Should the Scientific Challenges of Dissident Nobel Laureates be answered?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Eugene Shubert, Sep 19, 2015.

  1. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    First, you can provide evidence to support your contention that most scientists "are willing to prostitute themselves for funding". That was your unsupported accusation.
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed. Thanks for this. I see from your link that the section on Tim Ball reads:-

    "Tim Ball was captioned as the University of Winnipeg. In fact he left in 1996 and since then he has run political campaigns through two organizations he helped found: the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and the Friends of Science which, according to their websites aim to run “a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol”; and “encourage and assist the Canadian Federal Government to re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol”. Ian Clark is also on the board of the NRSP. As to the claim that Tim Ball is/was a professor in the Climatology Department at the University of Winnipeg, “the University of Winnipeg has never had a Department of Climatology”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle.

    As quoted by the Defendants (the Defendants eventually prevailed) against Tim Ball (the Plaintiff) in a lawsuit:

    “The Defendants state that the Plaintiff never held a reputation in the scientific community as a noted climatologist and authority on global warming.”

    “The Plaintiff is viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist.”

    More recently, I see from Wiki that: "In 2007, Ball, along with Willie Soon, David Legates, and Sallie Baliunas, co-authored a commentary arguing that "spring air temperatures around the Hudson Bay basin for the past 70 years (1932–2002) show no significant warming trend," and that, as a result, "the extrapolation of polar bear disappearance is highly premature."[13] The paper, funded by ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, was a "Viewpoint" article and was not peer-reviewed.[14][15] While the paper was cited by Sarah Palin to justify opposition to listing polar bears on the endangered-species list,[5] its findings were contradicted by reports from the U.S. Geological Survey[16] and other independent researchers, who concluded that man-made climate change was likely to devastate polar-bear populations by 2050.[15] The paper was also criticized by an expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wrote that it "doesn't measure up scientifically."[5]

    So much for Tim Ball.
     
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  5. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Here is a great video on the prostitution of climate science:

     
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  7. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    No -- a claim of fact needs support with documentation and tested argumentation. Videos are a poor medium for such claims.

    For example, he uses long-debunked misleading statistics. In 2015 he said in an interview:
    Only 13% of the AMS describes themselves as experts in climate science and the AMS publicly rebuked the Heartland Institute for making such a misleading claim about a paper they authored.
    http://blog.ametsoc.org/columnists/going-to-the-source-for-accurate-information/

    Second, the author of a 97% survey paper rejects the claim that Roy Spencer and John Christy are part of the 97%.
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/revealing-interview-with-top-contrarian-climate-scientists.html

    Moreover, Christy only switched to denial of AGW when his own data set was demonstrated not to support his denial of GW. Big adjustments made over 10 years to what he claimed to have measured in 1995 showed the Earth was warming, not cooling. And ten years later he's still trying to claim he is smarter than the bulk of climate scientists.

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    In fact, 20 years later, not all the errors are out yet. http://www.theguardian.com/environm...te-data-set-is-underestimating-global-warming
    and http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00767.1

    So in the one area of climate science where Christy has demonstrated some expertise, that is inferior to the work of other, more deservedly prominent groups.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2015
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635

    ========================
    Top Signs you are Reading Woo

    Cranks often enjoy posting on science forums. Once they feel the thrill of making up some pseudoscientific woo, telling it to a friend and having the friend think they are clever - they come on line, find a science forum and post away, hoping for kudos and compliments on their imagination and intelligence. We see them here all the time.

    But how can you tell a true crank from someone who is just confused, or someone who has a reasonable idea that is just not developed? How can you tell plain old errors from woo? Below is a guide to help with that decision. It lists several characteristics of cranks. If you see one of these characteristics, be wary. If you see several, well - either ignore the fellow or have some fun with him.

    . . . .

