It seems that NASA made an error in its series of US average annual surface temperature data that, while not materially relevant arguments about global warming (the differences are small and global warming is global) were nonetheless wrong. When the error was pointed out, NASA corrected it. The conservative blogosphere, naturally, went crazy is misunderstanding everything and can't understand why the MSM is covering up the big scoop that global warming is a hoax.
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The Latest Right-Wing Epistemological Crazy
13 Aug 2007 07:45 am
Comments (53)
When are those assholes gonna give me my glaciers back?
AGW proponents: "The science is settled! There's a consensus! You can't say anything about the science because everybody agrees!"
Skeptic: "But..."
AGW proponents: "You're a holocaust denier, er, global warming denier! You mst get paid by Exxon and therefore everything you say is a lie! The science is settled and everyone who doesn't get paid by Exxon Mobil agrees on the science!"
Skeptic: "But the science is wrong."
AGW: "Well, the science was wrong. But the science is NOW settled! And there's a consensus. And anyone who claims the science is wrong and there isn't a consensus is a denier and gets paid by Exxon Mobil! Denier!"
Why is it that someone who believes the Iraq war is going
great nearly always also believes that global warming is a hoax?
What is the connection?
What is the connection?
Stupidity.
Or not quite so trite, the inability to recognize that singular outliers in a trend do not disprove said trend.
I think that's a little unfair. Sure, there's plenty of people with bees in their bonnets on this (as with all and any other subjects) but I do think that this "is" important.
There's been a long running series of arguments about GW. No, not the hysteria from either side (20 metres sea rises next Tuesday, nor the it ain't happening and you're commie pinkos for thinking it is crowds) but, for example, McIntyre has been questioning the "statistical" methods being used in various parts of the supporting case. He's been, effectively, told to shut up and sit down because he's not a climate scientist. Now he has found a mistake (of whatever order of magnitude) it's worth noting that sit down argument no longer works. Yes, we should indeed be demanding that all of the workings used to make the adjustments are released and looked over again.
We are, after all, making decisions about trillions of dollars here.
Going back a few years there's something of a similarity with the arguments about the SRES models first raised by Lomborg. In the four families and 40 scenarios presented there, are we really covering all of the possible, or even all of the likely, possible future paths? We were told, repeatedly, that we should not consider models that created any lower emissions than those being fed into the computer models. Is that a valid assumption? I would argue not (but then my opinion is just that, an opinion worth very little) but what of a more detailed argument? That solar power will continue to get cheaper (as Lomborg has posited) at the same rate it has for he past few decades? If so, at around 2040-2050, it'll be cheaper than fossil fuels, so we'll all switch to using it.
That invalidates the SRES models, if it actually happens.
My own view is the AGW is indeed happening, that there's a window of some decades to do somthing about it and that we should indeed do something about it.
But precisely because it is such a big decision, I'd rather like to go back over the calculations, the reasonings and the follow on predictions just to make sure. For as MacIntyre has just shown, they're not perfect yet.
It looks like the global warming scientists were indeed wrong. The Arctic ice sheet is melting far FASTER than has been predicted.
Or maybe those silly Russians, Canadians and Denmark-ians are getting in a tizzy about blue water Arctic oil drilling over nothing, since that ice really is there, its just their ideological blinders that cause them to see sea water.
Dear Tim, I should think that the fact that despite years of work McIntyre hasn't found anything that makes a significant difference should improve your confidence in the scientists.
But precisely because it is such a big decision, I'd rather like to go back over the calculations, the reasonings and the follow on predictions just to make sure.
Gee, Tim, you don't understand the game here. You must rush to judgement.
As an example, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes supported the eugenics movement, and the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and State, and even the Supreme Court, were supportive of eugenics policies. Such theories were pushed by powerful interest groups that possessed highly politicized agendas driving government policies and public opinion, until finally both theories were disproven by skeptical scientists.
I think the way we look at GW in the next 5-10 years will be very different than what is offered up today.
It is entirely reasonable for there to be political debate
about what if anything we should do about global warming.
