Michael Bastasch
2:01 PM 07/25/2017
President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser compared the Trump administration’s use of “red teams” to debate climate science to a “kangaroo court” meant to “create a sense of continuing uncertainty about the science of climate change.”
“But I suspect that most of the advocates of the scheme are disingenuous, aiming to get hand-picked non-experts from federal agencies to dispute the key findings of mainstream climate science and then assert that the verdict of this kangaroo court has equal standing with the findings of the most competent bodies in the national and international scientific communities,” former President Barack Obama’s science czar John Holdren wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed published Monday.
“The purpose of that, of course, would be to create a sense of continuing uncertainty about the science of climate change, as an underpinning of the Trump administration’s case for not addressing it. Sad,” Holdren wrote in his op-ed, railing against the “perversity of the climate science kangaroo court.”
The idea of using red teams gained traction with Trump administration officials this year after former Obama administration official Steve Koonin suggested the arrangement in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in April.
Koonin, a physicist and former top Department of Energy official, argued red teams could strengthen climate science by exposing its faults and uncertainties. The military and intelligence communities often pit red teams against blue teams to expose weaknesses in policies and strategies being pursued. It could work in a similar way for climate science, with a red team of researchers given the goal of finding pitfalls in blue team’s scientific argument.
“A Red/Blue exercise would have many benefits,” Koonin wrote in the WSJ. “It would produce a traceable public record that would allow the public and decision makers a better understanding of certainties and uncertainties. It would more firmly establish points of agreement and identify urgent research needs.”
Many climate scientists, however, say it has no place in their field. One group of prominent researchers even argued red team exercises amount to “dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions” that undercut mainstream science.
Holdren argued the scientific peer-review process already acts as a check on bad science, further arguing a red team exercise is a ‘right-wing’ plot against climate science.
“Climate science has been repeatedly ‘red-teamed,’ both by groups of avowed contrarians sponsored by right-wing groups and by the most qualified parts of the world’s scientific community,” Holdren wrote in his op-ed.
“The right wing’s ‘red team’ efforts have consistently been characterized by brazen cherry-picking, misrepresentation of the findings of others, recycling of long-discredited hypotheses, and invention of new ones destined to be discredited,” Holdren wrote. “Almost none of this material has survived peer review to be published in the respectable professional literature.”
Despite this, Trump administration officials have begun looking for scientists to participate in a red-blue team exercise to test scientific claims about man-made global warming. Media reports suggest the Trump team is considering asking Koonin to lead the exercise.
The administration also sought recommendations for who should participate in the red team exercise from the Heartland Institute, which is known for its skepticism of man-made warming.
“The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland Institute to help identify scientists who could constitute a red team,” Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely told reporters Monday.
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Tags: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Energy, John Holdren
“President Barack Obama’s” should read “FORMER President Barack Obama’s”
Former President 0bummer.
∅
How about “The last president who was allowed to choose a science advisor”?
The “blue” team will never debate. It’s not in their nature. Never have, never will.
sorry. we debate all the time.
just not with people who think the earth is flat.
theres a healthy debate on the one thing that matters. ecs.
nic lewis and judith have published interesting stuff.. heck they even passed me the work to look at before publishing.
got a nice hattip in the acknowledgements.
it added to the debate.
what folks wont show up for are publuc stunts or forums where people accuse them of fraud. waste of time. the eart isnt flat.
You’re on a team Steve?
That explains so much.
Steven, out of respect, while I think the red/blue team is a bad political tactic for the Trump administration, if it came to that, I would give a hattip to you leading Blue team. The fact you are consistently here speaks volumes. Yes, the public stunts, on both sides, does not serve us well. In stead of a Red/Blue team, I’d much rather see Meat and Potatoes team.
The ‘flat earth’ was the consensus of its day…
“just not with people who think the earth is flat.”
Ahh.. I see you have read Trenberth’s work. !!
How’s the used car sale job , going Mosh !!
The highlight would be Mosh during the debate on warming vs cooling over Antarctica. Mosh would claim Antarctica should be cooling for decades to come according to simple physics and global warming theory while his teammates stare befuddled with their jaws dropped-open and wonder if his references to poppers and typing in slurred-speech style are more than a coincidence.
Go straight to insulting people?
Very scientific of you.
Call people names and then say you won’t even talk to them?
Very noble.
Refuse to give numbers of real stations and real observations.
Very frightened of the truth.
Run away when asked these questions?
Tough.
“How’s the used car sale job, going Mosh !!”
Unless I have it wrong, and this is not an appeal to authority, you may disagree with peoples views but be respectful! We don’t want to live in a bubble now do we, he ain’t no used car salesmen that is for sure!!
http://berkeleyearth.org/team/steven-mosher/
Your flawed and intentionally misleading reference to a “flat earth” is indicative of the type of “character assassination science” that alarmists engage in. If open and honest debates were not avoided and ridiculed by special interest groups in the early days we wouldn’t be having to go through these adversarial shenanigans now. In my experience only people who know they are wrong ridicule debate.
To paraphrase Einstein: “A child armed with a thermometer and a scribbler wins out against a thousand scientists with computer models and data normalizing algorithms”.
As I recall, Gavin Schmidt wouldn’t even show up in the same forum with Roy Spencer, who is another scientist. That’s what I call cowardice.
Duncan, that CV describes a salesman.. Nothing more.
the eart isnt flat, but temperatures are.
Steve Mosher
I believe that you were part of previous modelling efforts.
Can you confirm that the modellers undertook a CO2 atmospheric density analysis for the period of the last ten years of glacial, right through the temperature rise into interglacial and say at least 10,000 years of this interglacial.
A CO2 density curve. Not a model of assumptions. A density analysis based on CO2 and atmospheric temperature raw data.
PS – ppm is not density.
Mosher,
Do you really think that appeals to authority, insulting the other side, fear mongering and misplaced self-righteous indignation is debating the science? I have yet to find anyone on the broken side of the science promoted by the IPCC, and this includes many high profile individuals who have contributed to IPCC reports, who can explain away any of the falsifications of a high sensitivity that I’ve developed. The science you believe in is so incredibly broken the only defense its supporters have is to avoid having to explain how the laws of physics support their position.
