"Exposures will fall in the US... along with a few remains of the manufacturing sector, which will pack up and move to China where they can actually make their stuff."
Did you actually think of that one yourself or it it something you heard on Fox. If the government can dictate domestic manafacturing standards, surely it can also dictate the same standards for imported products. The US is the world's biggest customer and if they put some thought into these things they could actually do a lot of good by demanding that what they import be made to minimal labour and environmental standards.
Indeed! Peer-review is about judging the method of inquiry, not validating conclusions. There will always be alternative conclusions but it's the authour's perogative to choose the one they think best fits the evidence. The proper way to attack a particular conclusion is by presenting new evidence or better methods/logic in an opposing paper.
"I don't disagree that an incompetent teacher is a useful experience -- but the damage caused far outweighs this."
I think it is valid point that has been worded badly. Kids will often simply not like a teacher and in their eyes that teacher will be useless. When my kids were at school (particularly HS) and came home complaining about some trivial "injustice" I used to tell them the world was full of dickhead bosses, teachers, etc and they will have to learn how to deal with them. This does not mean I didn't get involved if I thought the teacher really was incompetent.
So if Anthony Watts is an honest amature then why did he try and use the DCMA to suppress this devestating contra-evidence to his propoganda? (meat of the debunking at 5:00-6:00)
As for what McIntyre does, he's an industry shill and he's very good at it.
"After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth,
we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with
integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified
selection of data are not valid." - Oxborgh report.
The Muir report, (why wasn't it linked in TFS?), says - "We have seen no evidence to sustain a charge of impropriety on the part of CRU staff (or the many other authors) in respect of selecting the reconstructions in AR4 Chapter 6. [snip] We find that divergence is well acknowledged in the literature, including CRU
papers."
I have, and I could feel it sucking the intelligence out through my pupils.
"he had issues with the analysis and handling of proxy data. And none of these "inquiries" ever addressed those issues."
Not only have you missed the section on tree-rings in the Muir report from TFS. You must also have missed the Spanish ^H^H^H^H^H^H senate inquistion into Mann's "Hockey stick". The National Academies of Science were asked to adjudicate on the veracity of his Nature paper (since they have at their disposal most of the planets top statistical experts), their sworn testimony came down clearly in favour of Mann. They did however make some criticisims about Mann's confidence levels for tempratures further back than (IIRC) 800yrs. To his credit Mann's addressed those criticisims and extended his reconstruction in a paper publised in Science (the internationally recognised journal published by his critics)
The whole idea of cliamte audit is nonesense, McIntyre's two peer-reviewed papers were published in obscure non-ISI listed journals and did not stand the test of time. When he realised he could not pass muster with the standard scientific audit of peer-review he went of on a crusade to "audit climate science", naturally he appointed himself as chief auditor. In other words he spat the dummy and took himself out of the science game. He is now just another crank heckling "those who can" from a his blog and harrasing them with an avalanche of FOI requests, mostly for stuff that is already readily available in the litrature.
Aside from aligning himself with the scumbag anti-science lobbyists at the Heartland Institute, CEI, etc. Sourcewatch throws some further light on the possible motivations for his propogandist rants...
"McIntyre was also exposed for having unreported ties to CGX Energy, Inc., an oil and gas exploration company, which listed McIntyre as a "strategic advisor." He is the former President of Dumont Nickel Inc., and was President of Northwest Exploration Company Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc."
You've been played for a sucker my friend, but don't dispair McIntyre is an accomplished anti-science propogandists and it happens to us all at one time or another.
China has been a superpower for the last couple of millenia, sure they had a rough trot through most of the 20th century but they're back now and doing things on a grand scale. Some of those thing are pretty shitty but others such as the restoration of the loess plateau are the exact opposite.
"I really don't have a huge problem with this Dutch mistake either, it's a small issue, although it is kind of funny."
BTW: What I thought was really comical was that when the Dutch error first surfaced there was a bunch of Dutch politicians standing up in parliment abusing the IPCC for sloppy work.