Genuinely difficult issues are involved, for instance what
do we owe to our great grand children?
But the public at large has no expertise at all to evaluate
the question of whether GW is real. For that one really
does need to listen hard to specialists.
Nick Patterson
Regarding the stupidity comment above, I'm personally agnostic about the whole global warming debate. On the one hand I've been convinced by the climate science that it is occurring, and human industrialization is the cause. Changes to the data at this point are just adjustments, similar to saying that "the earth is not truly a sphere, it is actually a bit irregular." In detail they are of scientific interest, but in fact they don't really have much of an effect on the reality of the situation.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that there is anything to be done about it, or even should be done about it, besides just adapting in the most practical and cost-effective way possible. The effects of global warming on human populations are much more difficult to predict, and doomsday scenarios of coastal metropolises being inundated with water and massive crop failures are unhelpful hyperbole.
That said, I find absurd the absolute denial that any climate change stuff is going on at all, or that mankind could possibly have anything to do with it, or that it could have bad consequences at all. Just like the absolute denial that there might possibly be anything wrong with the war in the Iraq, or that the government of the United States might have made any mistakes, or that the results might not turn out the way good for the nation as a whole, is absurd.
Thus: stupidity. Mea culpa.
Global Warming = Eugenics? That's just so weird I don't even know why I'm commenting on it. And eugenics wasn't a "theory" to be "disproven by skeptical scientists," it was a practice--one with no parallels whatsoever with climate change.
So some very confused thinking there, Fred.
Remember, in 2001, an NAS study commissioned by the Bush white house concluded that:
Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising.
This affirmed the findings of the previous IPCC report, which has a more recent report concluding that "human influences on climate are 'very likely' (> 90% chance) already detectable in observational record; increased from 'likely' (> 66% chance)." (The earlier report that produced the 66% number was the one the NAS drew from in authoring its 2001 study.)
Dear Tim, I should think that the fact that despite years of work McIntyre hasn't found anything that makes a significant difference should improve your confidence in the scientists.
Except for debunking the fraudulent hockey stick graph.
Except for debunking the fraudulent hockey stick graph.
Classic conservative urban myth-making:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11646
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/14/01828/236
There is idiot lying Al again, being the idiot liar he cannot help being. Lie on, Idiot Al. I see the name, spit and move on.
"But precisely because it is such a big decision, I'd rather like to go back over the calculations, the reasonings and the follow on predictions just to make sure. For as MacIntyre has just shown, they're not perfect yet. "
Posted by Tim Worstall
Tim, a whole bunch of people have gone over those - that's how the theory moved from fringe to mainstream, consensus science.
Are you really asserting that you don't understand how science works?
By now, what's left is some cranks and people who are funded precisely by PR networks, desperately seeking the holy grail of the secret protocols of the elders of global warming hysteria.
doomsday scenarios of coastal metropolises being inundated with water . . . are unhelpful hyperbole.
Yeah, right. No coastal metropolis could ever be inundated with water.
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
I miss it both night and day
We are, after all, making decisions about trillions of dollars here.
Every time Global Climate Change comes up, someone makes a comment like this. I am always left wondering, where do they get these numbers, and why am I supposed to worry about a statement like this? Are we really going to be throwing billions/trillions of dollars away? Would a more realistic assessment be that we are going to divert money that would have gone for fossil fuel extraction/subsidization to development of more sustainable energy technology? Also, it is not like whatever money that will "need to be spent" will be thrown in some giant hole. Whatever money might be spent, will go into either research or industry, which will employ people, who will spend the money, etc. Money will not just disappear.
It seems that people are trying to paint some doomsday scenario where responding to Global Climate Change will bankrupt us, destroy our morals, pollute our bodily fluids, etc., but, of course, they never say why.
"Why is it that someone who believes the Iraq war is going great nearly always also believes that global warming is a hoax?
What is the connection? "
Posted by Nick Patterson
An amazing capacity to strain at gnats and swallow camels, which is very highly (how should I say it) politically tuned.