    15) As seen on TV! Links to Youtube videos are one of the hallmarks of cranks. Whether this is due to cranks getting most of their information from videos, or whether it is due to the fondness of conspiracy theorists for Youtube, masses of Youtube links are one of the most common signs of the crank.
    =======================
     
  9. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    1,067
    It's interesting to me that the four highly accomplished scientists in the videos I posted are all painting the same picture yet you can't find even one highly accomplished scientist that dares to call any of them liars.
     
  10. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Because you have not established any relevant criteria for is an "highly accomplished scientist" when some of your citations are to people who won Nobel prizes in fields unconnected to climate science and those that work in climate science are not "highly accomplished" by scientific standards.

    From: I Love Philosophy forum.

    What connects the four videos is not highly respected scholarship in the field of climate science.

    Your list of experts supporting your current world view are not researchers into mechanisms where humans can/cannot change climate, but they are all roundly promoted by a circle of pro-CO₂ industry PR firms following the disinformation campaigns that sought to pooh-pooh evidence that tobacco smoke was dangerous and environmental lead a serious health hazard. So you haven't sampled expert opinion but merely slavishly endorsed non-experts opinions promoted by vested interests in continued CO₂ emissions.

    It's not surprising that everyone has multiple fact-based sources to criticize your list of PR flacks. You did not hand-pick them, but are just repeating authoritarian claims from your well-funded echo chamber. If you ever learned to measure the cognitive biases, you might someday have a measure of scientific credibility. Instead you chose the loathsome tactics of the PR flack: self-publishing, cherry-picking and fallacious arguments.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2015
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  11. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    OK:
    Eugene, your first mistake was expecting rational scientific objectivity in discussing anthropogenic global warming.
    The subject has been far too politicized for far too long to hope for detached scientific objectivity.
    (old zen phrase-"If I was disappointed, it was because I expected too much".)

    Your second mistake was in forgetting the long history of burning heretics at the stake.
    (not to claim that agw has become a religion, but-------still)
    Should you notice people piling kindling wood about your feet-------
    recant, and run like the demons of hell were chasing you
    Keep in mind the flight of Tam O'Shanter's bobtailed mare!
     
  12. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    1,654
    Dont forget that the pope has joined the cause!!

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  13. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    What exact form of the genetic fallacy do you use here?
    John Christy (the author of this chart) displays his ignorance of climate science here. He displays his insincerity by not publishing. The CMIP-5 program is a complex program, not given to such ridiculously low-brow comparisons.

    • Who are these "20" academics and what bearing to they have on a field with hundreds? Why is no number given for "dissenters"? What methodology is used to establish what they believe?
    • The CMIP5 comparisons are not plotted from an anomaly point of zero -- you baseline the model over a range, like 1961-1990 as in IPCC AR5 WG1 figure 9.8. To baseline at a point is to add model noise to instrumental noise to internal climate variability not reflecting the long-term trend. Tamino did this right with the IPCC AR4 models in 2010, so John Christy is 5-years behind amateur climatologists.
    • Baselining at a single point invites cherry-picking as Christy does not document a blind methodology to pick the point. So one assumes he picked the point that gave maximum divergence, assuming he got the correct data plotted. Knowledge of statistics puts Christy in the wrong.
    • Do you find it curious that Christy claims the linear trends of two series over a range of years happens to intersect exactly at an extremal point of the range? This suggests Christy didn't understand what he was doing. Knowledge of statistics puts Christy in the wrong.
    • These models are whole earth models, describing the spatial-regional variations of temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, etc. Comparing them on only one dimension is disingenuous or reflects a lack of capability. Comparing them without error bars reflects ignorance of statistics in one's intended audience.
    • Neither Balloons nor Satellites are the best way to get surface temperature data -- what is the meaning of the vertical axis in this plot? If global average surface temperature, Christy is cherry picking. If some other figure is meant, then someone is being disingenuous by not labeling it.
    • Evidence that it isn't global averages of surface temperature is a close as Figure 9.8 of IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 9 where the period 1990-2000 does not closely resemble either of Christy's lines.
    • There are not 102 CMIP5 models. IPCC AR5 WG1 Annex I lists 43 named models and each of those models was run 0 to 8 times with either historical data or one of four projections of future anthropogenic forcings, leading to a total of 180 model-based predictions. (Table AI.1) So the 102 number cannot be accounted for. The KNMI Climate Explorer tool likewise produces answers from 43 models.
    • If you tell KNMI to use a larger set of models than the AR5 set, called the "full set", you get 108, not 102 named models with the default RCP4.5 future emissions scenario. So while it's possible that Christy does use this tool in some manner, there is no way to guess how he mangled inputs, which series he actually plotted and what the "observations" that he compared.
    • Other than using a model there is no basis for the thick blue line. Other than a trivially wrong model, there is no basis for the thin blue and green lines connecting data points. This chart does not demonstrate that IPCC5 models are unreliable, only that Christy is really bad at making charts.


    IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 9 Sections 9.3, 9.4.1 and 9.7.2 explains what CMIP5 is and why it does not equate to what "academics" believe. Section 9.2 explains how models teach us much more than Christy's "average" line as these models have parameters and tuning parameters and comparing with reality teaches us what level of statistical confidence to put in each model.

    or “Knowledge of and experience with statistics is vital. Amateurs plot points, experts plot error bars.


    http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

    Should you believe anything John Christy has to say?.
     
  14. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    As suspected, the lines are not surface temperatures. The graph is derived from Christy's May 15, 2015 politically sponsored testimony before the House Committee on Natural Resources. He mislead them by asserting this was an apples and apples comparison when the truth of the matter is different. He also mischaracterized the research of others, but what's new with that?
    http://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=398484
    http://naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/christytestimonyemr.pdf
    http://www.theguardian.com/environm...es-doubt-and-denial-in-climate-change-hearing
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2015
  15. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    I am discussing it. You are evading holding up your side of the discussion. Therefore, I am the one acting in the interests of human knowledge and scholarly debate.
    One should not be impressed that the spatio-temporal average temperature of an astronomical body over it's entire surface and entire orbital period about a single non-variable main sequence star exhibits only small variation over a period of 135 years. But small is a relative term. One should should be damn puzzled why it changed 0.3% over 0.000003% of it's existence on what resembles an accelerating curve. One should be damn concerned if one is a member of a civilization which built infrastructure over 30 times this period when the temperature was not climbing this fast.
    This is a disingenuous argument as permanent land stations are not the only source of surface temperature date on or near Antarctica. The continent appears to be warming and shedding ice. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html Thus one natural consequence is more sea ice as the continent slides ice into the ocean. Here is research from other satellites : http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6143/266
    Also: http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36736 Antarctica is warming.
    Also: Thanks to physical principles like conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum and thermodynamics, we can bound temperature variation in Antarctica many ways. If Antarctica behaved otherwise, there would be evidence of it.
    Common sense is not science -- it's prejudices formed on the contingent experience's of one's life. And Ivar Giaever has no experience of climate science past some Google searches circa 2008.
    Pretty cowardly move by someone who has (empty) ambitions of having people look up to him as a scientific authority in physics.
    Hurricane intensity is closely correlated with sea surface temperature. http://skepticalscience.com/hurricanes-global-warming-intermediate.htm (Figures 2, 3)
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/s...bastion-for-dissenters.html?pagewanted=3&_r=3
    See post #47.
    Yup. They said so in court during a defamation suit where Tim had accused them of lying. Tim then took his ball and went home. See posts #42 and #47.
    Lindzen criticized himself. Lindzen's chosen reviewers criticized his claims. Christy's processing of satellite data was so seriously wrong that he got the sign wrong and found error after error over the next ten years. Is it coincidence that all of the errors were in the direction of the wrong sign?

    As with my previous takedown of Shubert's approach to discussions, I welcome Staff feedback on my paraphrases.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2015
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  16. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    Think your paraphrasing was pretty accurate, rpenner.
     