It's been common knowledge for quite some time that titanium oxide can scrub some pollution from the air, it's also commonly used as the basic ingredient in white paint.
"I do have a serious problem with referencing the WWF literature."
Yes, and so does the IPCC, read their statement, they admit, appologise and are working to correct authours not following their own procedure, ie: they failed to check the primary source referenced in the WWF report.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill; "The IPCC reports are the worst summary of our state of knowledge, except for all the others". As it stands the IPCC reports are by far the best summary available, imperfect? - sure, useless? - hardly!
Finally; science is never about trust, it's about understanding the underlying physical processes and the likely consequences. Science by definition is never absolutely certain about anything but we do have high confidence levels that our emmission will serverly fuck with the biosphere and our civilization within the next century. Any hard nosed risk analysis will say the sooner we make serious attempts to minimise that risk the better.
You missed the sarcasm tag. AFAIK 2 errors have been identified from the grey litrature, the one in TFA was the fault of the Dutch government, the 2035 one was the fault of the IPCC (as eplained in their statement they failed to follow their own procedure). The WWF report where the 2035 error came from was itself properly referenced.
As I said before there is nothing inherently wrong with grey litrature, peer-reviewed papers often use it because the information can not be found anywhere else. The entire raw instrumental temprature record is itself "grey litrature" sourced from national weather archives. Are you saying we should throw out all the raw data and start again?
They are good references, note the name Dr. Comiso appears on every one of them, Dr. Comiso is definitely credible and well published. Problem is; Dr. Comiso would violently disagree with your link. Again, use your skepticisim. (I'm pretty sure most of the papers listed are available via google scholar). What is really bizzare, and to me borders on the comical, is that after using Dr. Comiso in every single source, Michaeals goes into an anti Dr. Comiso rant at the end of the article. Now why would he do that? (rhetorical sacasm)
The unstated assumption in the whole article is that growing Antartic sea ice proves the Antartic is getting colder, yet the models actually predict growing Antartic sea ice as a result of AGW - see WG1, chpt 8. Bob Carter often uses the same propogandist mind hack with sattelite data for straospheric temps. Models predict a cooling statosphere - Bob likes to let people assume they do the opposite and also likes to conflate the stratosphere with the troposphere when convienent.
This sort of fratboy debating tatic is typical of Michaels and someone with an operative bullshit detector should be able to spot it. I know you have a good bullshit detector, all you need to do is switch it on while reading this stuff.
After saying all of the above I will credit Michaels with pointing out a mistake in the AR4 that I was unaware of. Although I doubt he found it himself, it does indeed include the statement "Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios" which is definitely at odds with what I know about the subject and what the WG1 found. So, with some reservasions, I will graciously accept your chosen list of mistakes for the ipcc, meaning the score now stands at 6 mistakes for the ipcc and 2000 for Knuth.;)
I certainly don't consider Pat Michaels credibile, especially when he is linking the lobbyist scum at "Science and public policy" for backup. But lets say he is correct and Antartic sea was under-estimated by 50%. This is disturbing news indeed since a growth in Antartic sea ice is consistent with a speed up in Antartic glacier calving, ie: it indicates that the Antartic is melting much more rapidly than anyone previously expected.
The reason I have bolded Antartic is because the seasonal sea ice there is totally different in it's behaviour to that of the Artic sea ice (except for the coastal areas around Greenland).
Now back to the list. To quote your lobbyist site's own list we have "Himalayan glaciers, African agriculture, Amazon rainforests, Dutch geography, and attribution of damages from extreme weather events" = five, six if you accept the drivel about Antartica in the article. According to WP - "As of October 2001, Knuth reports having written more than 2,000 checks".
Some examples of what I would consider "credible" in this context...
1. The journals Nature, Science, Physical reviwew letters, or some other scientific journal of international repute.
2 An internationally regconised scientific organisation such as NASA, NOAA, Royal societey, CSIRO, WMO, National Academies of science, or simalar.
3, A tier1 university that has published in the field. And I mean the university itself not just one crackpot with tenure.