Here’s a simple one for you to try and explain. But be forewarned that there’s no plausible explanation you can offer that will be consistent with the absurdly high sensitivity claimed by the IPCC. This simple fact is why people like Trenberth, Schlesinger, Schmidt and others have no answer either.
The IPCC claims a nominal sensitivity factor of 0.8C per W/m^2 which when multiplied by the 3.7 W/m^2 of equivalent forcing arising from doubling CO2 results in the nominal 3C increase claimed.
The average surface temperature of 288K emits about 390 W/m^2 (per Trenberth’s energy balance diagram). Increasing this to 288.8K increases the emissions by about 4.3 W/m^2. The additional 3.3 W/m^2 above and beyond the 1 W/m^2 of forcing causing it is claimed to be the result of massive positive feedback amplifying something tiny into something big (See “Feedback Fubar” to understand Bode so you can see why this is impossible in the first place).
Why aren’t the 240 W/m^2 of accumulated forcing arriving from the Sun also generating 3.3 W/m^2 of feedback each? Obviously they’re not, for if they were, the surface emissions would be close to that expected from a body the temperature of boiling water. How can the next Joule/sec of forcing from increasing CO2 concentrations be nearly 3x more powerful at warming the surface than the last Joule/sec arriving from the Sun?
COE tells us that Joules are Joules and in fact, work is measured in Joules and maintaining surface heat requires work. The consensus position is such an obvious violation of COE that for reasons that defy explanation seems to go above the head of nearly every consensus climate scientist on the planet. How can they be so incredibly dense and/or so unaware of how to apply basic sanity checking to a scientific position?
“public stunts or forums”
You’ll take shots at skeptics on incredibly popular public forums like WUWT and twitter, but you won’t consent to serious debates in any official capacity?
Total losers.
Steven Mosher
According to the Pope, the earth is round. Not a sphere mind, round, like a pizza.
Who are you calling flat earthers?
Your problem is, you’re just to yellow to have the AGW scam challenged without the ability to stifle dissenters and load the bases.
Truth fears no question.
What are you so afraid of, Mr. Mosher?
ypu aint the blue team mosh, what are you? english lit or something?
Mosh did you pick up Heller’s challenge to your fake graphs claim, he offers data and code, you have a habit of making spurious claims, and I know you sanitise your twitter when you get owned
Is it “flat Earth-ism” to question the sensitivity of the climate to CO2? Is it “flat Earth-ism” to point out the failure of so many climate predictions? Is it “flat Earth-ism” to suggest that just maybe, destroying our economies by a too-rapid conversation to unproven technologies is not the best approach?
See
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/flat_earth_society_believes_in_climate_change/
“As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that while he “can’t speak for the Society as a whole regarding climate change,” he personally thinks the evidence suggests fossil fuel usage is contributing to global warming.”
So the president of the flat earth society is on YOUR side.
co2isnotevil July 26, 2017 at 9:39 pm
“Why aren’t the 240 W/m^2 of accumulated forcing arriving from the Sun also generating 3.3 W/m^2 of feedback each? Obviously they’re not, for if they were, the surface emissions would be close to that expected from a body the temperature of boiling water. ”
I’ve wondered the same thing. The only answer I’ve been able to arrive at is the CO2 somehow has an exponential effect on the creation of water vapor. /sarc
We debate, but only with people who agree with us.
Jim,
Yes, this was the first thing I noticed which inspired me to perform proper due diligence on the claims of the IPCC. The comprehensive due diligence that followed uncovered many more inconsistencies with first principles thermodynamic theory, so many in fact that it’s hard to believe how so many serious errors have found their way into ‘settled’ science and have gone unnoticed for decades, moreover; every error is in favor of alarmism, much like the many dubious adjustments made to data sets.
I remember many having trouble with thermodynamics back in college physics and it appears that this trait is shared by most climate scientists who side with the IPCC and its ludicrous claims. I want to believe that it’s just incompetence driven by group think and confirmation bias, but it’s getting harder and harder to rule out nefariousness, especially given how the warmists are doubling down on the alarmist rhetoric, for no other reason than that the current administration wants to get the science right.
Steven, I’m no scientist, but recall the recently published RSS update. Why was Christy not part of the peer review process?
When you say “we debate all the time” what that says to sceptics is “the people that agree, continue to agree, but we will ignore the people that disagree.”
Just look at the MSM. They booked Clinton into the White House months in advance because they agreed to agree with each other but refused to debate the people that didn’t. The election was lost despite all of the greatest pundits and polls agreeing.
Steven, is your caps key broken?
What do you mean “we” debate? You’re not a so-called “climate scientist”, in fact you’re not a scientist at all. How can a liberal arts baccalaureate debate science, with real scientists?
So climate science, among all human enterprise, is exempt from fraud or waste!
Amazing.
Angech.
Your question has been asked and answered repeatedly.
Here you go AGAIN
The data is here
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/downloads/TAVG/LATEST%20-%20Quality%20Controlled.zip
Download that
Then run this code
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
zip <- "LATEST – Quality Controlled.zip"
unzip(zip)
Station_data <- read.table("data.txt", comment.char = "%" )
Station_data <- Station_data[,c(1,3,4)]
colnames(Station_data)<-c("Id","Date","Temp")
Station_data <- tbl_df(Station_data)
Total_Stations <-length(unique(Station_data$Id))
Summary % group_by(Date) %>%summarise(Stations=n())
ggplot(Summary,aes(x=Date, y= Stations)) + geom_line()
#############
there is no point in me repeating an answer yet again when you just ignore it or deny it.
The whole point ofposting data is so that YOU have the power to do you own checking.
Total is over 42,000
Peak is around 19000
Currently Active This month is between 14000 and 15000.
Because they know they will loose
Intelligence Squared already hosted a red team-blue team debate in 2015.
Red Team: Michael Crichton, Richard Lindzen, and Phillip Stott.
