Guest Commentary by Kip Hansen
“Multiple scientific assessments have concluded that man-made climate change is real and poses risks to human health and the environment. Even so, Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, told Breitbart News on Monday that he would like to essentially re-litigate the science of climate change.
In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, Pruitt proposed setting up opposing teams to debate key climate science issues.
“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt voiced support for a “red team-blue team” exercise to foster such a discussion. The red-blue team concept gained prominence in a Wall Street Journal commentary by Steven Koonin, a professor at New York University.
Koonin argued that such an exercise would subject the scientific consensus on climate change to a rigorous test. The red team would challenge consensus findings from scientific assessments, and the blue team would have the opportunity to respond.
“The outcome of a Red/Blue exercise for climate science is not preordained, which makes such a process all the more valuable,” Koonin wrote. “It could reveal the current consensus as weaker than claimed. Alternatively, the consensus could emerge strengthened if Red Team criticisms were countered effectively.””
— EPA’s Scott Pruitt wants to set up opposing teams to debate climate change science. Washington Post — 7 June 2017 — by Jason Samenow
Why is this report almost entirely wrong?
The Washington Post’s Jason Samenow is an experienced journalist. He certainly is experienced in climate science communication. According to his Wiki entry “Samenow worked as a climate change analyst at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Division from 2000 to September 2010. Samenow launched and oversaw the EPA’s public website on climate change. … In early 2004, Samenow established CapitalWeather.com, the Internet’s first professional weather blog.” (apparently, while an employee of the Federal EPA.)
When Samenow’s weather blog, CapitalWeather.com, was absorbed by the Washington Post in 2008, Samenow came along and is now the Washington Post’s Weather Editor.
However, like other federal employees that have turned to the internet to express their views on climate science, Samenow is not a disinterested, unbiased reporter of the facts. So, instead of journalism, we get advocacy and commentary where we should see news.
What Does Samenow Get Wrong?
Nearly everything. Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, did speak to Breitbart News on Monday but he did not say “that he would like to essentially re-litigate the science of climate change.” Climate Science is not subject to “litigation” — not then, not now, not in the future — so it certainly cannot be “re-litigated” even if Pruitt desired that.
Of course, that is not what Scott Pruitt said. What he did say is “What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt voiced support for a “red team-blue team” exercise to foster such a discussion. He refers to Koonin’s Wall Street Journal editorial in which Koonin argued that such an exercise would subject the scientific consensus on climate change to a rigorous test. [see Judith Curry’s “A ‘Red Team’ Exercise Would Strengthen Climate Science”].
Samenow repeats and doubles down on his original error with “In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, Pruitt proposed setting up opposing teams to debate key climate science issues.” The last thing Pruitt, or any sensible person for that matter, wants is to have opposing teams debate climate science.
The Washington Post author apparently has no idea what a Red Team Blue Team exercise would be for a scientific question. Maybe he has confused with it Dr. Suess’s Red Fish Blue Fish. Maybe Samenow should have looked it up in the Wiki. [If you don’t already realize why I say Samenow is clueless, you should read the Wiki, read Dr. Curry’s essay linked above and do a Google on Red Teams.] Samenow refers to the approach as re-litigation and debate. It is neither.
”Samenow writes: “Historically, red teams have been called upon in military exercises as a way to introduce alternative ideas and, ultimately, strengthen organizational performance. But David Titley, a climate scientist at Penn State University and retired Navy rear admiral, said introducing a red team into climate science doesn’t make sense. “Science already has a red team: peer review.””
In case no one at the Washington Post reads their own Science section [here and here] depending on peer-review to ensure correct results is a fool’s hope. Peer review is coming under increasing scrutiny, especially in fields that have strong indicators of publication bias and ideological bias, in fields where there is a strong and professionally-enforced consensus. I needn’t point out here that climate science is one such field.
The Intelligence and the Tech Security worlds have been using Red Team’s for quite some time, and the approach has become quite sophisticated.
What Red Team Blue Team is meant to do in the Intelligence World is to obviate the influence of “group think” among intelligence analysts, who tend to be a close knit group. According to Psychology Today: “Groupthink occurs when a group values harmony and coherence over accurate analysis and critical evaluation. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly follow the word of the leader and it strongly discourages any disagreement with the consensus.”
In Intelligence, this has fairly recently led to a US President being advised to go to war, and doing so, over the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, which were figments of groupthink among America’s intelligence analysts.
In a scientific field, groupthink leads to studies that “go along to get along” — to publication bias where the ‘best journals” only publish papers that agree with the emerging consensus or the field’s opinion leaders, drowning out by volume any differing voices and pushing dissenting papers downline into less prominent, less prestigious journals, where they do not have any influence and are seldom, if ever, read.
And that’s what Climate Science needs — a remedy for the groupthink that has led to attitudes like that of Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who is quoted saying: “The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in particular for the specific question around global warming, is unfounded and ridiculous…”.
So much for a search for better understanding.
# # # # #
Post Script: I once made a suggestion at Climate Etc. that the whole field of Climate Science might want to hit the RESTART button. A properly constituted Red Team would fit the bill to re-evaluate the field, discover misunderstandings, discover unknown unknowns, and direct future research to find the answers to known unknowns.
I’d like to see your comments, especially on the use of Red Teams in the real world, your professional lives. – Kip Hansen
Lead image credit: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
# # # # #
It wasn’t just the US intelligence community that concluded Saddam Hussein had WMDs, it was most of the other national intelligence services, too. Hussein was putting out desinforrmatisya that he did have gas and germs, and was believed. A situation like someone using a realistic toy gun to rob a store.
The situation with climate change is rather parallel, with shared bad assumptions by nominally independent groups.
Especially since he HAD used WMD in his war with Iran.
Which he bought from the USA. What a racket! Sell him the stuff then kill him because he has the suff!
“Which he bought from the USA”
From the Dutch actually.
This man was the scapegoat.
Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat (born August 9, 1942 in Den Helder) is a Dutch businessman. He sold raw materials for the production of chemical weapons to Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. In December 2005 a court in The Hague convicted him of complicity in war crimes for his role in selling chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein’s government and given a 15-year sentence. In 2007 the appeal court sentenced Van Anraat to seventeen years in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_van_Anraat
As to nuclear weapons, there was 550 tons of yellowcake uranium.
“The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/
Yellowcake is not WMD. It is a precursor to one, much like water is a precursor to sarin.
Letting your anti-American feelings out jon?
Your comment is plain false.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/fallujah.jpg
Iraq picked up their WMD, mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, from Russia and used the WMD against Iran and the Kurds.
Saddam, never satisfied using borrowed toys to kill people always desired his own chemical plants; just as Iran does.
OH, that must have been the fake yellow cake that they were going to buy according to a fake document that MI5 concocted to sex up Blair’s “dodgy dossier”.
Now someone in the US “secretly” removes the non existent yellow cake and plants a story in NYT as “proof” that it existed.
I guess they actually found some WMD as well but “secretly” removed then without telling anyone they had found evidence which justified their illegal war.
[??? .mod]
The US did not sell Saddam chemical weapons. What Germany sold Saddam was manufacturing technology and actually built the plants for producing commercial insecticides. Those plants were converted to making nerve agent. They also sold precursor chemicals for the production of insecticides which he had converted to make Sarin and various other nerve agents with the most potent being VX.
Jon, “Which he bought from the USA. ”
Whatever chemical weaponry / tooling he may have obtained from the USA was obtained illegally. (Look up the company “Alcolac” who was busted selling Saddam a precursor material but claimed they didn’t know Saddam was the end buyer.) His biggest purchases for chemical weapon manufacturing and materials were from Germany.
Saddam bought less than 1% of his weapons from the USA; he probably bought more from Denmark than the USA. His absolute BIGGEST supplier was Russia (over 50%, where did you think all Saddam’s tanks came from?) with another 1/3 from France and China.
Nothing fake about Saddam’s desire to buy yellowcake.
That’s because he DID have them. We know he used WMDs. We know he did not destroy them (all) or stop employment of scientists to develop them. We know they ended up over the border in Syria (where they were used too).
And we know that they keep finding WMD stockpiles, which the meeja describes as “old and degraded – not useable.” Well, yes. 15 years later they are no longer fit for purpose. Only a couple of years ago the British were reported to have destroyed a couple of bunkers worth of WMDs. In Baghdad. Walking distance from the palace.
The overcooking of intelligence was the threat to the US and links to AQ. Not the WMDs themselves (although some individual claims were perhaps wrong).
I remember a fellow, I think his name was something like Monsour – on Fox several times talking about Russian hazmat units transporting Saddam’s WMDs into Syria before the inevitable war started.
Tom and Rhoda ==> It is worse than we thought — ISIS operating in Iraq has used poison gas on the Kurds. I doubt that they made the gas themselves. I suspect that they simply used hidden stockpiles from Saddam’s days, which we have failed to uncover. So, the CIA may have been right after all — but I doubt it.
Of more likely poison gas captured from Syrian depots.
The UK reports on Saddam’s wmd have been shown to be baseless.
From: http://www.inquisitr.com/959826/syria-chemical-weapons-iraq-wmds-taken-by-russia-to-assad-and-back-again/
The analog here with the CAGW process is the issue of scale or materiality.
Very few people I know oppose the concept of global warming caused by CO2. Where there should be a constant battleground open to both sides of the debate is the impact and what portion of the measured world temperature is due to mans emissions. I want to know and a bunch of headless chickens screaming that the world is doomed and no more further investigation is needed will not wash.
The Iraq war was a beat-up we all knew they had chemicals because we sold them to them. Simple as that.
“what portion of the measured world temperature is due to mans emissions.”
There is no measured world temperature. There is a derived temp, which is physically meaningless.
So that’s the first thing that should go with a re-do.
Ingredients for self-production of chemical weapons are easy to get on the world market. In the case of chlorine gas even very easy. IS partially makes the explosive that they use for their cruel attacks themselves. The production of chemical weapons is not much more difficult. Therefore, one can not say that there are never chemical weapons at any time and in any place on earth. They can be produced at any time with two semesters of chemistry and a corresponding manual. In the case of Sadam Hussein, however, the United States has nevertheless embarrassed itself, for in his opinion, none of the previously mentioned gases have been found. Either he had sent them abroad or it was just a reason for the invasion of Iraq. The latter is likely to be more likely. O I L ! And not just for the US, even more so for Europe.
Derived temps meaningless?
I thought alarmists were bad trying to delete the LIA and MWP…Wuwt wants to deny all history.
