"It's only unfortunate that so many folks seem to pick their side instead of reading both sides of the discussion. Depending on others to do your thinking for you is dangerous"
Sigh, I had thought of posting that to all the self proclaimed skeptics who insist on giving Watts a platform, instead I am becoming rapidly depressed as to how many apparently intelligent people take his word as gospel.
"It is amazingly difficult to get believers to reevaluate new data
I disagree but rather than repeat myself ad-nausem I will just point to my earlier post explaining why I think Watts has gone well beyond any limits of skepticisim or decency.
Thanks, although I might quibble with the details that's a much better explaination of a reasonable point of view.
What I have a problem with is deliberate obufscation and propoganda in the name of skepticisim, it matters nought if the subject is AGW, evolution, or tabacco. Not only does it ruin the careers of respectable scientists with inuendo and smear, it also trains impressionable minds to dissimiss science in favour of dogma.
BTW: I'm also an old fart, I vividly remeber my 10yo self landing on a plate of spaggetti while watching Armstrong land on the moon.
"So you judge information based on who told you rather than what they told you?"
I can't speak for the OP but my level of skepticisim on any particular source definitely depends on their track record. As such anyone who is connected to with the CEI or the Heartland institute starts the race for my attention with a severe handicap.
Great theories often fall flat when the assumptions they are based on are incorrect. Weather is chaotic, climate is not. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is insensitive to initial conditions.
A good test of a model is it's ability to predict unknown phenomena, climate models of the 80's predicted a phenomena that is now called "polar amplification", they also predicted that the stratosphere would cool from increased CO2 while the troposphere would warm, both trends have been observed by sattelites. Other predictions have also been observed.
Here are a few reasons why you may get modded as a troll
The Mathematical definition for chaos comes from Lorenz who spotted the principle while studying weather models, to insinuate climate scientists are unaware of these facts is simply ignorant*.
There is a whole branch of science that is a sort of cross between climate science and geology, it's called paleoclimatology, to insinuate climate scientists have somehow missed natural variation is also ignorant.
The radiative forcings that effect climate have been taken into account in models, without the AGW component the upward trend in tempratures dissapears. To suggest climate scientists somehow missed the giant ball of flames in the sky is ignorant.
Here is a link (scroll down to the embedded video), that uses finite element analysis and basic physical/chemical laws to correctly reconstruct past CLIMATE regardless of the initial RANDOM values that define the weather. All the various models I am aware of have the same ability. The video is somewhat simplistic since it does not show the ocean currents and other features of climate that it predicts but if you have ever looked at weather patterns you will clearly recognise that hurricanes are predicted in the correct places, other larger features are much more acurately simulated.
ignorant* = Not an insult and definitely curable, watching TED talks is an excellent place to start the road to recovery.
Ah yes, it doesn't take long for someone to post a link to the fully qualified blogger Anthony Watts whenever the word skeptic appers in conjunction with climate, but if you call yourself a skeptic then consider the following...
Well before Watt's stared his website scientists had already explained how adjustments are made to
compensate for the urban heat island effect
but that didn't stop our pluckly little weatherman from building a website to show those ivory tower dwellers where they were sorely mistaken. As Watts fame (and income) grew, NOAA thought it might be a good idea to try and add some clarity so they took 70 weather stations that Watt's himself had rated as the best. They re-ran their analysis with just those stations and compared the result to the original analyisis using all 1200+ stations. Lo and behold the two curves were virtually identical as can be seen on the first graph in NOAA's response to Watts. Why? - Because the trend does not rely on the abolute temprature, it relies on the changes in temprature. Such systematic errors in measurement have long been known and handled by mathematicians and scientists alike.
Observant readers may note that a fully qualified political scientist by the name of McIntyre did manage to get a paper on the subject published in an obscure journal which was subsequently hyped so much that the US senate held an inqusition (err, inquiry) into Mann's 1997 hockey stick paper.