Blue team, Brenda Ekwurzel (UCS — team Kenji), Gavin Schmidt and Richard Sommerville (meteorologist).
The blue team lost. The debate was highly publicized. It didn’t change anything.
During the debate, Gavin Schmidt accused Richard Lindzen of dishonesty, thereby revealing himself to be the very special human being and ethical scientist that we all know he is.
The date of the debate was March 22, 2007. (I just gogled it.)
“The blue team lost. “
Even though Michael Crichton died seven years earlier?
I think you mean “lose”, the word “Loose” means weak and wobbly – which also describes them!
My mistake about the date. The rest holds.
Will 80% budget cuts encourage them to defend their field?
“Never debate”
(not augmentative in my response) that is precisely why this is a BAD idea. FORCING the blue team into debate will cause them to circle the wagons. They will bring out every study, graphs in hundreds of a degree, homogenized, blenderized, smootherized, modelerized piece of data they have in the past 30 years, and THEN say the Trump administration is denying science. It will back-fire, cannot red/blue team the merits of a religion, it will be a media circus.
It won’t be a media circus if it is handled online like the old Climate Dialogue site, with multi-topic dialogs going on at once.
Roger, I would agree if it would be that straightforward. Just need to look to the current Russia Collusion investigation, there would be leaks, interviews, protests, virtue signally, on and on. The Utopian dream of a bunch of guys/gals sitting in a room having a rational debate, if 30 years of hysteria is any tell, would be impossible. My guess, the ‘other’ side would just boycott the whole thing, claiming it’s rigged, a witch-hunt and anti-science, at least that is what the MSN would be reporting – They win!!!!
Well, thanks to Steven Mosher and others like him, there has been a debate that is going on here at WUWT for some time now…but how much has the MSM or anybody else reported on this to the general public?
Mosher and most of the other warmists who visit this site don’t debate, they just pontificate, which only serves to weaken their position. After all, spouting incoherent rhetoric is all you have left when you can’t accept that the physics falsifies what you’re told to believe.
Steven Mosher is not a scientist, so he can debate here, sure, but not really debate other scientists as a scientist. He is disingenuous when he insists “we debate” meaning “we climate scientists debate”:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/06/who-is-steven-mosher.html
He is a continuing participant in BEST. That satisfies any claim of “we”, Poptech’s war on him notwithstanding.
Will they let this guy into the debate from Greenpeace??:
They will probably eliminate Cruz, not a scientist. He is a Master-debater…
He could still advise.
The MSM continue the deluge of disingenuous drivel with all manner of scare stories directed at both the CAGW acolytes & ordinary folks who rely on these sources for their news & information. We are assaulted on a daily basis by stories predicting the end of the world due to CO2 (blame hydrocarbons), pollution (blame hydrocarbons), pesticides (blame hydrocarbons), plastics (blame hydrocarbons), falling sperm counts (blame hydrocarbons), changing albedo of arctic & glacial ice (blame hydrocarbons), increased rainfall & flooding (blame hydrocarbons), bad air (blame hydrocarbons), etc. etc. The list is apparently endless! How can the wonder materials that lifted us from a subsistence agrarian economy pre-1750 to our modern day high standard of living & increased longevity have become so demonized & despised? It belies belief!
Actually they always say Carbon (instead of CO2, carbon dioxide) – whatever that means. It’s like saying water,H2O is hydrogen.
You can hardly help but blame smog on hydrocarbons…!
Now there’s a non sequitur!
I thought this article had to do with the impact of CO2 on temps and climate.
Or are you suggesting that the EPA go back to its original mission of addressing particulate matter in the air and dirty water?
Griff, come visit the Smokey Mountains!
And in the UK much of this smog is the result of burning wood and biomass. Typical of the greens to promote something that does more harm than good.
“One group of prominent researchers even argued red team exercises amount to “dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions” that undercut mainstream science.”
…buck buck buckaaaaawwck!
(chicken)…
And you certainly need to take this route when mainstream science is so controversial while the side that’s demonstrably wrong refuses to admit there’s even a controversy. Talk about denial …
It should really be bidirectional with red teams attacking both a high and low sensitivity while blue teams defend either a high or low sensitivity. After all, the root of all differences that separates the warmists from the skeptics is the magnitude of the climate sensitivity.
Two for starters:
Helicobacter Pylori
Plate Tectonics
Two previous dangerous minority opinions opposed for decades!
SteveT
+100
Reality is the tide that washes over intellectual edifices, to see if they are made of stone or sand. Science is throwing buckets of water on those same edifices, to see if they will stand up to the tide.
Such an indignant statement is really a cry of: “Stop throwing water on our sand castle!”
Fantastic analogy! I started as a believer in AGW and looked into it to better understand the problem. What I found first confused me, then disappointed me and finally enraged me as I came to understand how thoroughly my beloved science has been corrupted by Leftist politics and career seeking activists like Michael Mann and others who should be in jail.
But ,but, butt he already alluded to a needed vetting process, no?
ya read popper on red teams…
opps.
You seem to have raided the popper cabinet.
You are never going to be picked as any sort of scientist, are you mosh.!
To call Holdren a kangaroo would be a compliment. Donkey.
Temperature data is one thing, but you can’t just change Popper’s views to support your own position…
Popper was talking about real science. It should work well in political science. Actually it was designed for this kind of thing.
What are these sterling scientists all afraid of? If they have a story, they should mop the floor with the red team, don’t you think? You can’t use the idea that, say, it’s not fair, poor Einstein has been asked to debate HIS theories with high school science teachers!
For those interested in real science, Trump is about to give climate science a real test without red team stuff. Let’s see what will happen to world temperatures now that the Paris agreement is dead. This is the real thing that all the whinging tougher/ideologues and useful phools are palpitating about.
What’s your guess, Moshe? Are we afraid of dying or afraid we will be just fine? I love the thrill of good brinkmanship.
Lol, blue team getting nervous. Resist we much!
The same thing that US democrats are terrified about with Trump’s voter fraud investigation.