The global temperature exists. It has a precise physical meaning. It’s this meaning that allows us to say…
The LIA was cooler than today…it’s the meaning that allows us to say the day side of the planet is warmer than the nightside…The same meaning that allows us to say Pluto is cooler than earth and mercury is warmer.
Mosher ==> re your :
I will be quoting you on that. Thank you.
In the days immediately prior to the resumption of the Gulf War, convoy’s of trucks were spotted moving something from Iraq into Syria.
The Global Average Temperature is real…a real estimate. With unknown, and probably incalculable error bars. Keep this in mind when judging if it is fit for the purpose it is being put to.
ATheoK — People scoffed at the Syrian idea for years, even though Saddam had moved his air force to Iran in the first Gulf War and Nork WMD were bombed in Syria by Israel.
Hans-Georg — I realize the “war for oil” meme is a very common belief outside the US (and not even that rare inside the U.S.) but it’s on a par with the Elders of Zion nonsense. We didn’t get any oil from Iraq, the war made oil more expensive not less, and within a decade our domestic fracking boom was pushing us back toward being the #1 oil producer. The only sense in which the oil mattered was that it meant Saddam could corrupt the UN “Oil For Food” program and would easily rearm after sanctions collapsed entirely.
Yes, meaningless. You can’t take temp measurements from different places, average them together, and come up with anything physically meaningful.
And FYI, I don’t speak for anyone but myself, so your breathless proclamation of WUWT denying all history is just histrionics.
What rarely gets mentioned is the 550 TONS of Iraqi yellow cake that was secretly shipped to Canada. http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/yellowcake.asp
If you trust Snopes, then you can say, “This isn’t the WMD you are looking for. There is nothing to be seen here. Move along.” However, if you think that Snopes is biased, then you might question the claims by the Left that Bush was duped.
Inquiring minds might also wonder where the Syrians got chemical weapon artillery shells. Invading US forces found virtually empty warehouses in Iraq, with one or two artillery shells lying on the floor as though the building had been emptied in haste and they had been overlooked.
These two anecdotes don’t PROVE that Hussein had WMD. However, the past administration had political reasons to hide the truth and things may not be as the Democrats claim. Results may vary. Use with caution. Supposedly, file cabinets of secret information had been captured, amounting to millions of words in Farsi(?). Has this been translated? Has any of it seen the light of day?
Rhoda is right. Hussein had chemical weapons and used them on his own people during the Iran-Iraq war. He had teams in his nation studying chemical weapon production. The problem was that we had no idea how many chemical weapons he had. In addition, the fact that he did not reveal his stockpiles and he did not produce records of the production/destruction became “proof” that he still had weapons and was hiding them. We could not possibly know that his own scientists were lying to him.
I’m not so sure that was sufficient provocation to go to war, but everyone believed he had the weapons.
It was also a matter of not complying with multiple UN resolutions on the truce, sheltering Abu Nidal, and having been involved in the first World Trade Center bombing to the extent of sheltering a participant.
The Army came across several caches of “obsolete” artillery shells and other odds ‘n ends. Still dangerous (mainly to the Kurds), of course, despite being non-existent. What George W. should have done was propose shipping the material to New Jersey for deactivation and neutralization. That would have put the protesters in a quandary. How do you argue their non-existence yet protest their shipment?
Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN Security Council sanctions was also a good reason to go to war against Saddam. I mean, how long are you going to let a mad dictator slide and defy international law? You want to give Saddam enough time to become another Kim Jung Un?
One result of the war on Saddam was Kaddafy of Libya volutarily gave up his weapons of mass destruction programs, which included a previously unknown nuclear program (A-bomb plans were written in Chinese), no doubt, thinking he might be next on Bush’s list.
If Bush had been a little tougher, he might have forced the Iranians to give up their weapons of mass destruction, too. But alas, he was a little too timid, and now Trump is going to have to clean up this Iranian WMD mess.
Yeah, ole Bush could have probably fomented a revolution in Iran right after he took out Saddam, if he had played his cards right. Too bad he hesitated. It’s going to be more difficult now. It’s always more difficult when you put off confronting dangerous enemies. They only get more dangerous with time and the costs to confront them get higher.
Leaving mad dictators to their own devices is not a good idea.
Hussein was not openly defying the UN Security Council Sanctions. The UN had inspectors in Iraq searching for chemical weapons. The fact that they could not find the weapons became “proof” that Saddam Hussein was hiding them.
In the mean time, we had Hussein controlled with no-fly zones and trade restrictions. He was not going to be a danger to us.
The bigger issue was Cheney and Rumsfeld chafing against the fact that we “did not finish the job” the first time.
UN inspectors were in Iraq, however they were not free to inspect where they wanted when they wanted.
I always thought he hid his WMD in Syria (along with most of his airforce).
“In the mean time, we had Hussein controlled with no-fly zones and trade restrictions. He was not going to be a danger to us.”
Yeah, we have Kim Jung Un controlled with trade restrictions, too. Until we don’t.
Pretty soon we are going to allow Kim to reach the “go, no go” option on nuking the U.S. Who wants to be at the mercy of a merciliess madman? Not me. Pre-emptive military actions to thwart Kim strikes me as a better option. The sooner the better.
We don’t have North Korea controlled with sanctions. Korea is a false equivalence to iraq under Saddam Hussein.
If you go back to ca. 1980 and then work forward, the information available shows that the uproar over WMDs was due to the fact that US military intellicence agencies and the CIA absolutely knew that Iraq had WMDs, because they had in fact supplied Iraq with the technical know how to produce biological weapons. It was that thought that Iran, who had the capacity, would use them on the Iraqi. Western agencies were concerned the conflict between the Sunni Iragi government and the Shiite Iranian government would result in Iraq’s fall. In consequence they provided technical information and types of biological materials to Iraq to maintain a semblance of parity between the Sunni and Shia capacities. This information is laced throughout discussions about the actual causes of Gulf War Syndrome in the later 1990s and early 2000s. GWS was thought by some medically trained individuals in the US and Europe (including at least one military doctor who came to suffer from syndrome) to be the result of Iraqi use of chemical weapons that went either unreported or undetected.
Geese, people! Let’s not fight the Iraq war all over again here. Climate science, please.
Yes, but it is an example of how a narrative can get established, and persist, despite evidence. Any analogies you can think of ofhand?
Christ, Tom! Look at any failed venture for analogies!
Lies of the left need to be refuted, whatever the context.
Sorry, the Iraqi govt. under Hussein was not religious like Iran or Saudi Arabia but secular Ba’athist (Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party). Hussein wore a military uniform all the time. The closeness between Iraq & Syria is through the Ba’ath political movement as Assad is a Ba’athist & Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was a Ba’athist as well.
Hussein did have huge stockpiles of yellow cake uranium that we could not guard without letting others know it was there. He took a pounding on no WMDs being found while the yellow cake was quietly removed from the country. I think that was a good thing for him to do and he took the political fallout like a man.
Equating yellowcake with WMD is a bit like saying “I just bought a truckload of iron ore so I can build a car in my back yard”
There’s a few steps in between – just ask the mullahs in Tehran, they’ve been at it for a couple of decades and they haven’t wiped out Israel yet.
There is no use for yellow cake unless you have either a nuclear power program, or a nuclear weapons program.
Saddam did not have the first, therefore he had the second.
Your analogy is pathetic because iron ore has many uses.
PS, the mere fact that the mad mullah’s have not yet attacked Israel is not evidence that they never will.
Saddam’s own Generals thought he had WMDs.
That’s right, Saddam’s generals *did* think Saddam still had an active WMD program because that’s what Saddam wanted them to think. Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMD’s because he thought that would protect him.
Is it any wonder the Intelligence services of the world got it wrong? Not to me.
Saddam thought if others thought he had WMD then he would be protected, but it turns out that others thinking he had WMD put him in mortal danger. A very big miscalculation, wouldn’t you say.
We should have dipped Saddam slowly into a nitric acid bath like he did his opponents. Saddam used to watch and laugh and smoke cigars while the flesh was slowly dissolved off his enemies. He started the bath by attaching them to a crane and then dipping their feet and ankles in first, so the victim could watch his own body being dissolved. No doubt Saddam derived great pleasure from their pain and suffering.
Now it’s your turn, Saddam. Burn in Hell, just like you deserve. May you receive just what you gave. That would be justice.
“On 22 May 2003, at the Charing Cross Hotel in London, Kelly met Andrew Gilligan, a BBC journalist who had spent some time writing about the war in Baghdad. Kelly was anxious to learn what had happened in Iraq, while Gilligan, who had discussed a very early draft of the dossier with Kelly, wished to ask him about it in light of the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction. They agreed to talk on an unattributable basis, which allowed the BBC to report what was said but not to identify the source. Kelly told Gilligan of his concerns over the 45-minute claim and allegedly ascribed its inclusion in the dossier to Alastair Campbell, the director of communications for Prime Minister Tony Blair”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)
But the real crime was selling oil in Euros…
I very rarely bet on anything , but I made $500 that year betting that no WMDs would be found .
I happened in Manhattan to have a UN feed on cable . So I saw that Hussein et al were jumping thru every bureaucratic barrel the Bush et al ( this very much was a war of family vendetta ) threw at them short of exile . But there was no way they could satisfy the paperwork documentation standards of WDC .
This is a good example of how a narrative can stay in use, regardless of evidence, just like CAGW. Allied troops did find scattered caches of WMDs, mostly gas artillery shells. There was a series in the decidedly anti-Bush New York Times decrying the lack of training US troops got in dealing with nerve gas, and the subsequent injuries. The allies just didn’t find large amounts of germs and gas deployed when Iraq was invaded.
That’s an inaccurate depiction of the Iraqi WMD issue. WMDs were really just a sideshow to the real reasons to liberate Iraq, but they were politically judged to be the easiest thing to present to get the UN onboard: that effort ultimately failed, with the UN choosing to do nothing. The intelligence on the WMDs was also not a group think issue, as several unrealated communities came to the same conclusions.
On the other hand, AGW is a very good example of groupthink.
Count to 10 ==> I certainly didn’t mean to stir up Bush-era politics. It is generally accepted that the western Intelligence community messed this issue up.
That in itself is an example of group think.
Could the admin delete this OT string of WMD comments? Holy crap I had to scroll for half a page before I got to a climate related post.
It’s generally accepted, amongst those who already hate Bush and or the west.
But David Titley, a climate scientist at Penn State University and retired Navy rear admiral, said introducing a red team into climate science doesn’t make sense. “Science already has a red team: peer review.”
He’s right. You may think peer review doesn’t work very well, but that doesn’t mean the new idea is different. It isn’t. So you need to figure out why it would word better.