  17. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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     — Justice Kennedy, majority opinion, United States v. Alvarez (2012)
     
  18. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    1,654
    Climate models or Goldilocks and the three bears (too cold, too hot, and just right)...

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    Too bad they quit with the EMIC model runs before the observed temperatures. Must not have shown how 'accurately' the models predicted outcome.

    Rough outline of Scientific Method:

    1. See something (observation).
    2. Think about it (formulate a hypothesis).
    3. Design an experiment to test your hypothesis.
    4. Observe the results of your hypothesis.
    5. Adjust hypothesis to fit observation.
    6. Go to 3.
    7. Repeat as needed.

    Or you can play climate scientist. If the observations do not match the hypothesis, adjust the observation (data):



    Color me Skeptical!!
     
  19. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    1,654
    More on topic:

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/09...-from-govt-climate-grants-for-part-time-work/

    I suppose its a good gig if you can get it.

    EDIT: Its Worse Than We Thought!!

    http://freebeacon.com/issues/scientist-demands-criminal-investigation-of-climate-change-skeptics/
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2015
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    There are dozens. I won't bother posting them since they don't have Youtube videos, and it's clear you don't read scientific papers.
     
  21. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    There's no need to burden someone else's servers with an image too large to be displayed on these pages.

    By chopping off the caption ( or rather by not looking and copying in from page 768 of the IPCC AR5 WG1 report, you miss out on the description, which I shall slightly reformat for the attention-deprived.


    Figure 9.8 | Observed and simulated time series of the anomalies in annual and global mean surface temperature. All anomalies are differences from the 1961–1990 time-mean of each individual time series. The reference period 1961–1990 is indicated by yellow shading; vertical dashed grey lines represent times of major volcanic eruptions.
    • (a) Single simulations for CMIP5 models (thin lines); multi-model mean (thick red line); different observations (thick black lines). Observational data (see Chapter 2) are Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit gridded surface temperature data set 4 (HadCRUT4; Morice et al., 2012), Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP; Hansen et al., 2010) and Merged Land–Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (MLOST; Vose et al., 2012) and are merged surface temperature (2 m height over land and surface temperature over the ocean). All model results have been sub-sampled using the HadCRUT4 observational data mask (see Chapter 10). Following the CMIP5 protocol (Taylor et al., 2012b), all simulations use specified historical forcings up to and including 2005 and use RCP4.5 after 2005 (see Figure 10.1 and note different reference period used there; results will differ slightly when using alternative RCP scenarios for the post-2005 period).
    • (a) Inset: the global mean surface temperature for the reference period 1961–1990, for each individual model (colours), the CMIP5 multi-model mean (thick red), and the observations (thick black: Jones et al., 1999).
    • (Bottom) Single simulations from available EMIC simulations (thin lines), from Eby et al. (2013). Observational data are the same as in (a). All EMIC simulations ended in 2005 and use the CMIP5 historical forcing scenario.
    • (b) Inset: Same as in (a) but for the EMICs.
    So yes, the individual models don't reflect reality to the nearest 0.01 C because they are climate models, not weather models. But in average (they same thing Christy attempted) they model the anomaly in global annual average surface temperature well. The insets on the right side show the much wider spread in average absolute temperature over the yellow box used to zero out the anomalies, as these models have internal variability (weather) that need not reflect the chaotic component of real Earth weather. You would have known that if you were in the target audience for this and actually read and understood Chapter 9.

    In fact, all you have to do is read Section 9.4.1.4.1 and Box 9.2.

    “Knowledge of and experience with statistics is vital. Amateurs plot points, experts plot error bars.”
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2015
  22. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    lol
    Take your complaint to the IPCC as that is a direct img tag to their ar5 pic
     
  23. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    LOL They do not reflect the reality within .2 - .3 (Celsius) for most of the model run. Past or present.
     

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