I feel certain that Obama’s former seance czar will be perfectly OK with this process as long as the press fully covers the outcome … with a pillow … until it stops moving.
This is right up there with Phil Jones’s, “All you’ll do is try to find something wrong with it.” A true scientist would say, “Yes! Let us talk of this. Listen to the brilliance of my argument. You will see the truth of what I say. The scales will fall from your eyes!”
Instead we get cries of “Heretic! Disbeliever!” A very sad state of affairs.
Gary, outside the Trump govt and some Republican states, Paris is alive and well…
Macron, Merkel and UK environment minister Gove all spoke up for it and have said Trump was wrong to pull out. The Chinese and Indians seem to be accelerating their commitment to it…
Mosh, maybe you need to quote Popper instead of just saying : because Popper. As always you don’t say what you mean and leave it as a guessing game.
Theoretically scientists should be their own red team , questioning their own work and that of others in PR. Sadly, we know all too well that this is not happening in climatology, where there are many policiy advocates posing as scientists instead of acting like responsible scientists. They have perverted PR into a gatekeeping exercise to ensure no contradictory work sees the light of day. This was clearly evidenced in the Climategate emails. No point trying to pretend otherwise.
The whole point about the need for a Red team is that this is a policy question and there the red/blue team exercise if valuable.
The field of Climatology has been severely disfunctional for over 30 years now and has become political movement, not science. That is why a red team is both appropriated and needed.
The purpose is to point out uncertainties or weaknesses in the theory.
While there are many, let’s just think about the cloud feedback.
Without the assumption that it is a certain positive value, global warming theory changes from dangerous to a slightly beneficial impact. There is Zero studies demonstrating what the feedback value really is despite all the money going into climate research. $biilions of dollars and dozens of satellites yet nobody within the science has taken this important question on.
Something simple like this is what the politicians need to hear about.
Reading this site alongside some from the “other side” (SkS, Open Mind etc) I am beginning to wonder what the argument
is actually all about. If you look at some of the potential “Red Team” that are genuine climate scientists such
as Judith Curry, John Christie, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer and Richard Lindzen, they actually agree with most of what the
Blue Team thinks. All believe:
Global warming has happened, is happening and will probably continue to happen in coming decades.
A significant part of the cause is an increase in CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels
The points of disagreement are limited and rather nuanced:
The level of sensitivity (TCS, ECS) of surface warming to changes in CO2 proportion in the atmosphere
Um, that’s it.
The big disagreements are not over the fact of AGW, but its severity and possible consequences. How much will sea level
rise? How will the weather change – more severe or more benign? (evidence is beginning to point to the latter)
Desertification or greening? (evidence is beginning to point to the latter), more deaths from heat or fewer from cold?
…and so on.
So, the first thing any discussion should do is decide on all the points that they agree on and just concentrate on
what the best estimates of ECS and TCS are, and whether perceived risks justify the mind-bobblingly huge costs of
trying to mitigate. Personally, given the long timescales involved and slow nature of the process, I believe adaptation
is likely to be more effective and a lot less costly than mitigation.
For example:
The UK’s recently announced policy of 100% electric cars by 2040 will involve providing about 36,000 gWh of new power
generation each year – roughly doubling domestic electrical power consumption. That is 41 gW of new installed
generation plant which is either 12 new 3gW nuclear powerstations, or 27,000 wind turbines (working at 30% capacity),
or 1,600 square miles of solar farms (40 miles square or 2.6 Greater Londons).
To carry all that electricty to everybody’s domestic car charging point will require roughly double the quantity of
copper cable. Imagine the cost of all that copper and the disruption and cost of digging up all the roads to lay that
cable and replacing all the pylons and substations.
Billions and billions and billions of pounds. Who is going to pay for it all? What will be the implications for our
economy?
Total and utter “pie in the sky”.
The most honorable scientists are those who are the most diligent to falsify, or encourage others to falsify, their own theories. Anything less than this, really, is just a career called Science.
“Theoretically scientists should be their own red team , questioning their own work and that of others in PR. Sadly, we know all too well that this is not happening in climatology”
Exactly. Since they refuse to check their own work, point out errors etc. (i.e. practice science), no one else must do it either.
Greg,
This is precisely why the idea will NOT work. The technique is only effective when both teams share the same mission, pulling for the same overall objective; for example the US military or NASA space scientists.In those instances the Blue team values the critiques uncovered by the Red team.
Can you imagine Dr Mann (or Holdren) saying “Thanks guys, now we can now more effectively move forward together.”?
This is an adversarial relationship at its core.
All of this is unnecessary, just a PR stunt. The verdict is already in–the “smart money” has been betting on natural gas development, utilization, and export and the infrastructure is already coming on line to make that a reality. It’s an “inconvenient truth” for the Green Blob that just around the time the so-called “science”
aka models’ predictions have been debunked (finding this out is not hard–hit virtually ANY conservative web site) the USA has been found to have a better record at “decarbonization” than all the “green” EU countries put together! Just let the money roll on where it will do the most good; for most of the public, “climate change” rates below toenail fungus in their list of daily worries.
James Schrumpf July 27, 2017 at 4:24 am
“This is right up there with Phil Jones’s, “All you’ll do is try to find something wrong with it.” A true scientist would say, “Yes! Let us talk of this. Listen to the brilliance of my argument. You will see the truth of what I say. The scales will fall from your eyes!”
Instead we get cries of “Heretic! Disbeliever!” A very sad state of affairs.”
Plus many.
Plus lots of many. Beautifully put. My thanks.
A debate, orderly and polite, with each side allowed to bring all the evidence they can offer, harms nobody.
It may not enlighten – but, it might just do that.
Auto
Well Steven…this is exactly what I was talking about. This is exactly what I predicted would be the blue team strategy: no science, but lots of hand waving and obfuscation. You might say that Holdren is not a blue team member, but he is one of the many blue team spokespersons, defending what passes for ‘mainstream’ science.