The problem with peer review is simple, and not what people here think. The problem is that it is hard to get people to put time and effort into it. They have priorities that would give them more personal satisfaction, and of course they are not paid. Fortunately there are still (just) enough public-spirited folk to keep it going. We need them.
What is never clear to me in this is whether the Red team is supposed to also do research, or if they are just criticising the Blue team’s research. If the former, you would have something like BEST. If the latter, it might not turn out to be so different from blogs.
Nick ==> I suggest reading Judith Curry’s piece on Koonin and Red Teams with an open mind and heart.
You might see the wisdom in it.
In my Restart essay I suggested:
“… But it would be a fascinating group thought experiment. An experiment probably best performed by a dozen or two acknowledged experts from the various scientific disciplines involved – preferably non-combatants in the Climate Wars – to get together for a four-day weekend conference somewhere — possibly under the Chatham House Rule to protect participants from the sometimes-vicious personal and professional attacks all-too-common in the Climate Wars — to consider this question: What Would It Mean to Hit the Climate Science RESTART Button? …” followed by a series of issues that could be addressed by such a Team of Experts, a Red Team.
Red Teams, in the Intelligence field, are meant to combat the possibility of Groupthink. If the idea of a deep field review by a team of highly qualified experts — non-Climate Scientists — experts in Physics, Energy Transfer, Atmospheric circulations, oceanic circulations, atmospheric chemistry, statistics, non-linear mathematics, and just plain general geniuses — if such an idea seems wrong-headed or threatening to you, you may be suffering from, and defending, Climate Science Groupthink.
A real experiment could easily be done to test the back radiation heating effect claimed for CO2 – it is trivial.
This is simple kip.
The blue team holds the following beliefs.
1. Co2 is a GHG. No credible scientist will waste his time red teaming this. A few nuts on the web would.
2. GHGs warm the planet. Again you can’t find a red team to challenge this.
3. Doubling c02 will increase temps by 1.5 to 4.5c.
Again…you can’t find a disinterested red team to challenge this..
What exactly do you expect them to do and who are these r people?
Details.
Mosher ==> It is not simple — except in a mind already made up on every issue.
The reality, the actuality, is that Climate science is a very complex, complicated field of study, with wide ranging uncertainties, huge blackholes of unknowns and intriguing avenues of as-yet unexplored possibilities.
Your view is simplistic. [“treating complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are.”]
Saying things like that makes you sound like a clueless ‘tweenaged Climate Warrior.
I emailed some influential friends in the USA several weeks ago as follows:
The Trump statement withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is political and economic, and contains no surprises. The Paris Agreement is a debacle on both fronts.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord
The science is also wrong – as you know, there is essentially zero probability of dangerous global warming due to increased atmospheric CO2. The global warming crisis is fictitious nonsense. See my posts from April 2017 and June 2015 below:
The subject of my 2008 icecep.us paper is final getting serious debate on wattsup, although the main protagonists in the debate have taken it one step too far. I am agnostic on the most fractious point in this debate (is the primary driver of increasing atmospheric CO2 natural or manmade), in part because we do not need to resolve it to dismiss the global warming crisis as false. It is clear that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is extremely low.
See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/13/is-murry-salby-right/comment-page-1/#comment-2509251
In the next months, it would be most productive for the US government to engage in a full review of the science of alleged global warming. A competent review one or two decades ago could have saved many trillions of dollars and many thousands of lives.
What can you do to encourage such a review?
Best, Allan
Allan MacRae, P.Eng., Calgary
Epilogue:
Climate sensitivity (ECS) is no more than ~1C/(2xCO2) and probably much less, so there is no real global warming crisis. Many trillions of dollars and many thousands (even millions) of lives have been squandered on what is clearly false, and probably fraudulent claims of high ECS.
A couple of rebuttal points on your claims:
2. GHGs warm the planet. Again you can’t find a red team to challenge this.
I have read a considerable amount challenging this. It simply can’t be true if you understand the feedbacks inherent in the atmosphere, particularly cloud formation. The models all assume that clouds are positive feedback because they can’t create alarming levels of temperature increase otherwise. That doesn’t make it true, as the evidence shows.
3. Doubling c02 will increase temps by 1.5 to 4.5c.
As far as any actual measurements are concerned, no. Increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere for 17 years hasn’t increased the “global temperature” by anything at all.
I think a genuine red team would make mincemeat of the global warming claims. Obviously, this is why the warmists are fighting it so much.
Steve, number 3 isn’t clear cut. The difference between 1.5C and 4.5C is huge. It’s the difference between very small effects and very large effects.
Plus, there’s number 4. What the effects of this temperature increase are.
Number 5. What we can do to meaningfully reduce CO2.
Number 6. The economic benefits of CO2 reductions versus their costs.
Each of these steps become more and more uncertain. In my opinion, Number 4 is where things become sketchy, and 5&6 are where things truly fall over, as the reductions we can take are meaninglessly small yet ludicrously expensive
Don’t give a half or quarter argument and pretending that you’ve given the whole thing. The alarmist side has been doing that for decades now.
Remember that the Hockey Team successfully redefined the peer review.
and mic drop.
Peer review in reality is little more than an advanced form of spell check.
Nick, about climate science peer review you say: “Fortunately there are still (just) enough public-spirited folk to keep it going.”
Some might say those “public-spirited folk” are “climate activists.” The Climategate emails would support that idea.
Dave,
“Nick, about climate science peer review”
I was talking about science in general. Thinking of the huge number of journals now, and the collective and unrewarded effort of reviewing them.
Nick Stokes:
This thread is about potential red/blue team assessment of climate science but you say
Yes, of course you were. Frequent readers of WUWT are familiar with your tactic of attempting to disrupt discussion of a subject by talking about related issues and not the subject under discussion. You always do it when the subject under discussion is inconvenient for pro-‘climate science’ propaganda.
Richard
Nick Stokes ==> What you say about peer review is true — but the end results of peer review are increasingly being found not to prevent poor science from appearing in journals — peer review has not produced reliablility in results.
Serious real peer review is hard hard unrewarding (financially) work for sure. It is even hard for me to review and edit my own work (self-review).
When there were a handful of important journals in each field, and a relative handful of important papers needing review, and it was prestigious to be considered a qualified peer-reviewer in one’s field, the results were better. Today I think there is little real serious effective peer review happening.
In CliSci I fear we see almost nothing but ClimateGate-style review.
“What is never clear to me in this is whether the Red team is supposed to also do research, or if they are just criticising the Blue team’s research”
Why is that not clear to you?
There are many scientists doing research in the climate field who are at least as competent as you and who do not share your view that CO2 is going to cause catastrophic warming – or any significant warming at all, come to that.
Do you not consider their research and their consequent understanding of the issues involved to be worth consideration, or are you merely taking up your usual stance as a gatekeeper for the CAGW brigade?
There is no such red team.
Names please.
Mosher ==> My suggestion was “best performed by a dozen or two acknowledged experts from the various scientific disciplines involved – preferably non-combatants in the Climate Wars –”
“preferably non-combatants in the Climate Wars –””
Unfortunately the battlefield has expanded to include absolutely everybody on the planet (save perhaps a teenaged yak herder in Asia), so there are no non-combatants. A better idea is to select a team with a similar level of commitment to the blue team (which is extremely biased). By giving large grants to every red team member that finds a flaw in the blue team’s work, we will create sufficient inducement to get real results. This is how the blue team works, after all.
As long as just one party in a discussion has control of publication, there is absolutely no “Red Team” effect in peer review. The Climategate emails make absolutely clear the process had been corrupted very early by partisanship. When peer review constitutes arguing that a paper doesn’t repeat the “consensus” it has failed, especially if an “uncritical reading” indicates that the paper makes arguments that appear to be mathematically and physically sound. The fact that “sound argument” can be contradicted by other “sound arguments” means that one or the other is wrong and quite possibly both are. My own view is that it is “weather all the way down.” There can be no understanding of climate that exceeds our understanding of weather. Any attempt to explain weather patterns in terms of climate is circular because the data employed is quite simply weather data, regardless of whether it summarized temperatures or rainfall or naturally “summarized” proxy data. Climate is not and never has been the “why” of weather. It is only the result. That goes for the available empirical geological data on CO2 which certainly varies with long term “climate” patterns. However, the longest term data we have really suggests we should be desperately hoping for global warming and welcoming every uptick in atmospheric CO2 as a slight increase in the distance between a viable biology and another Permian-level event. We could easily adapt to increased sea levels, but a Permian-level extinction would almost certainly take us along. Even more significantly, the Permian extinction affected the oceans first and worst. Geochemical evidence suggests declining oxgen in marine environments (reduced primary production) ending at the very end of the Permian in an abrupt and intense ice age. The boundary between the Permian and Triassic is marked by an an abrupt disappearance of foreshore sedmentary environments, replaced by continental sediments. The sole explanation for such a reduction in sea level would be a profound increase in continental ice sheets
Really? Don’t make me laugh. Define ‘public-spirited folk’? No, don’t bother. How about the peer-review process of the Celebrant-in-Chief, the IPCC for instance?
“He’s right. You may think peer review doesn’t work very well, but that doesn’t mean the new idea is different. It isn’t. So you need to figure out why it would word better.”
One example of the failure is the dozens of papers questioning the GCMs utility for attribution studies. There are almost no reasonable rebuttal of these papers but there is still huge focus on GCMs in both effort and money. In a functioning red/ blue team effort the consensus team would be required to refute the arguments put forth by the GCM questioners. There are dozens if not hundreds of papers that suggest the sun or internal climate variability are the major drivers and likely explain most of the warming but the IPCC says “we can’t think of any thing other than anthropogenic CO2 that could explain the warming”. A red team would be required to successfully refute these claims before advocating mitigation expenditure.
Citations required.
“Citations required.”
The acme of academic bullying.
I actually agree totally this is not a court where authority is the ruler of the day.
Evidence is real or not and anybody can bring it down.
Any restraint on data or method should also be the death of all work or referenced work totally.
In a court we are requested to tell the whole truth but anyone who has been under cross examination in a case will likely have experienced being shutdown during answering a question. In science that would demand all to be dumped. That has not been happening in the recent times in science.
Peer and pal review is an issue also.
Bill, I agree; one must listen before one can hear.
The Left has learned that shouting down an opponent works. Go on any college campus.
The Left got a great lead out of the blocks on climate extremes with the politicized IPCC’s use of the likes of Santer, Trenberth, Mann, etc. Real scientists have had a hell of a time catching up with the media.
Politics win.
