Climate Change and the Disappearance of States
12-16-2010
, 10:12 AM
12-16-2010
, 11:56 AM
Quote:
I guess that's the way a lot of people look at it. The problem is--have you really investigated the behavior of climate skeptics? I mean a lot has been said about some climate scientists dodging FOIA requests, but does anybody even know that they were getting slammed with repetitive and unnecessary FOIA's? A lot has been said about Michael Mann suggesting that a journal be boycotted because a skeptic paper was published there. Does anyone talk about the fact that the paper was given a light peer review by the journal's skeptical editor, that half the editorial board resigned in protest and that the publisher eventually said the poor paper should never have been published?
I don't expect conspiracy theorists to behave well or rationally, I do expect the establishment to - all the onus on behaving correctly is on the proponents of AGW. It should be clear that every **** up harms the case exponentially
I have no idea where you are getting this.
The summaries of the science in the 4th report include many "facts" which were not based on science. The most egregious example is the Himalayan glacier forecasts, but there were many more to do with food production and sea level rises etc which were again not based on peer reviewed science or were gross misrepresentations of the peer reviewed science. You cannot deny that this was the case, since the "errors" have been acknowledged by the IPCC, and they are going to adjust their procedures accordingly (although Raj Pachauri has bizarrely remained in place. The "errors" were all in the direction of exaggerating the effects of warming - if the report was not biased, the errors would have been mixed.
This is where not knowing the science hurts your position. 2C is not some silly number, it is based on the science. As for the uncertainty in projections, we act under uncertainty all the time--just because we can't project a specific warming does not mean that we should not act, especially given the consequences if warming is at the high end of the range.
I know enough science to understand that there is a clear consensus among climate scientists that their current models cannot accurately forecast specific temperature rises (as it says in the 4th IPCC report). I know enough science to know that there is no model which can predict to any reasonable degree the effects of any interventions we might make such as CO2 reduction. I agree that just because we can't project a specific warming doesn't mean we shouldn't act - that's why I object to PR stunts which pretend that we can project specific targets. 2C is a pure PR stunt that has literally no scientific basis at all, and even if the science enables us to predict a specific level of warming over a specific time, there is no scientific basis for projections of its abatement. Acting under uncertainty is critical to science, but at the moment we are being asked to devote vast resources to mitigate something which is being presented as certain - "the science is settled"; "there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists"; and the sceptical scientists are rightly pointing out that there is a lot less certainty than the IPCC suggests and therefore a weaker basis for setting policy than is being presented to us by the politicians
It's very easy to be a skeptic. All you have to do is sow doubt. That the public is eager to consume this doubt only helps.
It has become even easier to be a scaremonger, there are several books detailing the process - and the climate change lobby appears to be following the game plan - this makes me suspicious of their arguments even if their motives are altruistic. I was horrified by the activities of the activist employed by wikipaedia who changed 5000 articles to bias them in favour of the warming hypothesis and discredit the sceptics; I was horrified that the BBC was advised by a PR company to ignore the scientific arguments and repeat that the "science was settled" and then implemented this policy. Weren't you angry with this too? As a scientist, surely you don't support these actions?
How can you make this claim without knowing anything about the science?
I understand epistemology; I understand the scientific method; I understand how public organisations operate, and I understand the PR impact of revelations about operational activities which don't meet the standards expected by the public. I used to be a CEO, and I can assure you that if my company had produced an annual report as riddled with errors as the IPCC report was, I would be typing this from my jail cell. The investment banks and BP are models of probity and corporate social responsibility compared to the IPCC.
But when they do this, you call the report "scaremongering"
Scaremongering results from exaggerating the predictions which was what the IPCC did (again this is a matter of fact even if the exaggerations were the result of errors) - all I want is scientifically based predictions with their uncertainty and error range included - actually I want odds ratios and confidence intervals where possible
I agree.
I don't think you understand the depth and breadth of the consensus if you seriously entertain the idea that it could all be a scam. A scam that every scientific body in the world is in on? If that were true, then the implications of biased and greedy scientists would not be limited to climate science.
Scams can be very very large indeed! There appears to be a trend towards the politicisation of science, by which I mean in particular, the political control of science budgets. If your research meets the political view prevalent you get funded, if not you don't. This is an extremely worrying concern to me. There are many areas which are now being skewed well away from scientific fact, and exaggerated for political or commercial reasons. (And in this area the sums of money involved are huge; it would not be human nature for there not to be some scams going on within what may have started out to be a perfectly serious and honest project.)
I give one example of political distortion of science in a spoiler because it is otherwise irrelevant to this thread:
I do not put myself in the sceptic camp, or the alarmist camp - I want to be in the scientific camp, but it's pretty hard to get in!