The inquisition called on the US National Acedemies of Science to proffer an opinion on McIntyre's claims. Their testimony came down heavily in favour of Mann's conclusions but also made some minor crticisims of his confidence levels. Mann being the leading scientists he is took those critcisims seriously and subsequently published an extended study in the journal Science, yes that's right, the world renowned journal published by the very same organisation who critcised his confidence levels.
McIntyre's paper failed to stand the test of time but rather than having another crack at science he went off to become yet another fully qualified blogger and created the popular front site "climate Audit", I say front site because both Watt's are McIntyre are stongly associated with the anti-science lobbyists at the CEI and the Heartland Institute (now there's a couple of targets for an email hack if I ever saw one).
McIntyre used his site to continue pushing the claim that Mann had hidden his data (where have we heard that before?). To put it politely, I am highly skeptical of that claim. If it was true then how did NAS come to it's conclusions in their testimony, and how is it that many others have also replicated Mann's work? Why is it that both Watts and McIntrye take selective quotes from the testimony to loudly declare that they "discredited Mann's hockey stick"? - You would think that if the testimony actually came to that conclusion then they would want you to read it. Yet nowhere on either site will you find an link to the testimony because...well...skeptical people might actually go and read it.
Considering the above farcical chain of events I don't blame Mann for expressing his desire to keep McIntyre's discredited paper out of the IPCC reports, I would have said the same thing. However this does not change the fact that the paper was subsequently included and discussed.
For those who don't like to read scientific papers and abhore pdf's there is an excellent summary on the youtube channel Climate crock of the week, unsurprisingly Watt's abused the DCMA in an attempt to have the video removed.
The skill of genuine skepticisim starts by learning to be skeptical of ones own ideas and beliefs. It's siad that a great scientist starts every day by
A meteor can create a crater, the crater can fill with water and create a lake, therefore one can claim that the metor created the lake. Simiarly Earth had no concious input, but it did create life that in turn created God.
The fact I needed to create an explainion for you creates a depressing picture.
I'm not sure if there is enough hydrogen or hydrogen compounds in the venutian atmosphere to support such organisims. The idea is something I read as a kid back in the 60's, I don't know if anyone has investigated it further.
"Granted, if the time frame were to match that of what it took on earth, it would take a billion years or two."
Modern micro-organisims are many orders of magnitute more effcient at breeding and CO2 cracking than ancient stromatolites but yes it would still be a fairly slow process compared to a human life span.
Yes, welcome to a new geologic age the Anthropocene. The changes may seem inignificant to a human but the onset of the sixth great extinction has been faster than anything found in the geologic record save a direct hit from a large space rock. However I don't think we can wipe out "life as we know it", extromophiles already exist in the bizzare environments, anything short of a runaway greehouse effect that boils the oceans is unlikely to wipe them all out. That senario is extremely unlikely so after the anthropocene is over (and that may be sooner than many people think) there will be a new dynamic equilibrium, intellegent life forms may arise to speculate that ape like creatures caused the fine layer of plastic they will find in the sediment.
BTW: I doubt there was significant quantities of free hydrogen in Earth's early atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere like many of the atmospheres beyond the asteroid belt has lots of methane but it's very cold. At warmer tempratures methane readily oxidises into CO2 + H20. If CH4, H2O and O2 are detected in significant quantities in an alien atmosphere it's basically a "smoking gun" for the presence of life.
Life is reponsible for the O2 we see today, it's the waste product of plants photosynthesisng CO2. It's not that farfetched to think we could terraform the venutian atmosphere to contain a lot more O2 by simply sprinkling airborne photosynthetic micro-oganisimis on it.
The entire Earth came from dust and gas. Sure some of it may have arrived a little late in big chunks or clouds but the reason our atmosphere has the composition it does now is that life changed it from something like Titan's atmosphere to what we see today. In otherwords life and the atmosphere co-evolved on this planet and they continue to do so, neither would exist in their current form without the other.
The atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere are collectively know as the biosphere. If we find a spectra from another planet's atmosphere that has a similar composition to ours then our current state of knowledge would demand the conclusion that life created it. And yeah, it's worthwhile looking. IIRC scientists have already determined the atmospheric composition of several exoplanets.