My thinking of a Red Team/Blue Team, consists of two groups of scientists who may oppose each other, doing research together. Instead of a group of buddies patting each other on the back for their use of “novel statistics”.
Yet another inconsistent idea about what red teams are.
That’s why I included a blue team.
One might contend that the first and foremost problem with peer review, upstream from the complacency of reviewers, is that it is anonymous. Why should they put any time into it if their names and reputations are not on the line?
From the descriptions of red team / blue team “exercises” in the o.p. it seems they would be public.
As a reviewer I have never asked for anonymity. My view has always been if you don’t have the conviction to be associated with your evaluations, then refuse to be a reviewer. Anonymity allows groupthink members to act as gatekeepers without fear of discovery. Reread the Climategate emails to see where this can lead.
@Nick,
The problem is that it is hard to get people to put time and effort into it. They have priorities that would give them more personal satisfaction, and of course they are not paid.
And that is why “peer review” has morphed into “pal review”. There is little compensation in being a peer, but a great deal of compensation in being a pal. Positive feedback feeds the grant process, the bank account, and the tenure process.
The Red Team approach ensures that the peer review process has real monetary and professional compensation.
Now, if we can only find a way to keep the Red Team from being infected with Blues and throwing the game.
The start of the IPCC was political, not scientific, and one of the primary goals was income redistribution to poorer countries. Some kind of red team should take this on.
Another primary goal was a socialist / left wing global government made up of unelected and unaccountable left wing proponents and activists. An end to democracy and democratic accountability because voters aren’t capable of making the ‘correct’ decisions. (similar philosophy to that which underpins the EU)
EU is far from perfect, but democracy will increase as of May 2019 with one less monarchy involved. In the meanwhile, those voicing skeptic opinions in the EU have to battle many demons by the same token.
People might take the IPCC more seriously if they laid off the SJW crap.
I can’t see why anyone would take the IPCC seriously.
The IPCC was created soley to prove that CO2 was changing the Earth’s climate. They started out with an assumption that CO2 was changing the Earth’s claimate, and are now trying to prove it is true. They haven’t realized their goal yet with respect to proving the Earth’s climate is changing, but they have made great progess in pushing UN world government and in getting billions and billions of dollars to play with along the way.
They would have won the political battle had Hillary Clinton been elected. But then fate intervened.
TA, as an atheist I hate to say it, but President Trump’s unlikely arrival could be from divine intervention. A positive one, at that.
It’s a good thing climate science predates the ipcc.
We know in 1896 that c02 warms the planet.
English-Major-Mosher,
You repeat this endlessly, but you never mention, “But we have no idea how much.” 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C? Well, that is precise, NOT, and not established from first principles.
“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,”
The whole world could use that.
Of course, that discussion will not match up with current IPCC “climate change” rationale.
One of the most important things to do for anyone analyzing the situation is determine who within media is a political operative.
As far as I know there isn’t a single blog on the internet that gets any readership, that is anything more than a political activist’s personal website.
Everyone discussing climate is a political operative. We need scientists who can display a correct understanding of what makes atmospheric matter-energy relationships function.
Steven ==> Anthony Watts was, at the beginning, just a TV Weatherman interested in a specific little question about measuring air temperatures at weather stations. He has suffered at the hands of political activists of all stripes every since.
From personal contact and conversation, I can tell you he has almost zero interest in what passes for politics in America.
“We need scientists who can display a correct understanding of what makes atmospheric matter-energy relationships function.”
“Correct” in this instance being ones who agree that CAGW is an existential threat, you mean?
I believe there are many scientists who both blog and publish in the peer reviewed literature, many who do not appear to be grinding political axes.
I’ve been an infrequent poster and devoted reader for many years. I will not participate in a conversation where people like Nick Stokes can insult people like me without consequences. I’ve done Red Team and it is clear he knows what they do and nevertheless chooses to go for the abuse of the participants instead of critique of the process. I cannot make him stop but I can stop reading the nastiness.
Rob – I suspect you know as well as I do that such a Red Team analysis of “climate change” will not end up favorably for those like Nick who support the current paradigm. We should not expect any sort of support for this endeavor from the CAGW supporting side.
The way I read it was – I Nick Stokes am shit-scared of this happening.
… and so he should be. Despite the fact that the inevitable result will be buried by the vile denizens of our world of lies and deceit.
Exactly right. It’s not about science, it’s all politics.
As long as we are endlessly quoted the 97% line, science is degraded. When the public imagination drops the 97% meme there’s no more need to debate science.
Great idea. Unfortunately the established Climate Alarmists are a key part of “The Resistance” and will refuse to participate, as they do now. They will then challenge the legitimacy of any results because THEY were not included. Catch-22.
Hmmm, same as the Democrat politicians…
Ideally the journals would publish both sides of the argument. BUT the editors cannot be trusted to be impartial. Therefore each side should appoint an editorial board which would select the best of their own side arguments to publish. Journals would publish, equally, the selected papers.
Consensus climate science doesn’t have peer review. It has agreement review.
Nick Stokes, “If the former, you would have something like BEST.”
You mean the people who, like you, know nothing of instrumental resolution and who, like you, know nothing of systematic measurement error.
These are the people who should provide a critical alternative.
It’s too funny.
Science (climatology an exception) is conducted is ways similar to a jury trial. We want to hear all of the theories and evidence from both sides and have those theories and that evidence examined
by the other side. One glance at that graph displaying the myrid of differing model estimates of past, present and future warming , augmented by the graphic line showing Earth temperature reality, makes it abundently clear that there exists nothing even close to a consensus, excepting perhaps that planetary warming is preceding as before, with some stops and starts, ever since the last ice age. On the bright side, electric car and molten salt reactor technology is making the entire
issue of excessive carbonization of the atmosphere mute, but perhaps raising the issue of catastrophic lack of future CO2.
Future generations will add back CO2, as needed.
Some folks think red team reviews are pretty much useless. Here are fifty reasons.
“Fifty ways to ruin a red team”, sounds like a song lyric.
Thank you, commieBob, for posting those 50 reasons. Most of those explain why, where I work, the review system simply does not work.
All of the suggestions for red teams are woefully short on details. The bottom line is folks can’t decide or describe in operational terms
1. Who
2. What.
3. How.
A while back gwpf tried to red team temperature records.
Nothing.
Zip.
Nada.
And blue teamers wasted days on preparing materials. I still have an old folder labeled gpwf…code, new data, an entirely new database structure allowing anyone to select differ data and ask different questions. .giant fucking wasted effort.
Most of the folks I know have no objections to so called red teams doing reviews. The Internet is a kind of informal red team..pretty lame.
What we do object to is vague confusing and contradictory calls for red teams with no details given.
The blue team work is done. It’s been peer reviewed by other blue team members. No surprise there. If you want to red team it…go right ahead. Nothing stops you. Who knows maybe the Trump Administration will fund some skeptics to do red teams reports. The program is they can’t find any qualified people to actually work a red team. Duh.
Maybe a Trump noaa will release those damning emails. ..I bet that’s a giant nothing burger just like the Russian investigation. . Here is what I bet. In 2020 red team or not Republican rule over the science of climate will not change one single bit of what we know.
1. The earth will still be warming according to Republican
Run science.
2. C02 will still be a GHG according to Republican science.
3. GHGS will still warm the planet according to Trump science.
4. ECS will still be between 1.5 and 4.5C. According to Trump science.
Yes Republican science will not change a single bit of what we know. And that’s because the truth will out.
Once a putz always a putz.
Mosher ==> Comment again when you want to discuss science instead of two-party politics.
When and if the current Adminstration decides to appoint a Red Team to review climate science, then they will decide who, when and exactly what. It is unlikely that either you or I will be involved in those choices.
“The program is they can’t find any qualified people to actually work a red team.”
What would be the right qualifications, for someone to work a red team?
Janice… Good question. And Steve Mosher says “they” cant find qualified people for a red team. Steve also mentions an abortive attempt made already. Maybe I’m the only one here who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but who was involved in this attempt and was it documented? What did the GWPF do and where did it fall short?
Maybe Kip can give us some names he thinks would be qualified to be on a red team, since he’s the one promoting the idea. Or maybe Mr Mosher has some ideas about qualified people. Or anyone here. I think finding people not involved in the climate wars is essential. And I would hope I could have some confidence in what they say. I’m personally get weary of reading the comments on this blog – most of which is echo chamber stuff. People here avoid engaging Mosher and Nick Stokes on the issues because they say they’re just trolls and are not serious. But I don’t see it that way. Commenters here need to engage, civilly, people they disagree with and show some signs that they really have the capacity to listen to opposing viewpoints. Blue team folks are not likely to make the effort for a “debate” if those on the other side don’t show some open-mindedness.
What would a red team do? Expand on Steve Mosher’s 3 points and flesh out the uncertainties? Maybe it’s as simple as emphasizing the error ranges associated with gcms’ projections. Or are the feedback mechanisms assumed in the models valid in the first place? Maybe summarize the papers dealing with climate sensitivity and critique the methods used to arrive at estimates.
I thank Kip Hansen for his continued interest in climate science, his fundamental skepticism, and his desire for a different way to address the climate wars. This is a sound idea and Scott Pruitt also deserves credit for having the curiosity and interest in his job to try to find answers.
Ask Richard Lindzen to head the team, then let him pick whomever he wants.
“4. ECS will still be between 1.5 and 4.5C.”
And some morons will still assert that an uncertainty of +/- 50% is good enough to justify a complete overhaul of the world economy, on their terms of course.
Well, at last the real Steven Mosher has stood up
Mosher, thank you for providing for us a classic example of agw groupthink (in need of a red team)…
Uh, Mr. Mosher:
1) “The earth will still be warming” is speculation, not science.
2) “C02 will still be a GHG” is trivially true, but CO2 is an indisputably weak GHG.
3) “GHGS will still warm the planet” is, again, trivially true; CO2 is still a weak one.
4) “ECS will still be between 1.5 and 4.5C” is only a factoid promulgated by the IPCC, a political body. Prove to me CO2 has a theoretical ECS greater than about 1 degree C.
Go back to your Wandering in the Weeds. You are not very good at scientific facts, nor logic.
Republican science? Trump science? Too funny.
You are correct in: “because the truth will out.” Your problem is that politicized climate “science” in not truth. Every year that real scientists’ work elucidate reality, and observations vs models dissonance increases, the more the IPCC politicized “science” is shown to be bogus.
IPCC climate models are bunk. Prove me wrong; show me that they are sufficient to fundamentally change our society, economy and energy systems.