The warbloggers who scrutinize (highly selected) reports from Iraq will eagerly accept truckloads of goverment BS and lies, year after year, as things go to sh*t. They have an Orwellian ability to cheer the latest savior general and strategy, while ignoring the history of these salvations not saving. Many even have the ability to do this while claiming that things were already going great, which would eliminate the need for a savior.
With global warming, people like Tim have the incredible ability to act as if discovering a minor historical error in one bit of data within a large set of records which gets folded within a larger set of records, which is then combined with a large number of other types of data, somehow invalidates a very hard earned scientific consensus. One whose predictions have (from casual memory) errored on the low side.
Now, I don't obsessively follow Tim around the blogosphere, so I only know him from his postings in places that I usually frequent, but I can't seem to recall Tim triumnphantly busting in to announce the invalidation of some right wing or libertarian theory, because there was a minor error in a historical record.
Global Warming = Eugenics?
This is the strawman that jj would like to argue against. Nowhere did I say that GW = Eugenics.
What was said was that the crisis mentality used to promote this agenda has been used before to promote other politicized issues. It's this rush to commit untold amounts of money, time and resources that I would like to put the brakes on until man's culpability and even our ability to change it become clearer.
This mentality of crisis prevents reasonable debate on this subject which is what the proponents want. GW has crossed the line from an issue to debate to a religion in the minds of those who do not wish to consider all sides of this issue.
"It seems that NASA made an error in its series of US average annual surface temperature data that, while not materially relevant arguments about global warming (the differences are small and global warming is global) were nonetheless wrong."
Sorry, this is a bigger deal than Tim Lambert gives it credit, if only because it undermines the [true] perspective that the science is settled.
That a outside amateur hack like McIntyre (previously known for gems like "average temperatures have no physical meaning" and not knowing the difference between degrees and radians) can find an error in the series is bad news.
Firstly, and this is minor, it means McIntyre now has standing in climatology, and so we'll have to pay attention to whatever other random piece of buckshot in Energy & Environment he fires out. He's even less likely to concede AGW or its adverse effects than Lindzen, so he'll be a standard AGW doubt or denial quote-factory for "balance" for the next decade or so. More smoke, more frickin' delay tackling this problem.
More importantly, WTF? This should have been *the* most picked over series of temperature data anywhere, and for an outsider to find an error is severely embarrassing for NASA in general and Hansen in particular.
Let's assume that jj is correct in all of his allegations.Exactly what is the evidence that mankind can do anything at all about GW?
What studies show that without China, the world's largest polluter (and don't forget India)on board, we can affect anything at all?
If jj and others wish to move forward on this, shouldn't the first step be to get China's and India's cooperation? No where does anyone mention anything about that.....bothersome.
The people who promoted eugenics did it because "they had a crisis mentality?" Strange argument.
You appear to have set up a strawman of your own. There's nothing I wrote above that speaks to any crisis mentality. I was just clarifying what we know scientifically. This becomes necessary when there are people intent on making it not clear:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122994/site/newsweek/
It's not complicated: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising"--with the projected rise being between 3.6 and 8.1 degrees. That's not from people with a crisis mentality, it's the National Academy of Sciences.
Exactly what is the evidence that mankind can do anything at all about GW?
This is silly. You think that the NAS and IPCC just pulled their conclusions out of their butts?
But if you insist, here's a page listing nine studies where CO2 was isolated as a cause of the observed warming:
http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=3458&method=full
Attached is a link to an article by the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson which is rather negative on the climate change question.
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/08/global-warming-.html#comments
"This mentality of crisis prevents reasonable debate on this subject which is what the proponents want. "-Posted by Fred Jones
Do you really believe there would be the slightest willingness to do anything at all about global warming if it were not presented as a potential crisis?
shouldn't the first step be to get China's and India's cooperation
We should get their cooperation, but we have a clear responsibility to be a leader on this issue:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/9/172316/4448
Anyway, this exchange seems to be following familiar troll patterns followed throughout the climate trolling industry:
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2006/06/netvocates-privatised-propaganda.html
...so having a life, I think I'll duck out at this point.