I don't expect conspiracy theorists to behave well or rationally, I do expect the establishment to - all the onus on behaving correctly is on the proponents of AGW. It should be clear that every **** up harms the case exponentially
I have no idea where you are getting this.
The summaries of the science in the 4th report include many "facts" which were not based on science. The most egregious example is the Himalayan glacier forecasts, but there were many more to do with food production and sea level rises etc which were again not based on peer reviewed science or were gross misrepresentations of the peer reviewed science. You cannot deny that this was the case, since the "errors" have been acknowledged by the IPCC, and they are going to adjust their procedures accordingly (although Raj Pachauri has bizarrely remained in place. The "errors" were all in the direction of exaggerating the effects of warming - if the report was not biased, the errors would have been mixed.
This is where not knowing the science hurts your position. 2C is not some silly number, it is based on the science. As for the uncertainty in projections, we act under uncertainty all the time--just because we can't project a specific warming does not mean that we should not act, especially given the consequences if warming is at the high end of the range.
I know enough science to understand that there is a clear consensus among climate scientists that their current models cannot accurately forecast specific temperature rises (as it says in the 4th IPCC report). I know enough science to know that there is no model which can predict to any reasonable degree the effects of any interventions we might make such as CO2 reduction. I agree that just because we can't project a specific warming doesn't mean we shouldn't act - that's why I object to PR stunts which pretend that we can project specific targets. 2C is a pure PR stunt that has literally no scientific basis at all, and even if the science enables us to predict a specific level of warming over a specific time, there is no scientific basis for projections of its abatement. Acting under uncertainty is critical to science, but at the moment we are being asked to devote vast resources to mitigate something which is being presented as certain - "the science is settled"; "there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists"; and the sceptical scientists are rightly pointing out that there is a lot less certainty than the IPCC suggests and therefore a weaker basis for setting policy than is being presented to us by the politicians
It's very easy to be a skeptic. All you have to do is sow doubt. That the public is eager to consume this doubt only helps.
It has become even easier to be a scaremonger, there are several books detailing the process - and the climate change lobby appears to be following the game plan - this makes me suspicious of their arguments even if their motives are altruistic. I was horrified by the activities of the activist employed by wikipaedia who changed 5000 articles to bias them in favour of the warming hypothesis and discredit the sceptics; I was horrified that the BBC was advised by a PR company to ignore the scientific arguments and repeat that the "science was settled" and then implemented this policy. Weren't you angry with this too? As a scientist, surely you don't support these actions?
How can you make this claim without knowing anything about the science?
I understand epistemology; I understand the scientific method; I understand how public organisations operate, and I understand the PR impact of revelations about operational activities which don't meet the standards expected by the public. I used to be a CEO, and I can assure you that if my company had produced an annual report as riddled with errors as the IPCC report was, I would be typing this from my jail cell. The investment banks and BP are models of probity and corporate social responsibility compared to the IPCC.
But when they do this, you call the report "scaremongering"
Scaremongering results from exaggerating the predictions which was what the IPCC did (again this is a matter of fact even if the exaggerations were the result of errors) - all I want is scientifically based predictions with their uncertainty and error range included - actually I want odds ratios and confidence intervals where possible
I agree.
I don't think you understand the depth and breadth of the consensus if you seriously entertain the idea that it could all be a scam. A scam that every scientific body in the world is in on? If that were true, then the implications of biased and greedy scientists would not be limited to climate science.
Scams can be very very large indeed! There appears to be a trend towards the politicisation of science, by which I mean in particular, the political control of science budgets. If your research meets the political view prevalent you get funded, if not you don't. This is an extremely worrying concern to me. There are many areas which are now being skewed well away from scientific fact, and exaggerated for political or commercial reasons. (And in this area the sums of money involved are huge; it would not be human nature for there not to be some scams going on within what may have started out to be a perfectly serious and honest project.)
I give one example of political distortion of science in a spoiler because it is otherwise irrelevant to this thread:
Spoiler:
I do not put myself in the sceptic camp, or the alarmist camp - I want to be in the scientific camp, but it's pretty hard to get in!
12-16-2010
, 12:32 PM
It was a very good summary of the issues with the AGW debate...
In previous posts, I never bothered listing the IPCC sins because I thought they were common knowledge.
But apparently, many alarmists did not bother to follow the various IPCC scandals.
When alarmists get upset by the latest polls showing them losing credibility, they need to read your post...to remind them why they lost the public's confidence.
There has been too many games played denying FOIA requests by alarmists and too many apologists excusing this type of behavior. The tax payers financed their research so insisting that the scientific method be followed religiously is not much to ask. After publication, it should be SOP to have the complete methodologies on the web. No one should have to bother with FOIA requests. Just go to the web and download the data. I lost many a letter grade when I failed to get my methodology correct in school lab reports. If you are a professional scientist, purposely misleading methodologies should result in professional suicide...