A blog from a well known industry shill is not even in the same game, let alone the same leauge as any of the above.
At the risk of repeating myself, linking to Pat Michaels, climateaudit, wuwt, etc on the subject of AGW is analogous to linking to the Discovery Institute site on the subject of evolution. You need to apply some of that admirable skepticisim to the claims, motivations, logic and citations of your own sources and figure out what it is that convinces you that blogs run by, (or closely associated with), known lobbyists are a credible source of scientific information when every single one of these very credible scientific organizations clearly disagree.
Heh robinjo, I've been trying to get back to you, unfortunately the slashdot time limit cut off our discussion so I will try and address your last post here. I think our discussion basically arived at the same point climate scientists are at, ie: debating the magnitude of climate sensitivity which IIRC has basically remained unaltered at 3.0degC +/- 1.5degC since the 70's.
As to the Stefan-Boltzmann law you mentioned in your last post, this is a red-herring introduced a few years ago by the well known fraudster and charater assasin Lord Monckton. Of course there is nothing wrong with the law as it pertains to black bodies, the problem with applying it to climate is that the Earth is not a black body. This is why climate sensitivity is an estimate rather than a law. Note that most psudeo-skeptical site will never use the term "climate sensitivity" since it has a very specific textbook definition and directly contradicts a lot of their bullshit (such as the applicability of the SB law).
As to the current thread, I'm not EQUATING Knuth to the IPCC, I'm COMPARING their track records for errors to highlight the absurdity of the OP's claim that basically boils down to "imperfect implies useless". To Knuth's credit he managed his feat almost single-handedly so they are hardly equal, OTOH a commitee of one can get things done a lot faster.
Do you have a credible list of errors for the IPCC that would counter my comparison? - AFAIK the errata lists for both Knuth and the IPCC would be in the single digit region and both have produced a metric shitload of text, as the OP himself points out, the error count for the last WG1 report currently stands at zero after 3yrs of intense and often hostile scrutiny.
"Yeah, I've had this conversation with you before"
And yet your unreasonably dogmatic approach to this subject is still preventing you from actually learning anything.
"The IPCC report is now utterly unreliable for giving us this information"
Donald Knuth is famous for giving token cheques to anyone who spots an error in his classic computer science textbooks. Several cheques have been handed out over the years and the people who have recieved them display them as a badge of honour. Do you apply the same reasoning to "The art and science of computer programming" and therfore conclude that Knuth's classic texts are "utterly unreliable"./ad-absurdium
In other words the direct opposite to your claim is true, when someone, (be it Knuth or the IPCC), openly admits and corrects thier mistakes it makes their work more reliable and their motivations more honourable to everyone except extremly myopic observers. When the observers are an army of one-eyed psuedo-skeptical vested interests and the errors are few and far between then it is very strong evidence the work is extrodinarily reliable.
"the fact that WGII was using unscientific sources of information is unconscionable"
What is unconscionable is the fact you keep ignoring the fact that the report itself clearly states it's reasoning behind the inclusion of grey material. There is nothing wrong with material from any source unless you are trying to misrepresent it as something other than what it is, which BTW is what you are doing to the WG11.
Now do you understand why some of the more astute moderators saw through your populist bullshit and moderated you "troll"? - It was not because you make any error in fact, it was because you built a credible sounding strawman by ommitting inconvienient facts. The very tactic that you and your fellow useful idiots often claim the IPCC is guilty of - projection much?
Slashdot Mirror
"Exposures will fall in the US... along with a few remains of the manufacturing sector, which will pack up and move to China where they can actually make their stuff."
Did you actually think of that one yourself or it it something you heard on Fox. If the government can dictate domestic manafacturing standards, surely it can also dictate the same standards for imported products. The US is the world's biggest customer and if they put some thought into these things they could actually do a lot of good by demanding that what they import be made to minimal labour and environmental standards.
"I'm not sure "it" is the right word. As far as I understand, "dioxin" isn't a poison, but a group of chemicals with widely varying toxicity."