Here is the sad truth Obama has failed to advance the energy policy to meet climate change goals according to the IEA..Push your agenda at the expense of ruining civilization as we know it. Its not as though Obama spent the money, he wasted it.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/energy-technology-is-not-advancing-fast-enough-to-meet-climate-goals.html
“Yes Republican science will not change a single bit of what we know. And that’s because the truth will out.”
Maybe “republican science”, whatever that is, will actually share their data and methods so scientists other than their buddies can attempt replication. What a novel idea.
“What ever happened to you? Do you even know?”
An ego the size of a globular cluster.
SM,
You said, ” The program [sic] is they can’t find any qualified people to actually work a red team. Duh.”
There should be no difficulty finding people at least as well qualified as you. There are a number of posters here who have better credentials.
I left two words out of the quote above. Here’s the accurate version:
PS: This would be a good phrase for Pruitt to use.
Steven Mosher:
You write this bollocks.
There are several ‘red team’ reports. for example the NIPCC Reports.
Please refrain from spouting ignorant nonsense.
Richard
That report…The one with zero review?
Written by clowns citing Grey literature?
Talk about bollocks..
Science answered the first two questions long ago with the concept of reproducibility and the third question is answered by the existence of the internet.
1. Who – Absolutely anyone.
2. What – Whatever claims are made in any paper, and the raw data, codes, and methods used to support those claims.
3. How- By making materials publicly available.
“And blue teamers wasted days on preparing materials.”
The material should have been gathered before the blue team published anything. In truth, they should have been gathered and analyzed before coming to any conclusions. Unfortunately, the truth is out that there have been occasions of the conclusion being determined before the data has been gathered
“Nothing stops you.” That’s not what Steve McIntyre found.
The real problem is that FOIA requests for documents that are legally public property have been rejected and/or had large fees attached when there should be no more than nominal cost cost to merely forward work that is already in a complete file, and the truth has come out that blue team peer review has been merely rubber-stamping of papers that sound reasonable to the blue team.
Wrong.
You have zero clue about what willis steve mcintyre and I went through with foia.
The reason you have all the data and all the code today is because of what we did.
Nothing is stopping you except laziness. Or ignorance.
Look if an ex English major can spend 3 years working for nothing to re learn all the physics math and stats he used years before…then nothing is stopping you unless you are dumber than me…and that’s unlikely. You may be lazier. .but not dumber.
If I’m wrong and the work is done, then you only need to post one link. It’ll have a paper or papers that proving climate sensitivity of at least 1.5C and include (or link to) the raw data, code, and methods used to come to that conclusion, with no assumptions that are contradicted by other observations.
“You have zero clue about what willis steve mcintyre and I went through with foia.” I meant to imply that it was a considerable effort to get what was made available, and this indicates you agree with me on point 3.
“if an ex English major can spend 3 years working for nothing…” This indicates we agree on point 1.
Mosher, nope. ECS has CONSISTENTLY AND CONTINUESLY been reduced,
The NIPCC has revealed an extensive body of peer reviewed research SKEPTICAL of CAGW.
A cost benefit analysis of CO2 emissions has not even come close to being properly done
I actually like the idea of a Frank open discussion regarding CAGW. However I prefer several public debates. Presedential Sponsored Policy Debates would embarass the hell out of the Hansen’s of the world, and educated the poor snowflakes as they helplessly watched their heroes get decimated by facts from the Lindzen’s and Idso’s of the world.
It seems to me that the entire CAGW hypothesis and attendant panic reflex is so contaminated with non-existent “dry air” as to be rendered invalid.
Steven,
You have a basic concept error:
You are assuming that all published science supports the blue team proposal, when it doesn’t. The science on which a red team would base is also done and it has been peer reviewed by scientists many of which are not supposed to belong to any team. IPCC has made in many cases a selection of evidence, keeping out or downplaying what doesn’t fit with their story line.
Nick Stokes dichotomy is also a false one:
The Red team will have to do none of the above. It has to review the published scientific literature in an unbiased way to see what it supports and what it doesn’t, and it has to review Blue team propositions to see which ones are well grounded on solid evidence and which are not.
Both of you are trying to confuse the issue by attempting to change the Blue team nature into all climate science work (you), and by trying to fit the Red team nature into a false dichotomy (Nick). Perhaps this comes from fear that a properly set Red team could expose the nakedness of the emperor. Just by exposing the physical implausibility of RCP 8.5 a Red team would do a lot of damage to the alarmist AGW cause. I would like to see somebody in the blue team trying to defend RCP 8.5. Basing scientific research on RCP 8.5 should be grounds enough to be rejected by peer review if it really worked as it is supposed to.
Rcp. 8.5 is not climate science.
It’s a sensitivity scenario.
A what if.
A boundary condition.
RCP 8.5 is an output of the IPCC:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts.”
It cannot be disowned just because of your opinion.
RCP 8.5 is the basis of many published articles about future climate scenarios in what these days passes as climate science.
I agree with you that none of that is science, but sadly journals and referees do not, and that’s why a Red team could have a most positive effect for climate science.
Mr. Mosher, Rcp. 8.5 is a wildly speculative “hell on earth” scenario that alarmists frequently misrepresent as “business as usual” to credulous media hacks.
It is used in IPCC climate models to drive future projected global temperatures as high as possible. Expensive policies based on such models are a waste of resources.
IPCC climate models are bunk. Why don’t you go back to your books and extensive study habits and prove to the world that such models are sufficient to fundamentally change our society, economy and energy systems. Otherwise, go back to your Wandering in the Weeds and keep your silly opinions to yourself.
Javier ==> Yes on your:
That is a good description of where Red Team effort gets started.
In the medical world, the Cochrane reviews are a Red Team-ish example.
Strictly speaking, Cochrane reviews are deep “systematic literature reviews” — not exactly Red Teams. They reject studies that are found to be weak, ill-considered, poorly structured, etc from the outset.
Kip, to Cochran Reviews also investigate the existence of replication, confirmation, and “failure to confirm” studies?
Stephen Rasey ==> Read a few of their reviews and see. They typically throw out the majority of studies on a topic as, I hate to say it, dross. That do an intensive review on those that have a possibility of having valid results. a Cochrane review of Climate Science would [IMO] chuck out all of what Dr. Curry calls “Climate Science taxonomy” (search her site for the phrase), Mann’s hockey stick, all the paleo stuff misusing statisitics, and all the weak “dependent on nbovrel statisitical methods” junk but would allow global temperature averages but then only with very limited applicability and would demand proper, large uncertainty bars, possibly as great as all the warming since 1950. That just for starters.
“The blue team work is done. It’s been peer reviewed by other blue team members. No surprise there. If you want to red team it…go right ahead. Nothing stops you. Who knows maybe the Trump Administration will fund some skeptics to do red teams reports. The {problem] is they can’t find any qualified people to actually work a red team. Duh.”
How qualified does one have to be to point out the climategate emails as evidence of corruption of the Blue Teams “evidence”?
The principal Climategate actors all point out that the historic temperature record profile does not match their CAGW claims and they agree they have to manipulate the profile so that it conforms with their CAGW claims.
And that’s just what they did. We have the “before” and “after” charts. It’s easy to see what they have done to falsify the records We see the systematic way they cooled the past in order to make the present look much hotter. There’s lots of money and prestige for them in doing so, and they worked hard at it.
Would love to see this case in a real court of law. You wouldn’t have to be scientifically literate to figure out what was going on. Most anyone could see this is blatant dishonesty.
And where is your evidence that a few degrees of warmth would be catastrophic? Got any facts there, Mosher? After all, we have been warmer in the past and no catastrophe ensued.
How about Department Homicide divisions use “Red Team-Blue Team” to solve murders. Yeah.
The Homicide Department is one team, but they sometimes use that method when there are two competing theories. More importantly, “Red Team-Blue Team” is always used in western countries before any final action is taken in a murder case even when the Homicide Department only makes a single theory public – it’s called a court trial.
Your Red Team is involved in only reviewing responses to a RFP. I think the climate science review has a much broader mandate.
The EPA has bigger problems than just with climate because the doom and advocacy is spread across many subjects. I happened to just run across fish skeletons on Google Earth. Their side boxes, to be checked for things like roads, photos, etc., with wonderful amounts of information now has one for DEAD ZONES. Much of the US coastline, some of Canada, South America, Europe and possibly places I have not examined is covered with bare fish bones. Some of the skeletons produce information with a click, some not. I picked the one closest to where I have collected a lot of oxygen data from the late 60s to 90s for other reasons. As part of old debts and curiosity I hope to work it up if I live long enough.
“Classification: Hypoxic
Frequency: Unknown
Country: US-Louisiana
Decade of discovery: 1990
Wax Lake formed off of the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana, and receives 34 million tons of sediment annually. The lake was completely filled with sediment between 1941 and 2005. Wax Lake has experienced low oxygen since 1990 and is now part of regional water quality monitoring program.
Engle et al. 1999″
(Most places have a regional program, which probably will not work where the lake is full of sediment)
Anywhere you produce lots of organic matter with heat and stratification, the Louisiana coast a perfect example, this can occur. It has been aided by human nitrogen addition, but its demonization, somewhat like carbon dioxide, has produced similar problems. In my county they are hung up about nitrogen, with little interest in learning about their ignorance, because this is where the money has been. The EPA still has some real scientists and has done good work in the past.
There is a long, somewhat complex story here, but such areas in the world have been known for centuries, we have added some to it, but the history has been largely ignored. Their glass is half empty and they do not know what dead is.
Red team, blue team approaches used to be used all the time in NASA (when I still worked there).
It would wind up being Pinko team/ Blue team.
When you are in charge, lead. Soon enough the other side will be back and will have no problem dismantling the prior administration’s work. Republicans are stupid. There is only about 120 days of useful legislative time in a four year presidential term.
BTW, I’ve seen it written by our side that we are winning the debate. No, we are losing badly with the electorate. The people out here as as dumb as a box of rocks and they have been trained for decades in the correct dogma.
Tragically, I agree with you.
As a lifelong “conservative”, I have recently had my epiphany and come to the same conclusion as have you: when it comes to politics, conservatives are pathologically retarded.
We are losing the war in every battle that matters: climate, illegal immigration, nuclear power. Essentially anything that matters.
While I am too old for it to materially matter to me anymore, I despair for my children and grandchildren.
They are inheriting a word that will make the days of the Medieval Inquisition look like Happy Days at Disneyland. (Ironically, Disney is a significant contributor to this outcome.)
The argument over how much warming will occur and the impact on climate change is not significant until when one weighs in on the impact on energy supply. While the media likes to tout Wind and Solar it is clear that these are not ready to sustain our present lifestyle, unfortunately transportation fuels are an even bigger problem since biofuels are no where capable to replace liquid fuels. The electric car remains elusive and it seems impractical to believe the grid could expand to replace liquid transportation fuels.