I agree, the first line of defence against so called 'evil' is personal responsibility but it's certainly not a gaurentee. There was a site operating here in Oz that would encourge teenage boys to "get even" by posting embarrasing pictures of the ex-girlfiends. The site would then charge the ex-girlfriend exorbident admin fees to have it removed. I'm not sure if it's still up but I wouldn't be surprised.
Cutting of funds might work for spammers but these people are propogandists, they are not doing it to make money they are spending money to make laws. The health industry are certainly not alone in this modern avalanche of propganda, most sites that prominently claim to be "grassroots" or "feedom loving" are neither.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's worth a read-through."
No it isn't, and here's why.
"It's only unfortunate that so many folks seem to pick their side instead of reading both sides of the discussion. Depending on others to do your thinking for you is dangerous"
Yes it is, see my link above for reasons why.
Groan, I'm starting to get a taste of why climate scientists simply stop responding to so called skeptics.
Sigh, I had thought of posting that to all the self proclaimed skeptics who insist on giving Watts a platform, instead I am becoming rapidly depressed as to how many apparently intelligent people take his word as gospel.
"It is amazingly difficult to get believers to reevaluate new data
I disagree but rather than repeat myself ad-nausem I will just point to my earlier post explaining why I think Watts has gone well beyond any limits of skepticisim or decency.
Thanks, although I might quibble with the details that's a much better explaination of a reasonable point of view.
What I have a problem with is deliberate obufscation and propoganda in the name of skepticisim, it matters nought if the subject is AGW, evolution, or tabacco. Not only does it ruin the careers of respectable scientists with inuendo and smear, it also trains impressionable minds to dissimiss science in favour of dogma.
BTW: I'm also an old fart, I vividly remeber my 10yo self landing on a plate of spaggetti while watching Armstrong land on the moon.
Thanks for the compliment! I saw someone had posted a reply and was expecting abuse and obfuscation from the usual suspects.
"So you judge information based on who told you rather than what they told you?"
I can't speak for the OP but my level of skepticisim on any particular source definitely depends on their track record. As such anyone who is connected to with the CEI or the Heartland institute starts the race for my attention with a severe handicap.
Great theories often fall flat when the assumptions they are based on are incorrect. Weather is chaotic, climate is not. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is insensitive to initial conditions.
A good test of a model is it's ability to predict unknown phenomena, climate models of the 80's predicted a phenomena that is now called "polar amplification", they also predicted that the stratosphere would cool from increased CO2 while the troposphere would warm, both trends have been observed by sattelites. Other predictions have also been observed.
Here are a few reasons why you may get modded as a troll
The Mathematical definition for chaos comes from Lorenz who spotted the principle while studying weather models, to insinuate climate scientists are unaware of these facts is simply ignorant*.
There is a whole branch of science that is a sort of cross between climate science and geology, it's called paleoclimatology, to insinuate climate scientists have somehow missed natural variation is also ignorant.
The radiative forcings that effect climate have been taken into account in models, without the AGW component the upward trend in tempratures dissapears. To suggest climate scientists somehow missed the giant ball of flames in the sky is ignorant.
Here is a link (scroll down to the embedded video), that uses finite element analysis and basic physical/chemical laws to correctly reconstruct past CLIMATE regardless of the initial RANDOM values that define the weather. All the various models I am aware of have the same ability. The video is somewhat simplistic since it does not show the ocean currents and other features of climate that it predicts but if you have ever looked at weather patterns you will clearly recognise that hurricanes are predicted in the correct places, other larger features are much more acurately simulated.
ignorant* = Not an insult and definitely curable, watching TED talks is an excellent place to start the road to recovery.
Your link is broken but it does contain the highly amusing message; "Sorry, but you are looking for something that is not here".
Ah yes, it doesn't take long for someone to post a link to the fully qualified blogger Anthony Watts whenever the word skeptic appers in conjunction with climate, but if you call yourself a skeptic then consider the following...