If "Fred Jones" throws up any further canards, refer to these two master lists of conservative urban myths:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
Wow!
jj really kicked my ass by posting some outdated links! I especially liked the one that the US was the biggest polluter (which it isn't).
I think declaring others who disagree with you "trolls" is also an exceptionally useful tool for those who can't explain why the world is not behind his 'obvious' crisis du jour. Just as religious zealots reject any discussion, so do the GW proponents. Let's face it...the earth has been warmer, and the earth has been cooler and no one can state that man can change any of it, even if goober-boy *is* right.
I am not saying that any of this is wrong. What I'm saying is that there should be a more deliberate approach than the wild-eyed chicken little attitude that jj represents.
jj should get up to speed.....
But according to figures released yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which advises the Dutch government, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those of the US.
"Why is it that someone who believes the Iraq war is going great nearly always also believes that global warming is a hoax?
What is the connection? "
Posted by Nick Patterson
{Perfect question.}
SLC joins Al, as being terminably viciously ignorant.
Wow, Fred, the Dutch and the cement, THAT COMPLETELY CHANGES EVERYTHING !!!1!1!1!!!
Pollution is a sign of some sort of inefficiency, such as fuel being burned less than perfectly efficiently. This is why the Soviet Union was once the world's biggest polluter. Wow, a formerly communist country with nearly 1.3 billion people recently surpassed a capitalist (you know, supposed to be efficient) country with around 300 million people in total emissions. That really lets the US off the hook doesn't it?
Oh, Freddy, you are quite the crazy as well. Let's be sure about that Crazy Freddy. Not a troll, or who cares, just crazy as crazy can be. Freddy, the eugenics crazy.
Hey, facts is facts.
If you wish to point to 4 1/2 year old stats and argue those, go right ahead.
As for Jennifer who sticks her big head in where it doesn't belong only to call names, why don't you go home bake some cookies, Ok Sweetie?
Hi, crazy eugenics Freddy. Love them genics, eh? Crazy genics Freddy, is crazy indeed.
If Jennifer was honest, she would have read the thread and known that this strawman has already been raised by others.
Now, get in there and fry something!!
"I think the way we look at GW in the next 5-10 years will be very different than what is offered up today."
Wanna bet, Fred?
Take your choice:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_backseatdriving_archive.html#111700433898143899
Re Jennifer
Excuse me, how does that fact that I posted a link to an article written by one of the most distinguished physicists of the 20th century in any way, shape, for, or regard label me as ignorant? Very frankly, based on the types of comments she provides to this blog, I don't think that Ms. Jennifer has the intellectual capacity to carry Prof. Dysons' briefcase.
Excuse me, how does that fact that I posted a link to an article written by one of the most distinguished physicists of the 20th century in any way, shape, for, or regard label me as ignorant? Very frankly, based on the types of comments she provides to this blog, I don't think that Ms. Jennifer has the intellectual capacity to carry Prof. Dysons' briefcase.
I also have found her intellect wanting. While I have offered up a position, a point of view with some rationale, Jennifer has only name called and little else.
Jennifer is truly the troll.
Allan Brandt's The Cigarette Century contains an excellent chapter on the invention of scientific controversy as a political tool. The cigarette makers faced a crisis in the early fifties, as epidemiological studies showed clearly that there was a causal link between cigarettes and lung cancer. What were they to do? In the event, they got together, hired a pr firm that wisely decided cigarette companies couldn't just advertise that they were safe - they needed a pr mechanism that was subtler than that. So the companies ponied up money for a false front 'research' think tank - the pr firm was very clear that the think tank had to have 'research' in the name, as that would make it seem unbiased. Then they went looking for buyable scientists. They did an excellent job - one of the things that interested them, for instance, is whether the scientist smoked or not. They found a man who was an expert on cancer, but whose research time frame had passed, and who was bitter that nobody accepted his big idea that all cancer was genetic. And then they brilliantly orchestrated a campaign so that the mounting evidence for the cigarette-cancer link looked like it was really an issue in a greater scientific controversy. The papers loved it, just as they loved cigarette advertising. The fake think tank was instructed not to prove cigarettes were safe - that was too risky - but to say that the case was still not proven. It was an amazingly good show. By the end of the decade, cigarette smoking was way up. There were something like four hundred more cigs smoked per person per year in the U.S. in 1960 than when the cancer link was discovered in 1951. Of course, there are now 450,000 people who die from smoking related causes each year, many who might have started as the 'controversy' was being treated to "fair and balanced" reporting. Meanwhile, in their real research divisions, various company scientists had identified many of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke by 1957.