But the rules don't seem to apply to climatologists who support the AGW hypothesis...
And I was happy too see that wiki super-editor removed via arbitration in a unanamous vote.
That guy was a one man wrecking machine in destroying pro-AGW sceptic wiki articles.
Perhaps wiki will be slightly less political than it is now.
In previous posts, I never bothered listing the IPCC sins because I thought they were common knowledge.
But apparently, many alarmists did not bother to follow the various IPCC scandals.
When alarmists get upset by the latest polls showing them losing credibility, they need to read your post...to remind them why they lost the public's confidence.
There has been too many games played denying FOIA requests by alarmists and too many apologists excusing this type of behavior. The tax payers financed their research so insisting that the scientific method be followed religiously is not much to ask. After publication, it should be SOP to have the complete methodologies on the web. No one should have to bother with FOIA requests. Just go to the web and download the data. I lost many a letter grade when I failed to get my methodology correct in school lab reports. If you are a professional scientist, purposely misleading methodologies should result in professional suicide...
But the rules don't seem to apply to climatologists who support the AGW hypothesis...
And I was happy too see that wiki super-editor removed via arbitration in a unanamous vote.
That guy was a one man wrecking machine in destroying pro-AGW sceptic wiki articles.
Perhaps wiki will be slightly less political than it is now.
12-16-2010
, 01:02 PM
12-16-2010
, 01:36 PM
12-16-2010
, 01:55 PM
12-16-2010
, 02:21 PM
12-16-2010
, 02:59 PM
12-16-2010
, 03:40 PM
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/12/n...science-i.html
They over-estimated the effects of CO2 doubling by almost 2 degrees Celsius from the IPCC low end estimation?
Gee Whiz, this must be a first. The IPCC exagerates the dangers of CO2. Say it isn't so!
Could the IPCC claims of 3-5 degree Celsius temp increases from CO2 doubling be wrong?
No...that can't be possible. Can it?
Quote:
Per physicist Luboš Motl, the NASA researchers, Bounoua et al., concluded the following:
"The article in Geophysical Research Letters combines their climate model with the feedbacks linked to vegetation, especially evapotranspiration - the sum of plant transpiration and evaporation from leaves...What is their result?...The resulting climate sensitivity attributed to the CO2 doubling from 390 ppm today to 780 ppm expected in 200 years from now (under business-as-usual) is just 1.64 °C - less than a Celsius degree per century or so. This figure is below 2 °C, the low end of the interval guessed by the IPCC." [Note: study's authors - L. Bounoua, F. G. Hall, P. J. Sellers, A. Kumar, C. J. Tucker, M. L. Imhoff (2010)]
"The article in Geophysical Research Letters combines their climate model with the feedbacks linked to vegetation, especially evapotranspiration - the sum of plant transpiration and evaporation from leaves...What is their result?...The resulting climate sensitivity attributed to the CO2 doubling from 390 ppm today to 780 ppm expected in 200 years from now (under business-as-usual) is just 1.64 °C - less than a Celsius degree per century or so. This figure is below 2 °C, the low end of the interval guessed by the IPCC." [Note: study's authors - L. Bounoua, F. G. Hall, P. J. Sellers, A. Kumar, C. J. Tucker, M. L. Imhoff (2010)]
Gee Whiz, this must be a first. The IPCC exagerates the dangers of CO2. Say it isn't so!
Could the IPCC claims of 3-5 degree Celsius temp increases from CO2 doubling be wrong?
No...that can't be possible. Can it?
12-16-2010
, 03:50 PM
Quote:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/12/n...science-i.html
They over-estimated the effects of CO2 doubling by almost 2 degrees Celsius from the IPCC low end estimation?
Gee Whiz, this must be a first. The IPCC exagerates the dangers of CO2. Say it isn't so!
Could the IPCC claims of 3-5 degree Celsius temp increases from CO2 doubling be wrong?
No...that can't be possible. Can it?
They over-estimated the effects of CO2 doubling by almost 2 degrees Celsius from the IPCC low end estimation?
Gee Whiz, this must be a first. The IPCC exagerates the dangers of CO2. Say it isn't so!
Could the IPCC claims of 3-5 degree Celsius temp increases from CO2 doubling be wrong?
No...that can't be possible. Can it?
The negative feedback is about 13%, not "2 whole degrees!" Read the paper and see.
It's a good paper that does show a plausible negative feedback not contained in climate models. That climate skeptics have to lie about the magnitude of the effect should throw up some red flags. Oh, only consensus scientists do bad things. I forgot.
12-16-2010
, 03:59 PM