My favorite part of the article: ““Climate science has been repeatedly ‘red-teamed,’ both by groups of avowed contrarians sponsored by right-wing groups and by the most qualified parts of the world’s scientific community,” Holdren wrote in his op-ed.”
I agree with what he says, although I still don’t know who these ‘right-wing groups’ sponsored people are. (Are there left-wing groups sponsored scientists? Is that okay with Holdren? Technically, all the climate science done under Obama was sponsored by left wing groups, namely the administration.) The red team work is already finished, and has been completely ignored, or more accurately, avoided! The only purpose of name calling and appeals to authority (consensus) is to avoid an actual discussion. There is no point in using these extremely inferior arguments to defend your position if your position is at all defensible.
Does Holdren, or any other blue team spokesperson, refer to the science in specific terms…ever? No! Just a proclamation that the science is settled. They cannot talk about the remarkable skill of the climate models in nailing their projections. it hasn’t happened. They cannot talk about the tropospheric hot-spot. They cannot explain why it has failed to warm as expected. They cannot explain early 20th century warming. They cannot explain mid 20th Century cooling or why their fear-mongering projections of increasing extreme weather hasn’t happened at all. The attempts to explain the pause have been laughable, so they generally avoid that subject as well.
Can the red team actually penetrate the powerful shield of intolerance that surrounds the blue team? Let’s hope so, for the sake of science and our wellbeing.
You mean the John Holdren who along with Paul and Anna Ehrlich warned us of a new Ice Age about to descend upon us (in peer reviewed literature)?
Who can forget the memorable book “The Population Bomb”? /sarc
Yup, that John Holdren:
Holdren and Ehrlich, 1971: Global Ecology: Readings toward a rational strategy for man [pgs. 76,77] “[Because of an imminent ICE AGE] .. even more dramatic results are possible; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.”
John Holdren then was pushing de-industrialization as a solution for this global cooling:
Holdren is seriously deluded. The good news is he is in the rearview mirror now.
Haha, strange how the coming ice age and global warming both required the US to go into the dark ages. Does this guy live in a mud hut, or just expect others to?
Holdren’s goal is to increase the power of government, and he will ride which ever vehicle will take him in that direction.
Scientists, and those who would have us believe their prognostications, are ignoring the elephant in the room. Most published research is bunk. link
In face of the above, we have to ask the sanctimonious Dr. Holdren, why should we believe you?
The teams are misnamed. The Red team should be warmists and the blue team the anti-warmists (coldists perhaps). Also since warmists get support and funding from Russian gas interests (to raise the price of gas in Western Europe and hence provide more export income to Russia) it is appropriate for the warmist side to be denoted the Red team.
Au contraire mon ami. link
Au contraire mon ami. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/
Those guys are marching to the beat of their own drummer. The media has standardized on red-Republican, blue-Democrat since about 1988. link That roughly coincides with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also roughly coincides with when the Democrat party quit working for the interests of working people. I wonder if there’s a connection.
Hot things turn red, and cold people turn blue.
I like the idea of taking on a new name for those who fail the faith test on AGW. We have been labeled as “deniers”., as if that is somehow derogatory when it is actually the proper defense of the scientific process. My concern is for the impending return of glaciation because we are still in an ice age. Maybe Interglacialists has a ring?
I personally think the red/blue team is a BAD idea, it will accomplish nothing besides MSN pontification (look they want to kill science). A false positive cannot be disproved. Like arguing Religion, it will not get anywhere. This administration needs to cut funding, after all the Science is settled and shine light into every dark corner forcing exposure of methods used to pursue further regulation. No money and make them jump through hoops, all perfectly legal. For example, just require a ROI calculation be done on every regulation, in the open, fudging numbers would quickly be exposed.
I agree completely. This charade has gone on for over 40 years and there’s nothing remotely scientific about a “red/team blue team” exercise. It’s pure foolishness. No debate has ever been tolerated by the ruling regime.
Cut off their funding. They’ve produced nothing useful. No results. Let them wash cars.
Agreed, Red/Blue teams can work when both sides have the SAME interest in mind, such as the defense of a Carrier Group. One side will find ways to attack it, the other side will find ways to defend. The ultimate goal is to find all the weaknesses – same side – same goals.
The Red/Blue team in climate debate have very different goals/interests in mind. They are not working towards a common goal. This is why it cannot work and will turn into a simple debate between opposing sides.
Duncan
I fear you may be right. There is little point arguing about religion since it is based on “beliefs” rather than scientific facts and CAGW is certainly a new religion. I also agree that cutting ALL funding for this nonsense should be a matter of urgency as should the withdrawal of many generous long-term subsidies for clearly inefficient alternative energy sources.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the developed world is getting itself into a frenzy of “virtue signalling” with each country trying to outdo the other in introducing ever-more draconian measures to eliminate our major transportation and energy-genarating infrastructure. France, Germany, the UK have all jumped on the bandwagon to eliminate gasoline/diesel vehicles & coal power stations and, as we know, parts of Australia are already basket cases in terms of energy policy. We know the ridiculous stated goals driving (sic) these policies are unattainable, short of a revolution in electricity generation, storage and distribution, but the politicians are having a field day and just rubbing their hands in glee at all the carbon taxes they will ratchet-up to steal from ordinary people. This BS need to be stopped NOW!
Just let Europe regress back into the Dark Ages. This would provide Hollywood with all kinds of medieval movie settings without resorting to a lot of props and computer-generated graphics.
Germany and the UK have been installing renewable energy for nearly a decade now.
No ill effects showing…
UK has already closed the bulk of its coal power plant… Germany gets 35% of its electricity from renewables.
This is not a bandwagon people are jumping on, but a long established set of policies making steady progress.
Griff….always determined to put a positive “spin” on wind, solar and biomass. Actually, UK has been installing useful renewable energy (hydroelectricity) for over a century but let’s not get distracted by that.