Obig: Yes Minister
Sigh, it's the psuedo-skeptics who are lacking an argument.
Indeed! Peer-review is about judging the method of inquiry, not validating conclusions. There will always be alternative conclusions but it's the authour's perogative to choose the one they think best fits the evidence. The proper way to attack a particular conclusion is by presenting new evidence or better methods/logic in an opposing paper.
Actually most of it wasn't even in a different location, the "ever deepening ocean" is mainly due to thermal expansion.
"I don't disagree that an incompetent teacher is a useful experience -- but the damage caused far outweighs this."
I think it is valid point that has been worded badly. Kids will often simply not like a teacher and in their eyes that teacher will be useless. When my kids were at school (particularly HS) and came home complaining about some trivial "injustice" I used to tell them the world was full of dickhead bosses, teachers, etc and they will have to learn how to deal with them. This does not mean I didn't get involved if I thought the teacher really was incompetent.
Standard second level of denial - "Even if it is happening we can't do anything about it".
So if Anthony Watts is an honest amature then why did he try and use the DCMA to suppress this devestating contra-evidence to his propoganda? (meat of the debunking at 5:00-6:00)
As for what McIntyre does, he's an industry shill and he's very good at it.
Great post!
"After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth, we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified selection of data are not valid." - Oxborgh report.
The Penn state inquiry does not directly address tree rings.
The Muir report, (why wasn't it linked in TFS?), says - "We have seen no evidence to sustain a charge of impropriety on the part of CRU staff (or the many other authors) in respect of selecting the reconstructions in AR4 Chapter 6. [snip] We find that divergence is well acknowledged in the literature, including CRU papers."
"Have you read anything on ClimateAudit?"
I have, and I could feel it sucking the intelligence out through my pupils.
"he had issues with the analysis and handling of proxy data. And none of these "inquiries" ever addressed those issues."
Not only have you missed the section on tree-rings in the Muir report from TFS. You must also have missed the Spanish ^H^H^H^H^H^H senate inquistion into Mann's "Hockey stick". The National Academies of Science were asked to adjudicate on the veracity of his Nature paper (since they have at their disposal most of the planets top statistical experts), their sworn testimony came down clearly in favour of Mann. They did however make some criticisims about Mann's confidence levels for tempratures further back than (IIRC) 800yrs. To his credit Mann's addressed those criticisims and extended his reconstruction in a paper publised in Science (the internationally recognised journal published by his critics)
The whole idea of cliamte audit is nonesense, McIntyre's two peer-reviewed papers were published in obscure non-ISI listed journals and did not stand the test of time. When he realised he could not pass muster with the standard scientific audit of peer-review he went of on a crusade to "audit climate science", naturally he appointed himself as chief auditor. In other words he spat the dummy and took himself out of the science game. He is now just another crank heckling "those who can" from a his blog and harrasing them with an avalanche of FOI requests, mostly for stuff that is already readily available in the litrature.
Aside from aligning himself with the scumbag anti-science lobbyists at the Heartland Institute, CEI, etc. Sourcewatch throws some further light on the possible motivations for his propogandist rants...
"McIntyre was also exposed for having unreported ties to CGX Energy, Inc., an oil and gas exploration company, which listed McIntyre as a "strategic advisor." He is the former President of Dumont Nickel Inc., and was President of Northwest Exploration Company Limited, the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc."
You've been played for a sucker my friend, but don't dispair McIntyre is an accomplished anti-science propogandists and it happens to us all at one time or another.
"Matter tells space how to bend. Space tells matter how to move" - Young Einstien (movie).
"fagboyz"? - How old are you, 12-13?
"The burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. One is not under any obligation to prove someone else's claim."
So where's the proof for that claim?
"Did you get that off the label?"
The "scrubbing" part? - Came from a flakey science show in the 90's, a slashdot AC is probably a better source...