Any honest person who knows the energy business is painfully aware of the now certain fact that “renewable” energy is no where near ready to replace fossil fuels for many decades even after spending enormous sums of money.
Rushing prematurely to eliminate the use of fossil fuels before the alternatives are fully available will certainly be a disaster for mankind. While I do not agree with everything from the IEA (International Energy Agency), it is a welcome admission and warning that we are headed for trouble if we continue to depend on non existent energy sources.
Now the IEA has flagged the problem that under Obama significant progress has not been made with renewable energy to meet the climate change goals. No surprise here except to admit the failure by Obama.
“Paris Agreement has more problems than just Trump: Clean technology isn’t advancing fast enough”
Where I am at odds with the IEA, it seems that they believe a better ($$$$) policy will correct the problem I am not optimistic that the problem can be fixed for many decades. No responsible government plan should depend on currently unavailable energy sources with an uncertain future, not knowing if or when they will be available to satisfy the worlds energy needs. Currently many plans assume there will be some yet to be discovered technology to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Many government mandates including the goals of the Paris accords are irresponsible in risking their economy and welfare of the citizens based on either ignorance or false optimism that new energy sources are just around the corner.
Technology does not work that way.
Hopefully Governor Brown and the other fools will listen to the IEA and wait until alternative energy is available. I doubt it, he is so obsessed with the issue and cannot thing logically.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/energy-technology-is-not-advancing-fast-enough-to-meet-climate-goals.html
“Paris Agreement has more problems than just Trump: Clean technology isn’t advancing fast enough
Just 3 out of 26 energy technology categories the International Energy Agency tracks are on pace to help meet global climate goals.
The IEA has a fairly straightforward solution: implement policies that will encourage investment in these technologies and work across borders to develop them.
The technologies needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate goals are not developing quickly enough, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.
Nearly every country in the world has committed to take action under the Paris Agreement to slow global warming. But only 3 out of 26 technology categories tracked by the IEA are on pace to help do that, the agency concluded in this year’s Energy Technology Perspectives report.
The IEA, which advises countries on energy strategy, has a fairly straightforward — if not easy — solution: implement policies that will encourage investment in these technologies and work across borders to develop them.
“Many technology areas suffer from a lack of policy support, and this impedes their scaled-up deployment,” IEA said. “Energy efficiency, bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) are notable examples of where significant potential for technology progress remains, but strong policy signals will be required to trigger the appropriate investments.”
Trump is absolutely RIGHT
I am reminded of Adolph Hitler’s purported “plans” for winning the later stages of WWII being based upon deployment of unproven technologies. I can win any argument if you will allow me my assumptions about future conditions.
Science and law are not fundamentally separable. They are both exercises to parse truth from hearsay and superstition. Peer review is a concept that science borrowed from law.
The current reality is that government science has bungled CO2 so badly that independent scientists have stepped in to fill the void. Who now are the peers?
The red/blue concept is an effort to define a new group of peers.
Kip, a relevant analogy story. I was once a senior Motorola exec. So we had annual ‘future science roadmap’ reviews. So one of the three big lacuna identified was low power memory semiconductors (now filled by NAND flash). Nobody had anything back then.. My nascent business needed something. So we went to Japan and licensed FeRam, then went to MSP and inlicensed NRAM. Put both into development to produce something. Both ultimately failed commercially. But nobody else was trying anything. Lifes lessons learned.
ristvan ==> Interesting story. I have one from the Intelligence world which I won’t share.
One of my “Lifes lessons learned.” Rud, is to never count on something you don’t have in hand.
That being said, small commitments of resources to test feasibility “makes the world go round.” R&D, anyone?
You were absolutely right to try something. Should you have bet the company? Should we bet our society, economy and energy systems?
Yup. I bet about $6 million per year in an (at that time) $36 billion/yr company with >20% profit margins. HR spent more on paper clips than I risked on low energy memory.
Actually, I just wish someone out there would explain the Hypothesis of CO2 induced catastrophic global warming to me using actual data and facts.
Somehow, if they really think they are being scientific, they have to be able to separate natural warming from CO2 warming to the point its obvious to other scientists (not just to their own church members, but real scientists and statisticians). 3 or 5 or however many warm years in the last decade supports warming – but does not distinguish natural from CO2 induced warming.
Proxy data is WAY too prone to error to be of much help separating these two trends in the short time we have decent data (i.e. satellite data).
Data showing the increase of CO2 gases over the last 15 years, versus the temperature trend seem to disprove CO2 as the main driver.
Disband, shutdown, eliminate the EPA and start from scratch – you need to get the activists out of a so-called scientific agency.
+ 1 your first sentence.
Here’s my attempt Robert. I realize this explanation is drastically over-simplified so any criticism is welcome.
Although thousands of peer-reviewed papers have been tabled supporting Anthropogenic Global Warming’s existence, there is yet one confirming its magnitude. And the burden of proof lies with the claimant. In this case it’s those who infer large climate change from an effect whose magnitude involves mathematical imagination for which there is no experimental verification.
The man-made climate change concern originates with the atmospheric portion of CO2 increasing from 0.028% (measured in ice cores at 280 parts per million) for pre-industrial times to the current 0.04% (400ppm) and the portion of that increase that is from fossil fuel combustion. The 150 year instrumental record indicates an increase of 0.8 degrees C. to the mean, which coincides with the climate’s recovery from The Little Ice Age (1250-1850AD) that started with the end of the Medieval Warm Period (750-1250AD).
The actual mechanism (the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect) is not in question. CO2 is a radiatively active molecule, it is largely infrared resonant at an amplitude of 15 microns for which the corresponding temperature is over 50 degrees C. below zero. This is why the AGW play occurs well above the cloud deck (still within the troposphere) where there is no water vapor.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere raises the ERL (Effective Radiation Level) to a colder level thus disturbing the equilibrium where outgoing terrestrial longwave IR (infrared radiation) balances incoming solar shortwave IR. The accepted math yields a forcing calculation of 3.7 watts/meter squared per atmospheric doubling of CO2 (560ppm) from pre-industrial ice core calculated levels (280ppm) which translates to roughly an increase of +1 degree C to the surface mean temperature. To the extent this “increase” can change the climate is where the science ends and the supposition begins as 3.7 is less than .3% of incoming solar at 1362 watts/meter squared.
Where the concern kicks in is the positive water vapour feedback hypothesis. The IPCC endorsed numerically modeled temperature projections to 2100 include an assumed feedback response over and above the “known” effect of CO2 (approx. .5 to 1.5C per doubling of concentration) due to increased water vapour from the Anthro CO2 warming. Water vapour is the most abundant and forceful ‘greenhouse’ gas in the atmosphere, ergo even more greenhouse warming, supposedly two or three times as much as the original increase in CO2.
The higher estimates of climate sensitivity, the origin of the catastrophic scenarios thus the need to mitigate, are based on the water vapor feedback/amplification “triggered” by AGW concept. However, there are uncertainties. More water vapor from increased evaporation (itself a profound cooling effect) means more daylight clouds in the lower atmosphere which reflect incoming solar while shading the surface, thus a significant cooling effect to counter the AGW effect along with the nightly warming effect of the low level clouds.
CO2 has risen monotonically since we began measuring it 60 years ago. During this time there have been decadal periods where the temperature mean has risen, fallen and times when it has gone in neither direction. So the instrumental record either does not support AGW theory, or the effect is statistically negligible. Either way the need to impose taxes, a cap and trade system and other costly methods (think replacing coal with wind/solar) to reduce combustion emissions is not justified.
Regards, M.W.Plia.
Read the science.
No one owe’s you a free education.
Take night clssses.
Take classes from your employer
Both of these worked for me… you don’t need a degree just do your homework.
Or teach yourself. .witness willis.
“Read the science.”
What makes you think he hasn’t already read the science? Because his interpretation doesn’t agree with yours?
When “scientists” like Gavin Schmidt refuse to even be in the same room with skeptical scientists, you’ll never have agreement.
I think it is expecting too much to think Gavin Schmidt, or any of the others pushing the CAGW narrative are going to come around to the skeptic side. They are entrenched.
The truth will eventually dig them out. The truth will set us all free, although it might not make all of us happy.
Of course the alarmists are alarmed by the formation of a red team to challenge the blue team. As Lindzen pointed out, all legit climate scientists are on the red team. The blue team consists of environmental activists, fake scientists, politicians and media. The red team vs. blue team game will be amusing to watch!
Red team
http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/uploads/usat-images/2016/04/9849395-nba-cleveland-cavaliers-at-dallas-mavericks-850×560.jpeg
Blue team
http://archive.onekama.k12.mi.us/m2009/Sports/TeamPhotos/10.BBB.gr7_7350.jpg
“Of course the alarmists are alarmed by the formation of a red team to challenge the blue team.” Ok, who for example among blue teamers are actually alarmed by this? I can see where some would say “why should I debate you when there’s a consensus to the contrary.” There was a prevalent agw view promoted in the 8 years of democratic party rule. Those in that camp would be reluctant to debate even the lukewarmers.
One complication. The prevailing view in the mainstream press is aligned with a vague alarmism represented by people like John Kerry and Al Gore. The reaction in this sphere and among academia-enforced alarmism will not be favorable. This will give cover to those who will resist involvement.
Instead of sport like game (red team vs blue team) why not a scientific method.
There is some experiments worthy to falsify the theory of Climate changes do to the human activities?
If not, then it’s not a scientific matter. If yes, why not let different University perform the required open (reproducible) experiments?
Another red team Task?
Many of the fundamental measurements about climate have changed over the years. Not just global surface temperature, but also TSI at TOA, rate of sea level rise, polar ice loss/gain, etc.
These changes will make many early papers wrong. I have not seen many corrigenda. Have you? Will the Red Team be charged to examine?
Geoff ==> A proper Red Team would establish guidelines to use when evaluating accumulated knowledge. This would include discounting early conclusions based on understandings that later have had to be changed to align with newly discovered principles. It also means discounting conclusions that are based on earlier conclusions that are no longer valid. This is what is so valuable about a deep systematic review from a Red Team perspective.
The Blue Team has been “going along to get along” — there are conclusions that one must not appear to counter at the risk of your reputation. Steven Mosher has been listing them above, comment after comment, the same old true-sounding Climate Warrior talking points — many long since discardable.
The genius-level Physicists and the world-class Statisticians on the Red Team will find a lot to send to the circular file cabinet.