As for “no ill effects showing”, I’d beg to differ. Germany comes 2nd only to Denmark (followed by Spain & Australia) as already having the most expensive electricity in the developed world thanks to its misguided policies. Any idea why electricity is so expensive in this countries? Duh! Germany also relies on extensive transnational grid interlinks to balance its power supply & demand. Heaven knows what will happen when Germany’s neighbours also have as much intermittent sources of energy in the form of wind & solar as Germany does. Grid instability will rise significantly as intermittent energy sources increase and may lead to significant power outages.
What you also neglected to mention, is that Germany actually has MORE INSTALLED CAPACITY OF RENEWABLES than conventional sources yet those RENEWABLES ONLY GENERATED 35% OF GERMANY’s ELECTRICITY. So how do you square the economics on that, Griff? Please explain!
So the bulk of Germany’s electricity still came from guess what? COAL!!! And not just any coal – predominantly low grade brown lignite. Very environmentally friendly! And, it’s worth mentioning that a significant chunk of your so-called “renewable energy” comes from burning biomass in the form of wood pellets. In fact, over 40% of Germany’s domestic timber production goes to produce pellets for burning in power plants. Again, please enlighten me on the supposed environmental benefits of that little game.
However, you rather missed the point in my original post, Griff. The bandwagon I alluded to was the one concerning electrification of the transportation sector which France, Germany and the UK have all made bold statements about in the past couple of weeks. Given that replacing gasoline/diesel for transport conservatively represents an energy demand of the same magnitude as the existing electrical supply in these countries, I’m curious how Germany, France & the UK will provide all this electrical power by 2040. Please enlighten me since, as you already pointed out, they are busy closing down their reliable coal-fired power stations as well as nuclear stations in Germany while France claims it will slash its nuclear power from 73% to 50%, too. Which magical source will all this energy come from….and at what cost? Oh, and BTW, what about the grid infrastructure to handle an effective doubling of the energy required, thanks to all those electric cars? How much will that cost and who will pay? Take a guess?
I really don’t need any lessons on energy supply from you, Griff. Thanks!
YES!
Duncan & Bart: Agreed. As Pat Frank posted above, it’s been done and then ignored by the blue team pep squad in the media. Skeptics will get a red team of lukewarmers who will prepare for an academic exercise. Progs will send out scientists like leo decrapio so long as it’s meaningless, if ever there was a real debate with repercussions, Progs send guns to the knife fight. Mosher will “debate” those who agree with him that CO2 is warming the atmosphere, but if you say “good, measure it and let us know”, you’re a flat e@rther.
Red Team/Blue Team is a good idea.
“A Red/Blue exercise would have many benefits,” Koonin wrote in the WSJ. “It would produce a traceable public record that would allow the public and decision makers a better understanding of certainties and uncertainties. It would more firmly establish points of agreement and identify urgent research needs.”
If this is true,
“The right wing’s ‘red team’ efforts have consistently been characterized by brazen cherry-picking, misrepresentation of the findings of others, recycling of long-discredited hypotheses, and invention of new ones destined to be discredited,” Holdren wrote. “Almost none of this material has survived peer review to be published in the respectable professional literature.”
then what are they (The Blue Team) afraid of?
What are they afraid of? Why won’t Dr. Mann produce discovery? link
Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.
“What are they afraid of?”
Yeah, anyone who had their facts straight would be eager to argue their merits. I’m guessing they don’t have their facts straight. And they probably want to avoid talking about Climategate and they are worried it might come up during the course of the RedTeam/BlueTeam debate, seeing as how it goes right to the heart of the only “evidence” they have to back up their claim: The bogus surface temperature charts.
The Blue Team wants to declare themselves to already be the winners. They don’t need no Red Team, they say. In reality, they are running away and trying to avoid this examination of their past records. Like they have something to hide.
“Almost none has been published” because the rigged “pal-review” system actively conspires against it, as seen in Mann’s and other’s Climategate emails.
This guy holdren acts like he’s never heard of a false paradigm before. Personally, i think they need to red team AGW to the max. Is it really feasable that a trace “green house gas” could cause a third of the warming of the earth coming out of a glacial?
Don’t marginalize CO2 because it is a ‘trace’ gas. It created and creates the entire biosphere including ourselves. This is heavy lifting indeed and is the defining characteristic of this planet and possibly this tiny spot in the Universe. Go after CAGW chicanery by all means, but throw away that argument forthwith.
Just because CO2 is important in some respects doesn’t mean it is important in ALL respects! If it affects climate at all it is not to a degree which can be detected!
Gary, my question at the end there is exactly the type of thing that i want to see red teamed. Is it really plausable to think that 1/3 of the warming coming out of a glacial is caused by rising CO2? Think about it. Of all the massive things that are going on coming out of a glacial, how is it that CO2 gets such top billing. Water vapor alone dwarfs CO2’s impact. Then we have solar irradience changes due to orbital shifts, obliquity, albedo. (just think of the albedo changes due to ice alone!) So, i’m not buying the “magic gas” claim. Something gets lost in between the greenhouse effect and its eventual impact on surface temps. As Dr Spencer oft repeats, we can’t begin to quantify the effects of AGW until we have quantified the effects of natural sources of warming. (and that hasn’t been done yet)…
John Holdren wasn’t Obama’s science czar. He was Obama’s scienciness advocacy czar.
Holdren is very familiar with Kangaroo courts. He tried to silence Roger Pielke Jr. because he contradicted the Democrats / Consensus talking point that warming weather had caused more severe weather. Had him investigated by his university along with several others who would not parrot to the party line.
It should be obvious to anyone John Holdren never expected to be alive in 2017. His co-conspirator Ehrlich wrote a book on the subject. We were all supposed to be dead long before 1990.
That’s how smart Holdren is.
The Obama Administration and its climate science participants pushed nothing but climate alarmist propaganda and politicalized all science to serve unnecessary and massive increases in government regulation.
The country endured 8 years of climate alarmist Kangaroo courts under Obama. His administration used billions of dollars in federal funds to “bribe” universities and government organizations to produce politicalized climate alarmist science in support of his schemes.
Those scientists who challenged his schemes were punished with political attacks and denied funding for their work.
It is clearly time for a red team effort to challenge the so called “concensus” which was created to coverup the clearly flawed state of climate alarmist science which is driven by politics not science.