Proof via ad-absurdium that IQ does not properly reflect one's intelligence
Feynman: IQ = 120
GWB: IQ = 135
China has been a superpower for the last couple of millenia, sure they had a rough trot through most of the 20th century but they're back now and doing things on a grand scale. Some of those thing are pretty shitty but others such as the restoration of the loess plateau are the exact opposite.
"I really don't have a huge problem with this Dutch mistake either, it's a small issue, although it is kind of funny."
BTW: What I thought was really comical was that when the Dutch error first surfaced there was a bunch of Dutch politicians standing up in parliment abusing the IPCC for sloppy work.
It's been common knowledge for quite some time that titanium oxide can scrub some pollution from the air, it's also commonly used as the basic ingredient in white paint.
"I do have a serious problem with referencing the WWF literature."
Yes, and so does the IPCC, read their statement, they admit, appologise and are working to correct authours not following their own procedure, ie: they failed to check the primary source referenced in the WWF report.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill; "The IPCC reports are the worst summary of our state of knowledge, except for all the others". As it stands the IPCC reports are by far the best summary available, imperfect? - sure, useless? - hardly!
Finally; science is never about trust, it's about understanding the underlying physical processes and the likely consequences. Science by definition is never absolutely certain about anything but we do have high confidence levels that our emmission will serverly fuck with the biosphere and our civilization within the next century. Any hard nosed risk analysis will say the sooner we make serious attempts to minimise that risk the better.
You missed the sarcasm tag. AFAIK 2 errors have been identified from the grey litrature, the one in TFA was the fault of the Dutch government, the 2035 one was the fault of the IPCC (as eplained in their statement they failed to follow their own procedure). The WWF report where the 2035 error came from was itself properly referenced.
As I said before there is nothing inherently wrong with grey litrature, peer-reviewed papers often use it because the information can not be found anywhere else. The entire raw instrumental temprature record is itself "grey litrature" sourced from national weather archives. Are you saying we should throw out all the raw data and start again?
They are good references, note the name Dr. Comiso appears on every one of them, Dr. Comiso is definitely credible and well published. Problem is; Dr. Comiso would violently disagree with your link. Again, use your skepticisim. (I'm pretty sure most of the papers listed are available via google scholar). What is really bizzare, and to me borders on the comical, is that after using Dr. Comiso in every single source, Michaeals goes into an anti Dr. Comiso rant at the end of the article. Now why would he do that? (rhetorical sacasm)
;)
The unstated assumption in the whole article is that growing Antartic sea ice proves the Antartic is getting colder, yet the models actually predict growing Antartic sea ice as a result of AGW - see WG1, chpt 8. Bob Carter often uses the same propogandist mind hack with sattelite data for straospheric temps. Models predict a cooling statosphere - Bob likes to let people assume they do the opposite and also likes to conflate the stratosphere with the troposphere when convienent.
This sort of fratboy debating tatic is typical of Michaels and someone with an operative bullshit detector should be able to spot it. I know you have a good bullshit detector, all you need to do is switch it on while reading this stuff.
After saying all of the above I will credit Michaels with pointing out a mistake in the AR4 that I was unaware of. Although I doubt he found it himself, it does indeed include the statement "Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios" which is definitely at odds with what I know about the subject and what the WG1 found. So, with some reservasions, I will graciously accept your chosen list of mistakes for the ipcc, meaning the score now stands at 6 mistakes for the ipcc and 2000 for Knuth.
I certainly don't consider Pat Michaels credibile, especially when he is linking the lobbyist scum at "Science and public policy" for backup. But lets say he is correct and Antartic sea was under-estimated by 50%. This is disturbing news indeed since a growth in Antartic sea ice is consistent with a speed up in Antartic glacier calving, ie: it indicates that the Antartic is melting much more rapidly than anyone previously expected.
The reason I have bolded Antartic is because the seasonal sea ice there is totally different in it's behaviour to that of the Artic sea ice (except for the coastal areas around Greenland).
Now back to the list. To quote your lobbyist site's own list we have "Himalayan glaciers, African agriculture, Amazon rainforests, Dutch geography, and attribution of damages from extreme weather events" = five, six if you accept the drivel about Antartica in the article. According to WP - "As of October 2001, Knuth reports having written more than 2,000 checks".