Based on the paleoclimate record and modeling results one can only conclude that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control..It is all a matter of science.
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. If CO2 really affected climate then the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but such has not happened. It is all a matter of science.
The AGW conjecture cannot be defended because the conjecture is just too full of holes. The largest is that the radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture depends, has not been observed anywhere in the solar system including the Earth. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction as so must be the AGW conjecture. It is all a matter of science.
Pruitt has in a single maneuver exposed the fact the “consensus” was political not science based. The blue team reactionary response only confirms it.
The actual science debate is very small since CO2 impact is a belief system with few empirical supports. The variables are to great and the human inputs too small. Of course they don’t want to debate that case. That’s why consensus was created to create a room where everyone basically pre-agrees and usually for a political reason not a scientific one.
Anti-carbonists, the Blue Team, The consensus should be ashamed and mocked which Pruitt effectively and subtlety has done. Real science would never have gone this way, the consensus for policy support was never real science but lobbying. It doesn’t take much trolling for the big mouth Blue Teams political commonality to get exposed which Pruitt has succeeded in demonstrating. The fake “integrity of science” retort will be rolled out next and Blue’s false outrage mode and virtue triggering goes into high gear.
I’d like to agree with you, but Michael Mann has scored minor victories by bullying critics with legal threats while playing the victim at the same time. When he meets a serious opponent like Mark Steyn, who is up for going toe-to-toe with him in the courts, his legal team go all quiet and slow….aided by sympathetic and conveniently-incompetent judges. The wheels of justice have slowed too much for it to be an accident.
Generally, courts have rightly stayed away from ruling on things like scientific ‘facts’ and the eternal verities of religion but they are falling short in this matter. The reputation of the legal system may take a big hit if they don’t publicly wash Michael Mann right out of their hair.
“The wheels of justice have slowed too much for it to be an accident.”
It is taking an awfully long time which raises questions. I haven’t heard Steyn comment on his case in quite some time. He should probably publicy complain about how long the court is taking to hear the case. If he doesn’t, noone else will.
“He should probably publicy complain about how long the court is taking to hear the case.”
He did so in his testimony to Congress.
Not being a scientist I see one big mistake in this article that seriously concerns me. Climate science is being ligated right now in the Exxon/Mobil lawsuit. If the state of New York brings this suit and succeeds then in the eyes of the law a president has been set and climate science is then settled in the view of the courts at what the court establishes that day. Any further studies or future consciences would have to be ruled on in court to be valid.
“If the state of New York brings this suit and succeeds”
It won’t. The New York Attorney General has no case to make. He would have to prove that humans are causing the climate to change in order to make his case. Since, to date, noone has been able to prove that humans are causing the climate to change, the NY AG will not be able to make a case that Exxon was hiding something that in reality doesn’t really exist, or at the least cannot at this time be proven to exist.
The NY AG is a partisan Democrat who uses his office as Attorney General to attack his political party’s opponents. He just within the last few days filed a charge against Eric Trump.
The Democrats will stoop to any low to attack their opponents, and the NY AG is one of the lowest of the bunch. Using his office for pure political purposes. He ought to be removed from Office. The U.S. AG should be looking into the actions of the NY AG.
mikehickey ==> The Exxon case has very little to do with climate science and a lot to do with politics.
The court will not adjudicate the science.
Once upon a time Berkley Earth was the official skeptic backed Red team…
and then they (exhaustively) confirmed the science.
Every time it is going to be the same result: ‘it is warming, the surface temp data is OK (no the UHI effect is not distorting it)’
Griff, you forgot your signature tag line “and CO2 is the culprit”. Or are you a bit more open minded these days?
Griff, you are not so well informed I’m afraid. The BEST-record shows some disagreements vs. GISS, they use a better working infill, see https://climateaudit.org/2017/05/18/how-dependent-are-gistemp-trends-on-the-gridding-radius-used/ . UHI: there are locations where it recently distortes ( not in US and EU) and a few locations were are no distortions. Over all very small.
When it comes to the models (CMIP5) there is a greater disharmony, see http://berkeleyearth.org/graphics/model-performance-against-berkeley-earth-data-set/ .
And yes: CO2 is a forcing. There is NO disharmony. And also a thinkable “red team” will find no other result. The most important question is: How are the real values of TCR / ECS. For ECS somewhere between 1.5 and 4 as it was found about 20 years ago… it’s a shame IMO.
“Once upon a time Berkley Earth was the official skeptic backed Red team…
and then they (exhaustively) confirmed the science.”
Did Berkley Earth confirm all the adjustments that were made to the historical temperature record? You know, the ones where ALL the historic temperature records were cooled in the past to make things look much hotter today. Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you that these adjustments ALWAYS went the same way: Cool the past, to make the present look hotter? What are the chances that ALL the world’s temperature records had to be adjusted downwards?
Did Berkley Earth study the Climategate emails before they “confirmed the science”?
Actually, Griff, the Berkeley team confirmed the validity of the temperature record. That was their job. The only skeptic on the team was Judith Curry, who objected to some of the gratuitous conclusions voiced by other team members.
True, one of Koch’s put up the money, but there was no indication that the results were biased in any way.
Scaft1,
Dr. Curry is hardly a skeptic. It’s a nice false flag for alarmists to say so. David Brooks at the Times is a “conservative”?
Is the point transparent enough or do we have to hammer the absurdity of your claim into the dirt.
Sir, you are terribly and horribly wrong in your assessment of Dr.Curry. I suggest you retract your claim lest you be branded a fool.
“(exhaustively) confirmed”
Really?
I pointed out that they were armed with blanks before they fired their first shot. Their method was theoretically faulty based upon information theory in the Fourier Domain. The scalpel cuts out the signal leaving them to play with the noise.
2011.04.02 from Expect the BEST, Plan for the Worst
This was reiterated in 2012.12.13 Circular Logic Not Worth a Millikelvin
Willis, a long time supporter of the scalpel method, put the objection to Zeke on 2014.06.28 Problems with the Scalpel Method
On 2017.01.30 Willis followed up on the status of the question:
BEST is no Red Team. At “best”, they are fooling themselves with big computer processing. At worst, BEST is a Blue Team “Fifth column” trying to fool US with big computer processing.
I would like to note and thank ChiefIO for his approving comments about my Fourier Domain observations:
Some More Trouble With Temperatures and Nice Analysis>”Some More Trouble with Temperatures….” 31 January 2015
The Best study pre-dated the Thomas Karl adjustments and I have not heard whether they’ve updated their series since then.
Berkley Earth did not “confirm” the science of CAGW, Griff. It merely provided another estimate of historical temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age. And those historical temperature estimates have no correlation with the concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.
I’d rather invest in polygraph machines and see which climate scientists are willing to be hooked up to them.
If you have one side telling the truth and the other telling the exact opposite are we all supposed to accept the resulting middle ground as an accurate representation of the truth?
I suggest none of this is even necessary. Simply take away all government funding and let the results of private funded research lead the way. Now, I am not saying to follow the results blindly but I think a truer outcome will result because it is likely that private money will not be wasted on someone chasing rainbows just to get a paycheck. And, when having to compete for that private funding instead of receiving handouts from the gravy train, it should remove much of the political falsehoods that are being touted as real science.
I’m so clueless. Apparently Mosher and others know of some formal description for red/blue teams and I don’t.
I thought it would be something I’d like to do if I ever stumble across the winning ticket for Megabucks:
Start a climate science foundation that likes to write checks with the goal of pursuing scientific inquiry to learn how the world works (as opposed to supporting the political spin of the day).
For research projects, assemble two teams of researchers. Assuming that all researchers are biased, put those who think Earth is warming faster/cooling slower than it may be on the red (warm) team. Put those who think the opposite on the blue team.
Let each team know about the other, maybe even socialize or at least pass on interesting data sets and hypotheses. (Of course, given some team makeups, “socializing” could mean a brawl, so let’s not encourage that!) Ideally they’ll come up with reports with the same conclusions. That likely won’t happen, so then put both teams together to write a final report, guided by some dictatorial scientist/editor who somehow doesn’t have a measurable bias. Then feed it to peer review.
If the result is a paper where everyone agrees, fine. It could be a paper where there’s no agreement between the two teams, that’s also fine. Those papers ought to provide direction for future research.
Comments above seem to imply one team represents conventional wisdom, one represents people looking outside of the box, or at least challengers to the conventional wisdom. I’d much prefer a coequal approach with the goal of understanding how this planet of ours ticks.
I think Samenow wrote a perfectly reasonable article, and Hansen is just being pedantic. No one cares whether “re-litigating” or “debate” was used instead of “discussion.” Samenow got the story across. Find something useful to do, Kip.
Jim Carson ==> You make the same mistake that Samenow does — totally fail to understand what a Red Team Blue Team exercise is.
Take the advice I give Samenow: “Samenow should have looked it up in the Wiki. [If you don’t already realize why I say Samenow is clueless, you should read the Wiki, read Dr. Curry’s essay linked above and do a Google on Red Teams.]”
Since carbon dioxide is the issue, let me offer the true story of what you should know about it.
********************************************************************************
What is there to say about carbon dioxide? It has been disappearing so that he present day carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only one sixteenth part of CO2 we used to have in the Cambrian, 500 million years ago. Understanding why this happens is quite simple: the internal workings of the planet earth are slowing down, same way it happened to Mars. Its giant volcanoes that once belched carbon dioxide are now silent. A linear connection from carbon dioxide recorded in the the Cambrian to the point that represents the present day can be extrapolated to show that carbon dioxide will disappear entirely from the earth in only 13 more million years. CO2 is plant food and plants will disappear in half that time.And along with plants, all higher life forms, including us, will also disappear. The only effect your silly decarbonation will have is to slightly decrease the time left for us on this earth. I suggest switching all funds assigned to climate research now over to a maximum effort to discover inhabitable planets we can reach. And all non-research climate funds go to geo-engineering research. It must be done immediately because the fate of mankind is too important to let politicians screw up the effort to bail us out of this Armageddon trap.
P.S.: Put someone on to determine an accurate SD for the timeline.
o
*********************************************************
CO2 is the pretense, not the issue at all.
Global order is the issue and who benefits from a particular managed structure.
The bottom line is that the Alarmist side are liars, only pretending to do science. They have too much at stake. They are depending on the CAGW gravy to keep rolling along.
You can’t discuss anything with liars.
The trouble is Bruce, you are correct on the basics, is that most skeptics conceded.to the false legitimacy of the AGW premise and then hoped rational thinking would save the debate. If it weren’t politics at the core that might have been a fair estimate.