About the reaction I would expect from Holdren. Anyone who could associate with Paul Ehrlich and still consider himself a scientist is deceiving himself.
“Many climate scientists, however, say it has no place in their field. One group of prominent researchers even argued red team exercises amount to “dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions” that undercut mainstream science.”
I believe tectonic plate theory was a very minor opinion for quite awhile that the consensus fought against.
Germ theory of disease? It was in the 1980s that helicobacter pylori was discovered to be causative in many gastric ulcers.
The debate is about whether man-made CO2 released into the atmosphere is a problem. There is plenty of factual evidence to show it is not a big enough problem to warrant changing the methods we use to generate energy.
Will stopping this method of rent seeking reduce rent seeking? No, people who cannot find anything useful to do will not suddenly change as this form of arbitrage disappears. They will “invent” another crisis.
So the pragmatic issue is not about climate change but about how to manage lazy and greedy people. If we have to pay for their greed how do we get them to do something useful? If we cannot, it is certainly less expensive to pay these people to do nothing. When they do something it can lead to very expensive outcomes.
I would vote to get a rope. If using a rope was a valid response the ‘Glo-buncha-bull (™) warming alarmists’ would have already hung anyone who advocated actual science. So I guess I will not suggest it, but I might think it hard enough that we all can see the color and fibers of the rope thereof.
Prescient analysis! I like it.
Yeah, scientists who work 60-80 hours per week are lazy people. Or scientists that spend 6 months to a year away from their families in remote locations such as Antarctica or Greenland. All for salaries, that when factoring in their work hours, are quite modest. So no, they are neither lazy or greedy.
Chris, your romantic notion of the toil of climate scientists reveals you are a young millennial patsy.
Chris, in your unconnected to reality opinion, do you honestly believe that all scientists meet the description you just gave?
Gary Pearse said: “Chris, your romantic notion of the toil of climate scientists reveals you are a young millennial patsy.”
Gary, you are 100% wrong. Do you have any other mindless comments to add?
MarkW said: “Chris, in your unconnected to reality opinion, do you honestly believe that all scientists meet the description you just gave?”
Mark, it’s good to hear from Mr, 10,000 posts and still zero supporting links provided. I’ve worked with professors at universities in the US and Asia, and found that most work pretty hard, and don’t make a lot of money. Not all, but most. According to Geoff’s logic, with which you clearly agree, lazy folks are going to do the following 1) Get a bachelors degree in a hard science – most likely physics – which is challenging and requires great effort, takes 4 years (realistically 5 these days) and costs $100K 2) repeat the same process for 2 years for a master’s degree, adding another $30-50K 3) repeat the process again for 3 years, adding another $50K. And at the end of that 10 year slog – and longer if they had to work in the private sector in between to save money – they can become an associate professor and make $40-50K/year. So in total, give up 10 earning years of your life, rack up $200K in debt, and then get a job that pays $40-50K/year. That’s what a lazy person is going to do, according to your logic.I’d say you and Geoff are the ones unconnected to reality.
Chris,
private industry starting salary PhD physics …. $80-110K
permanent university ……………………………….. $50-70
post doc university or affiliated research ………. $42-54
government lab ………………………………………. $60-74
the above are the mid (25th-75th) percentiles. So, the guys you are referencing are the low end of the spectrum. Maybe lazy, maybe not.
Be they altruistic, or be they not able to qualify for the careers that pay twice as much?
You vote for altruistic, I vote for relatively incompetent (and/or relatively lazy).
Don M,
Private industry salaries are not relevant to this discussion. They are not going to be writing papers on climate change, they will be working in defense or space industries.
Many, many more are hired into universities than govt labs – the ratio is at least 5-1. So, the figures for universities are the more relevant when looking at the entire PhD pool. And, you noted a range from 42 – 70K across the 2 university related categories. So call it 55K, that’s fine. It’s still a very low salary for someone who puts in 10 years of hard work and incurs up to 200K in student debt. Someone with technical aptitude can come out in 4 years with a computer science degree and make $100K+. I just don’t buy the lazy accusation, there are far easier routes to making a living than becoming a PhD in atmospheric sciences.
Hey, that fact is not relevant to my point of view ….
A person spends 10 years and $200K and they “CHOOSE” the $45,000/year career track.
The next guy (that put in the same time & money) who actually does get to choose the $110K career track, gets first choice because the next guy is more competent and/or hard working.
Or, the first person is indeed the altruistic save the world type (which is just as scary).
Lazy is as lazy does.
The face of fascism, “settled science” redux.
While I worry about skeptical blundering and moronic political agnosticism as the culture of choice you have to wonder after reading an article like this; “how have we lost to clown science authority such as this for 50 years running?”.
I give Pruitt credit for drawing them out with “Red Team” posturing. Blue looks really obtuse to a larger viewing share then normal.
trouble with red teams is that what with only 3% of scientists to start with, and most of those 3% past retirement, it’s vary hard to get real scientists.
You are not really very skeptical if you fall for that 97% – 3% line…. that is debunked for a start. Does not even need a Red team to do it.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/20/what-is-there-a-97-consensus-about/
Well, being a scientist, I know more than a few scientists. And I know not a single one a den1er. So, as a skeptic, I actually think 97% is far too low.
And isn’t JC recently retired? A common phenotype of den1ers these days.
Giving JC the label “denier,” you must have serious comprehension issues, a very limited English vocabulary, or a propensity to lie.
(this moron doesn’t even know how to spell “skeptical”)…
Most high profile skeptic scientists are part of the 97% (including Dr Curry)…
I know how to spell sceptical. And I’m not even a Brit. (although I’m somewhat fond of the language).
Do you know what the two questions were on the so-called survey?
And yes, it’s odd how once a climate scientist no longer has to worry about career advancement and grant applications they become outspoken against AGW. Why do you think that might be?
So, Really, Cook et al, Oreskes, Holdren, all say 97%, but you say that’s too low. Does that make Cook, Oreskes and Holdren denlers? Please step up your game, or you’ll bump Steve from the “lamest tr0ll here” honor he so treasures.
