Comments on: Apologist Responses to Climategate Misconstrue the Real Debate (Quantitative, not Qualitative)

By: Potpourri

Potpourri — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:59:55 +0000

[...] An intrepid critic tries to blow up my Climategate post with a medical analogy. Doesn’t he know I’m the three-time heavyweight champ of medical [...]

By: cmacrider

cmacrider — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 07:53:54 +0000

In general your comments are thoughtful but, I submit, a bit charitable to the Global Warming advocates. Before the entire world is transformed economically, socially, and politically to fulfill the aspirations of the AGW crowd, THEY HAVE THE ONUS TO PROVE:
1. That c02 concentrations drive climate change since the data clearly shows that it has not done so in the past;
2. That anthropogenic contributions of co2 is the critical factor in causing global warming;
3. That their computer models can accurately forecast climate change when the evidence is that they predicted a decade of continuous warming and the data now establishes that there has been a slight cooling over the past decade
4. That the 31,000 or so scientists who signed a Petition stating their disbelief in AGW have no scientific basis for their opinion.
5. That Dr. Lindzen’s recent scientific papers are wrong
6. That the Physicists who have correlated climate change to sun spot activity on the sun are wrong
7. That the Russian, Australian, and New Zealand allegations that the AGW advocates did not take a representative sampling from their weather stations and selectively chose data to validate their proposition that these land masses were warming is wrong.
8. That the astro physicists who point to the fact that planet mars has experienced a similar warming as planet earth during corresponding periods are wrong.
To date they have not satisfied that onus of proof even on the balance of probability never mind with any degree of scientific certainty.

Once they have satisfied the foregoing burden then it seems they still have to prove that the reduction in co2 will obviate the catastophes they allege. It is a bit disconcerting to hear that if the entire production of co2 in the United States was completely shut down for 40 years it would (accepting all the AGW assumptions) only produce a statistically insignificant climate change.

The emails and equally as important the sloppy spaghetti computer code that was released validates the skeptics right to be skeptical. The proposition that they can create a computer program to “model the earths climate” is pure hubris when one recognizes the fact that climate is chaotic and dynamic with many unknowns (e.g. are clouds a negative or positive forcing?). One should bear in mind the basic proposition of the “chaos theory” is that you have to be able to measure precisely every possible variable before you can begin to quantify and predict chaotic behaviour. The proposition that man’s activities are so central to the forces that affect climate is an exercise in group narcissism.
In closing, I should point out that I am not sure that your free trade vs. protectionist example is analagous. Most economists are willing to admit that economics is part science and part an art. The AGW people are holding their theory out to be “pure science”. Ergo we are entitled to demand scientific certainty from them before we accept their theory.

By: Richard Barnes

Richard Barnes — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:50:35 +0000

Call me a silly old thing , but I happen to agree with Mr John Holdren, who speculated (some time ago, now,) that a tripling of atmospheric CO2 would be a good thing.

More plant food = more food for all.

That was in the 1970s.

I believe that his opinion has changed.

He now works for Mr Obama.

Mine opinion hasn’t changed.

By: Roger Knights

Roger Knights — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:01:21 +0000

“It’s true, an email from Phil Jones by itself doesn’t make Richard Lindzen right or wrong, but when policymakers need to decide which scientific experts they can trust, then the CRU emails are very relevant.”

You got it. Believability is the crux of the matter. It used to be that the climate contrarians were the ones wearing the “crank” cap. (Thanks in large part to the unprincipled viciousness of alarmist propagandists.) Now it’s the CRUsaders. They’ve lost their cred–or at least the shine is off their halos.

By: Other voices on climate change » Robert Murphy: CRU emails show science far from ’settled’

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:34:12 +0000

[...] For the rest of this article, click here. [...]

By: Xavierlc

Xavierlc — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:23:41 +0000

A very long article to say “Global arming is a hoax” differently.

Nice!

By: Gina Becker

Gina Becker — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:24:53 +0000

That it is warmer now than in 1850 isn’t certain. Look at the surfacestation.org data, then the academic papers that “correct” for urbanization effects (only 0.06 degrees???), then at all the corrections done on the raw data, which NASA’s website show to create a warming trend.

By: Dodgy Geezer

Dodgy Geezer — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:24:49 +0000

@Philemon

“As an economist, (you) should have sufficient statistical training to be able to evaluate the statistical techniques being used to study climate. As someone with academic training, one can evaluate the quality of the arguments being employed and the rigor of the research methodologies…”

Readers might like to consider how I came to doubt the AGW process. Back in 2003 I noticed Steve McIntyre trying to understand the ‘hockey stick’ graph, and asking Mann for information about the data and statistical techniques used.

He was not given them. Instead, he was subject to a tirade of abuse, and Nature was told that he was a crank who should be banned from being published. To their everlasting shame, Nature agreed.

Up to that point I had been prepared to believe in the general theory of CO2-driven warming. When I saw this treatment it was obvious that the AGW proponents had something to hide, and were doing it in an unethical and authoritarian way. I started to learn enough PCA to be able to understand McIntyre’s objections, and saw that they had validity.

Since then, every aspect of AGW has been shown to be fatally flawed – the input data, the chemistry, the models, you name it. But this has not mattered as the madness has been launched as a political and religious movement in which many can believe, while a select few can make a great deal of money out of it – a very similar analogue to Scientology.

I have spent the last seven years derided and stigmatised by my friends whenever I raised these issues, so I have learned to keep my head down. But if I could vote for a Nobel recipient, that would be Steve McIntyre, who has single-handedly stood for science while all about him sold out to social pressure….

By: Climategate: Here Comes Courage! « Watts Up With That?

Climategate: Here Comes Courage! « Watts Up With That? — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:20:17 +0000

[...] [...]

By: SNRatio

SNRatio — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:53:32 +0000

I don’t think you have got the Trenberth point quite right. He basically points to lack of detailed knowledge of energy flow, but that does not mean he knows very little. To me, it rather seems that because he knows so much, he is very critical about still existing shortcomings. I think the IPCC conclusions have been oversold a bit, but because there is still so much uncertainty both in models and data, the quantitative estimates are not at all very precise. I can’t understand how you can assert that they are: Sensitivity 2-4.5 deg, 3 deg most likely – very precise? And the argument about not knowing the effect of remedies is irrelevant for the most important ones: Reducing GHG emissions, where principles of risk management give rather clear results as long as we don’t know more to safely constrain the upper tail of the pdf for sensitivity.