fiorina today She visited Trump Tower to meet with Trump. She was smiling from ear to ear after talking to Trump. He’ll probably give her a good job, and I think he should. She is a very smart person. If they can bury the hatchet, that’s good for all of us.
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Attributed to Mark Twain. If you are very good, and have time, you need to get as much information as possible into a well written one page summary. That takes a lot of effort as opposed to “stream of conscious” writing. It’s why there are short summaries of long reports. The short one for the head honchos, and the details for the fact checkers.
Look how well the IPCC SPM worked versus the information in the Working Papers. ;-(
I wouldn’t worry too much, from what I’ve seen, Donald Trump has his finger on the pulse of just about EVERYTHING. He certainly knows the game that’s been going down thanks to Gang-Green [gangrene]. I have every reason to think he will deal with it/them appropriately.
Isn’t “Carbon Pollution” an oxymoron? Shouldn’t they know this?
Wot About the 31,000 real scientists at http://www.climate.petition.org?
Things change. I will never stop by the magazine racks at bookstores again. That was a pitiful era of low information quality. Such declining brands are easily co-opted by alternate agendas when their acquisition cost falls to penny stock levels.
I picked up a recent SA, and could hardly wait to read it with a nice cup of cocoa when delight turned into gobsmacking horror as it became painfully apparent that a great natural science magazine had turned into political science. The mag included multiple instances of anti-Trump, anti-right diatribe throughout. Ordinarily I would have thought such an edition would have been an embarrassment even to the publishers who must have realized they had crossed a line. Alas, I don’t believe so. RIP Scientific American. I’m sad that it will be the last one I buy.
I’m just realizing that Scientific American is suffering from the same political affliction that has now infected the once great game of American Football. Why in the world do they do that to themselves, especially in a world where technology has already so fractionalized their all-important audiences?
Not just the NFL, the NCAA had decreed that they aren’t going to hold anymore tournaments, etc in N. Carolina until the rescind a law that keeps men out of women’s restrooms.
There is a cultural war going on. The Left is trying to destroy the traditional conservative, religious culture of the United States.
President John Kennedy had a goal of sending men to the moon. President Obama has a goal of sending men to the women’s rest room.
Question: Should ‘Scientific’ American be charged/accused or otherwise taken to court for false advertising? It has been years since they scientifically did anything.