It seems you aren’t aware of the total debunking of the 97% meme…
You might have a small amount of credibility if you knew how to spell “skeptical.”
“sceptical” is the British / Commonwealth spelling. (Although Fowler argued that it shouldn’t be.)
(Roger, he spells it “skepical”)…
Jstalewski,
I much prefer “skeptic” to “sceptic” as the latter reminds me of “septic”, as in septic tank, a container of malodorous bodily effluent.
Hi VB,
even the link you mentioned shows that less than 3% of abstracts surveyed implicitly or
explicitly rejected the consensus. I would ask where the red team could find 30 or 40 scientists
who are active in the field (i.e. not retired) who would be willing to be part of the process?
In addition the last time this was tried was the Berkeley earth project which was set up by the
then skeptical Richard Muller and the basic result was that he ended up agreeing that the consensus view was right.
Finally is there any serious notion about how this will work? And who will judge the results?
I assume that a likely point of attack will be the uncertainty in the climate models. And suppose
the red team say they are too uncertain to be relied upon and the blue team responds that that
is not the case and also they are the best we have. Who is the third party who gets to decide who
to believe. A stale rehashing of old arguments is not going to solve anything or change anyone’s opinion.
There needn’t be any formal judges, or maybe the moderators of the Dutch Climate Dialogue site could be recruited.
It won’t be a stale rehashing to 97% of the journalists and opinion leaders who read it. They’ve heard only the warmists’ alleged debunkings of skeptical claims. They haven’t heard the skeptical counterpoints to them. Warmists haven’t been forced to get down to brass tacks.
Roger,
what makes you think that US politicians for example have not heard both
sides of the debate ad nauseum? There was a recent high profile hearing in
from of the house science committee (covered here and elsewhere). Unless there
is some process of deciding which points are valid that is accepted by both sides
then this is a waste of time.
Germino
All that is required is a room with a window, a big window, or is seeing not believing ?
The first thing needed is a team of referees to examine papers to be accepted into argument. These need to be mostly physicists and statisticians who are recognized as impartial. They should also give reasons why other papers are not accepted. Who knows, maybe the Blue team would have the nerve to submit M. Mann’s contaminated crap as evidence of something besides corruption of science!
Totally bogus comment. Skeptics who work with the temperature data sets, both surface and satellite, would love to debate. Meanwhile Mosher won’t debate because he thinks the opposition are flat earthers.
Realscep, the 97% thing wasn’t even cleverly dressed up. However, I believe only 3% of the population actually thinks for himself; the rest parrot their masters’ doggerel. The Soviet Union dissidents we know of numbered far fewer than 3%, but they represented the impossibly brave ones.
Of course, basically ‘knowing’ and ‘thinking’ only what you’ve been told to without using your own resources, clearly you cast yourself on the side of the authorities and think the dissidents were stupid schmucks. So I suppose it isn’t a given to everyone that Soviet dissidents were actually brave.
I try to tease out some original thought from commenters like yourself because you do come to this site, which is a big step up from the designer-brained, pre-programmed types that burden society. And also, you are quite a young man (I won’t spell out the many ‘tells’ that inform me of this) and, hopefully you will think differently as you grow older. You can see what a tragedy it would be if you already knew everything you were ever going to know, I’m sure.
Resorting to the 97% consensus fabrication is just like the 97% fabrication itself- a blatantly false appeal to authority which betrays the credibility of the underlying argument. So, you declare yourself to be willing to embrace falsehood and deny scientific process. You are the enemy of truth! Presumably you think Michael Mann is a great scientist and not a nasty, lying, conniving, activist pseudo-scientist. Perhaps you are Michael Mann!
John writes: “Presumably you think Michael Mann is a great scientist and not a nasty, lying, conniving, activist pseudo-scientist. “
John you left out “fishbelly white mass of quivering gelatin infested by a strange, bunch grass like growth on his head”.
Translation:
“We’ve been been peer-reviewed by those who already agreed with our conclusions. A ‘Red Team’ might be made up of scientist who weren’t funded to reach our conclusions and challenge how our conclusions were reached. HOW DARE THEY!”
But it’s been “peer reviewed up the wazoo” .
https://youtu.be/aO9Mx5IcdJQ
it would that this is how they see the tax and rate payers.
TYPO!
“It would seem that this is how they see the tax and rate payers.”
(time for my nape …er… nap. 😎
A “settled science” with a “97% consensus” is worried about “dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions” ?
Neo,
97% consensus, what odds can I get on that ?
Frustrating though it may be for some to be placed into the position of a public debate, there are a few realities here that are hard to ignore. Much of the funding for climate science comes from the government. A large enough portion of the folks in the USA placed climate change concerns low enough on the scale of importance that they voted for Trump and for republicans in the house and the senate. I don’t know if that will happen again, but it has happened once. If those who believe in imminent catastrophic climate change want to continue to get increasing amounts of government support and funding, some of those people will have to change the way they vote. Refusal to engage is not likely to change minds. The CAGW supporters might do better using unrelated reasons to change the minds of enough people so that the vote changes. However people go about, the reality is that without continued government support the goals of the CAGW supporters won’t be met. Some of those people who have been called deplorable, flat earthers, deniers, or whatever need to change their minds. I’m not sure that walking away from a debate is a workable option anymore, even if it means listening to and debating with people that are considered inferior. I suppose we’ll see how this plays out and if it makes any difference. The CAGW crowd might be able to just wait this out for 3 or 7 more years.
This is my favorite quote “Holdren argued the scientific peer-review process already acts as a check on bad science, further arguing a red team exercise is a ‘right-wing’ plot against climate science” .
And that ridged peer review process passed a paper on Star Wars did it not .
Peer – review is the best argument he can come up with.??.
Hands up everyone who knows it’s pal-review: Biased, funded, corrupted and agenda – driven.
Passed his papers on Global cooling I assume! What a joke! Peer review as it presently operataes is part of the political corruption of science