The great lesson here was pretending a political agenda was “science” to begin with. About of 1/3 of high school graduates can’t find Germany on a world map without word labels. Almost half think a large rock falls faster then a small one. Many can’t name the sides of the U.S. Civil War in the most generic way, North and South? That’s sad but skeptics thinking to their grave the climate debate is a complex series of technical disputes over human CO2 contributions and resulting impact is worse then sad. It’s obtuse to the Nth degree.
Pruitt at best was just trolling the Blue Team and they so deserve trolling. The idea a serious debate structure is going to be organized to finally win the science debate should be a segment on Watters World;
The Red vs. Blue was a quick tidbit to remind observers that there really is a Blue Team that doesn’t care at all about anyone who disagrees with the 40 year + carbon regulatory rationalized fake science. Unfortunately, snark isn’t going to win the climate war either. Do people really think Blue would show up and play by fair debate rules? Skeptics? Committed to losing since the mid-80’s at least.
The high horse of shouting “science” in a movie theater has been figured out. The world just isn’t as gullible thanks in part to the academic depravity of the climate CAGW advocate community. I’m glad to see Pruitt trolling and labeling them as the “blue team” which pretty much sums up blue state dead end thinking around the climate agenda.
Of course calling it globalist, a collectivist proxy descended from Soviet levels of science care taking would be even more accurate and withdrawal from the entire UN Climate Framework cabal the more correct policy in response. This is still kiss-in-the-ring banter on the margins. Blue will be back on the “integrity of science” shtick in no time flat. Red will be smeared as “big oil” shills, Holocaust Deniers and all the rest. In short, a re-run we’ve all seen a thousand times over 40+ years.
Instead of incremental shrillness why not just get to total honesty?;
Denounce the consensus as corrupt, denounce the UN Climate Framework as anti-American rubbish which it is. The relatively meager spawn of Paris was low hanging fruit. The whole monster must be destroyed and the is the sham of the IPCC agenda science spun from the 70’s and 80’s greenshirt appeasement and various cronies of many stripes must come to an end. With extreme prejudice. It would be strong optics for Team Trump to watch a real meltdown of the armchair Marxist academic left, the core of climate policy advocates. He should welcome the full conflict and end the wishy washy hairsplitting of accepting base anti-CO2 dogma while trying to control policy excess that results. CAGW are make-believe claims. Then slash and burn all crony green subsidies, purge NOAA and NASA of junk science and deploy a commission into academic science corruption of which climate “science” is shinning example.
Instead Pruitt’s boss is floating “renegotiation” of a destructive Paris “deal” only validating a fraudulent underlying “science”. The same kind of thinking as the many congressmen floating the idea of US and UN foreign aid to a failing Soviet Union. This went on in the late 70’s and through the 80’s as well.
As Reagan best summarized the Cold War outcome; “We win, they lose”. It should be the same here. CAGW climate fraud supporters lose, actual science and individual rights supporters win. The blue team is only going to smear and defraud further, they will never defend their science since it’s opinion not science proof to begin with. They’ll never validate others views outside their own. Like I said, this is a re-run.
Is this board under special moderation for some reason?
[No, why? . . . mod]
Took a long time to show my entries with many other posts in between.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060052668
EPA downsizing, started in 2013.
How’s it going to work?
I can only see red/blue turning into the (party) political bun-fight it already is. Who would be the umpire, who would judge the winner?
It can only be a further leap into The Swamp.
Problem is, skeptics and other non-believers are too late to the party. The horse is well and truly biolted.
Someone, right at the very outset should have has the bravery, guts and self-belief to stand up and ask any one of 3 questions
– Just How Does This GHGE Work?
– How can anyone say the climate is changing without really and actually quantifying it?
– How does temperature relate to climate, esp absolute temps rather than temp differences between places?
But nobody did. The house was full of gutless wonders who didn’t want to look, or were scared of, being foolish.
It takes a Big Man to admit a mistake but, to actually do so, enhances his ‘bigness’. It a very (for lack of a better word) attractive trait.
But the Snake Oil Salesman entranced everyone and it’s too late now.
Just like Montreal. No-one dared stand up and ask the ‘stupid’ question.
Not least because exactly the same ‘scaredness’ or fear of looking foolish, that let the thing get started is now keeping it alive. The warmists are scared of being shown to be wrong, to be made to look stupid and so will do almost anything to maintain their ‘dignity’
Stupid human pride
How would it work? Similar to the old Climate Dialogue site, but fancier.
Problem is, skeptics and other non-believers are too late to the party. The horse is well and truly biolted.
Wrong analogy. An Innocent Man has been convicted and is in jail. Should the Defense give up?
This explains a lot.
“The Secret History of the Iraq War”
Youssef Bodansky
“In Intelligence, this has fairly recently led to a US President being advised to go to war, and doing so, over the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, which were figments of groupthink among America’s intelligence analysts.”
I realize this is a very common belief, but it’s completely wrong. The WMD definitely existed (just ask the residents of Halabja, many of whom are horribly deformed from a sarin attack) and the regime was definitely not complying with the required effort to identify and destroy all WMD and WMD programs, the problem was these more or less perfectly obvious facts became conflated with the idea that we would find stockpiles of WMD after invasion which didn’t necessarily follow for any number of reasons. A Red Team exercise might have exposed some doubts about certain particular claims but it wouldn’t have changed the thrust of the conclusions at all.
Also, note we were pretty much at war with Iraq from roughly 1991-2012, whether we liked it or not. The 1991 decision can be criticized on any number of valid grounds, the 2003 decision simply acknowledged the reality that the decision to stop the tanks outside Baghdad and negotiate a settlement was just as dumb an idea as doing so with the Axis Powers would have been in the 1940s.
Yeah, Bush 41 left some unfinished business in the Gulf.
This is what a carping anti-war left does to the common sense of some Republicans. Bush 41’s desire to satisfy the anti-war Liberals caused him to withdraw prematurely befoe the job was done.
Drawing a parallel between bad intelligence in Iraq and bad climate science may be a good analogy. In both cases, politicians got in the way of the problem solvers and changed the rules of the game.
My take on how we got to this mess begins in 1992. The change from politicians relying on science to guide environmental policies to one of politicians manipulating science to achieve political objectives began in at the United Nations meeting in Rio in 1992. That meeting produced Rio Declaration Principle 15 (now called the Precautionary Principle), which states: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
Politicians have interpreted Principle 15 to mean that science can simply be by-passed when formulating policy. If one can hypothesize a one percent possibility of out-of-control global warming, measures should be taken to prevent global warming. The cost-effective part of the Principle is ignored. The result has been an incredible increase in environmental regulations not based on science. The one percent solution replaced the scientific method both in Iraq and in climate science.
The fallacy in this application of the Principle is that the probability of environmental issues associated with a warming earth may be no greater than the probability of environmental issues associated with a cooling earth. Policies that might be appropriate for the warming case would be diametrically opposite to those appropriate for the cooling case. Under this reality, applying the Precautionary Principle and promulgating any environmental regulation makes no sense whatsoever. The damage that would be done by acting based on the wrong premise, a warming or a cooling planet, nullifies arguments to take any action until the science is right.
No, this mess begins on or before June 23, 1988 at the Wirth / Hansen Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing…. You know — the one where Tim Wirth shut off the air conditioning.
Obviously, the political machinations began before this public date… But June 23, 1988 is a key date.
All right, look, kids,
This IPCC Climate Sensitivity, either Transient or Equilibrium, is based on the premise that the 0.7 Degrees C warming from 1880, if it can be believed at all due to the hideously inaccurate nature of the so-called Global Average Temperature, assumes that all “Warming” from somewhere around 1880, if there was any at all, is entirely due to the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere.
I tried to calculate it from First Principles, completely impossible, requires this assumption, except, the climate changes by itself year to year. Is this not QED??? My high school physics professor loved it when I quoted this Latin stuff, Quod Era Demonstrandum, There I Have Demonstrated It.
This assumption has no basis in fact, there is no proof, might be, might not be. Since Global Average Temperature was completely impossible to calculate until recently, all these shrill voices calling for the destruction of our modern economy are revealed as Leftist Fools.
Mosher and Stokes are invited to refute, otherwise invited to SHUT UP.
“Climate Change” is now a propaganda term for runaway global warming that will end life on Earth, caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
There is no science to back up that claim.
Absolutely none.
There are many theories about what causes global warming — none remotely close to being proven true.
Since no one knows what causes global warming, there can be no (process) models or (meaningful) predictions — there are just opinions disguised as models, and wild guesses disguised as predictions.
The fact that there have been 30 years of WRONG predictions/wild guesses makes the popular runaway global warming from CO2 + the positive feedback “tripler” … seem to be nonsense.
What purpose would a Blue versus Red Team serve when neither team knows exactly what causes climate change, and neither team can predict the future climate?
Assuming the current government bureaucrat “scientists” would make up the blue team:
— They own the historical data, and have already “adjusted”, infilled and manipulated it to show more warming — and they probably “lost” the raw data.
— They are very experienced with BSing about the coming climate change catastrophe and some have experience with questioning by Congress and speaking on TV.
What makes anyone think even a very scientifically literate Red team could convince anyone the Blue Team, backed up by 30 years of climate change propaganda, was wrong?
We have had continuous natural climate change for 4.5 billion years.
(1) The Blue Team wants us to believe natural climate change suddenly stopped in 1940 and man made CO2 took over, with no explanation of why that happened, how it could happen, and no evidence in the temperature record that anything unusual happened.
(2) And in the “era of manmade CO2” since 1940, we had negative correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1940 to 1975, positive correlation of CO2 and temperature from 1975 to 2000, and no correlation of CO2 and temperature from 2000 to 2015.
The Blue Team would be based on a theory, with no scientific proof, that leads to a future catastrophe that is always coming in the future … and we have been waiting 30 years so far … and the climate keeps getting better.
There is no science and no reasoning behind 30 years of claims of a coming runaway warming — no amount of science and reasoning can change opinions that were never based on science in the first place.
What we need and don’t have is a leader such as Trump or Pruitt willing to stand up and say there is no scientific proof that CO2 controls the climate and the flat temperature trend in the past 15 years is evidence of that.
You can not refute a secular religion like the “CO2 Obsession Climate Change Cult” when people in authority remain silent.
Red Team + Blue Team = total waste of Green money.
Climate blog for non-scientists
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
All the Red Team would have to do is quote the IPCC AR5 WG1 comment “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” This statement by real scientists is not generally known by the public, because only the executive summary was ever broadcast. Once the public have seen this I think the debate is over, and it has the advantage of coming from the Blue Team, so they could hardly deny it.