Some examples of what I would consider "credible" in this context...
1. The journals Nature, Science, Physical reviwew letters, or some other scientific journal of international repute.
2 An internationally regconised scientific organisation such as NASA, NOAA, Royal societey, CSIRO, WMO, National Academies of science, or simalar.
3, A tier1 university that has published in the field. And I mean the university itself not just one crackpot with tenure.
A blog from a well known industry shill is not even in the same game, let alone the same leauge as any of the above.
At the risk of repeating myself, linking to Pat Michaels, climateaudit, wuwt, etc on the subject of AGW is analogous to linking to the Discovery Institute site on the subject of evolution. You need to apply some of that admirable skepticisim to the claims, motivations, logic and citations of your own sources and figure out what it is that convinces you that blogs run by, (or closely associated with), known lobbyists are a credible source of scientific information when every single one of these very credible scientific organizations clearly disagree.
Yes it was really dumb to expect the Dutch government to know how much of their own nation was below sea level. /sarcasm
Heh robinjo, I've been trying to get back to you, unfortunately the slashdot time limit cut off our discussion so I will try and address your last post here. I think our discussion basically arived at the same point climate scientists are at, ie: debating the magnitude of climate sensitivity which IIRC has basically remained unaltered at 3.0degC +/- 1.5degC since the 70's.
As to the Stefan-Boltzmann law you mentioned in your last post, this is a red-herring introduced a few years ago by the well known fraudster and charater assasin Lord Monckton. Of course there is nothing wrong with the law as it pertains to black bodies, the problem with applying it to climate is that the Earth is not a black body. This is why climate sensitivity is an estimate rather than a law. Note that most psudeo-skeptical site will never use the term "climate sensitivity" since it has a very specific textbook definition and directly contradicts a lot of their bullshit (such as the applicability of the SB law).
As to the current thread, I'm not EQUATING Knuth to the IPCC, I'm COMPARING their track records for errors to highlight the absurdity of the OP's claim that basically boils down to "imperfect implies useless". To Knuth's credit he managed his feat almost single-handedly so they are hardly equal, OTOH a commitee of one can get things done a lot faster.
Do you have a credible list of errors for the IPCC that would counter my comparison? - AFAIK the errata lists for both Knuth and the IPCC would be in the single digit region and both have produced a metric shitload of text, as the OP himself points out, the error count for the last WG1 report currently stands at zero after 3yrs of intense and often hostile scrutiny.
"Yeah, I've had this conversation with you before"
/ad-absurdium
And yet your unreasonably dogmatic approach to this subject is still preventing you from actually learning anything.
"The IPCC report is now utterly unreliable for giving us this information"
Donald Knuth is famous for giving token cheques to anyone who spots an error in his classic computer science textbooks. Several cheques have been handed out over the years and the people who have recieved them display them as a badge of honour. Do you apply the same reasoning to "The art and science of computer programming" and therfore conclude that Knuth's classic texts are "utterly unreliable".
In other words the direct opposite to your claim is true, when someone, (be it Knuth or the IPCC), openly admits and corrects thier mistakes it makes their work more reliable and their motivations more honourable to everyone except extremly myopic observers. When the observers are an army of one-eyed psuedo-skeptical vested interests and the errors are few and far between then it is very strong evidence the work is extrodinarily reliable.
"the fact that WGII was using unscientific sources of information is unconscionable"
What is unconscionable is the fact you keep ignoring the fact that the report itself clearly states it's reasoning behind the inclusion of grey material. There is nothing wrong with material from any source unless you are trying to misrepresent it as something other than what it is, which BTW is what you are doing to the WG11.
Now do you understand why some of the more astute moderators saw through your populist bullshit and moderated you "troll"? - It was not because you make any error in fact, it was because you built a credible sounding strawman by ommitting inconvienient facts. The very tactic that you and your fellow useful idiots often claim the IPCC is guilty of - projection much?