You have to hand it to the cigarette companies. That kind of fake controversy and intellectual dishonesty, combined with the populist anger of the always inflamable peckerwood contingent, has created the political atmosphere we live in, and the shroud of misdirection that any issue - Iraq, global warming, national health care - immediately runs into so that the lobotomized can live grimly satisfied that they have stuck it to those awful liberals - and so the investor class can continue to reap big rewards. After years of this, the righwingers have actually learned to cretinize themselves. They hardly need any training any more. It is pretty amazing.
You GW people really turn people away with your arrogant condescension. Rather than debate the issue, you tell people to shut up and call them names. The GW side is so steeped in the "I'm right, you're wrong so shut up." type of attitude that I'm very reluctant to believe them.
No one told anyone to "shut up."
But if you're going to get on a comments thread such as this and make arguments that are misleading or poorly researched, then you can't be surprised when people respond with material from good sources and try to correct your mistakes. This is what it's about on the Internets...
And yes, people might even make it a bit intimidating to make similarly poorly-researched arguments in the future.
And further, who started out by accusing who of being into "eugenics"?
How would you respond if you merely said that 2 + 2 = 4, and someone compared you to a eugenics promoter for saying so?
You come close to comparing people to Nazis, and then you accuse them of being uncivil when they respond curtly.
"Re Jennifer
Excuse me, how does that fact that I posted a link to an article written by one of the most distinguished physicists of the 20th century in any way, shape, for, or regard label me as ignorant? Very frankly, based on the types of comments she provides to this blog, I don't think that Ms. Jennifer has the intellectual capacity to carry Prof. Dysons' briefcase."
Posted by SLC
When Dyson's article starts off with two paragraphs which are stuffed full of bullshit. And not even original bullshit - it's a cut and paste job from classical denialist work. It could even be creationist or another fraud field, with a search and replace on specific terms.
I'll concede that William Dyson, as a physicist, has credentials. There are people who are skeptics with credentials. This Washington Post article did a good job of describing them.
Naomi Oreskes in this LA Times piece a while back did a good job of putting things in perspective as far as the few credentialled skeptics and the scientific consensus goes.
Let me repeat that the IPCC's conclusion is, with greater than 90% certainty, that the bulk of the warming we've seen over the past century is due to human activity. Bush's National Academy of Science agrees with their work.
Let me repeat that the IPCC's conclusion is, with greater than 90% certainty, that the bulk of the warming we've seen over the past century is due to human activity.
Again, the "evidence" cited is an opinion poll, most of whom are not climatologists. Again, the same political promotion of science was used in other issues that turned out to be crap.....and EVERYONE was on board!
You'd think that you would be a little more skeptical after that, but history always repeats itself, doesn't it?
the "evidence" cited is an opinion poll
Peer review = Opinion polling.
OMG. That's just classic.
The real difference between jj an myself is that I have not really taken sides on this issue and am open to debating. jj, on the other hand has an intractable position based upon what appears to be politicized science from those who do not specialize in climatology.
The point I raised earlier that seems to have really lit his fuse was that science was politicized in earlier times and, of course, was skewed by politics to conclusions that were not accurate.
Why is demonstrating the dangers of the politicalization of important scientific issues so enraging?
Not enraged. Just appreciating absurdities.
Comments closed August 27, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Sounds like a big win for our post-ontological media future.
Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 13, 2007 7:58 AM