Well before Watt's stared his website scientists had already explained how adjustments are made to compensate for the urban heat island effect but that didn't stop our pluckly little weatherman from building a website to show those ivory tower dwellers where they were sorely mistaken. As Watts fame (and income) grew, NOAA thought it might be a good idea to try and add some clarity so they took 70 weather stations that Watt's himself had rated as the best. They re-ran their analysis with just those stations and compared the result to the original analyisis using all 1200+ stations. Lo and behold the two curves were virtually identical as can be seen on the first graph in NOAA's response to Watts. Why? - Because the trend does not rely on the abolute temprature, it relies on the changes in temprature. Such systematic errors in measurement have long been known and handled by mathematicians and scientists alike.
Observant readers may note that a fully qualified political scientist by the name of McIntyre did manage to get a paper on the subject published in an obscure journal which was subsequently hyped so much that the US senate held an inqusition (err, inquiry) into Mann's 1997 hockey stick paper.
The inquisition called on the US National Acedemies of Science to proffer an opinion on McIntyre's claims. Their testimony came down heavily in favour of Mann's conclusions but also made some minor crticisims of his confidence levels. Mann being the leading scientists he is took those critcisims seriously and subsequently published an extended study in the journal Science, yes that's right, the world renowned journal published by the very same organisation who critcised his confidence levels.
McIntyre's paper failed to stand the test of time but rather than having another crack at science he went off to become yet another fully qualified blogger and created the popular front site "climate Audit", I say front site because both Watt's are McIntyre are stongly associated with the anti-science lobbyists at the CEI and the Heartland Institute (now there's a couple of targets for an email hack if I ever saw one).
McIntyre used his site to continue pushing the claim that Mann had hidden his data (where have we heard that before?). To put it politely, I am highly skeptical of that claim. If it was true then how did NAS come to it's conclusions in their testimony, and how is it that many others have also replicated Mann's work? Why is it that both Watts and McIntrye take selective quotes from the testimony to loudly declare that they "discredited Mann's hockey stick"? - You would think that if the testimony actually came to that conclusion then they would want you to read it. Yet nowhere on either site will you find an link to the testimony because...well...skeptical people might actually go and read it.
Considering the above farcical chain of events I don't blame Mann for expressing his desire to keep McIntyre's discredited paper out of the IPCC reports, I would have said the same thing. However this does not change the fact that the paper was subsequently included and discussed.
For those who don't like to read scientific papers and abhore pdf's there is an excellent summary on the youtube channel Climate crock of the week, unsurprisingly Watt's abused the DCMA in an attempt to have the video removed.
The skill of genuine skepticisim starts by learning to be skeptical of ones own ideas and beliefs. It's siad that a great scientist starts every day by
A meteor can create a crater, the crater can fill with water and create a lake, therefore one can claim that the metor created the lake. Simiarly Earth had no concious input, but it did create life that in turn created God.
The fact I needed to create an explainion for you creates a depressing picture.
Not that I'm arguing against government funding of science, I happen to think it's a GoodThing(TM), but you have heard of the Medici family, right?
It's more likely Earth created God.
I'm not sure if there is enough hydrogen or hydrogen compounds in the venutian atmosphere to support such organisims. The idea is something I read as a kid back in the 60's, I don't know if anyone has investigated it further.
"Granted, if the time frame were to match that of what it took on earth, it would take a billion years or two."
Modern micro-organisims are many orders of magnitute more effcient at breeding and CO2 cracking than ancient stromatolites but yes it would still be a fairly slow process compared to a human life span.
Yes, welcome to a new geologic age the Anthropocene. The changes may seem inignificant to a human but the onset of the sixth great extinction has been faster than anything found in the geologic record save a direct hit from a large space rock. However I don't think we can wipe out "life as we know it", extromophiles already exist in the bizzare environments, anything short of a runaway greehouse effect that boils the oceans is unlikely to wipe them all out. That senario is extremely unlikely so after the anthropocene is over (and that may be sooner than many people think) there will be a new dynamic equilibrium, intellegent life forms may arise to speculate that ape like creatures caused the fine layer of plastic they will find in the sediment.
BTW: I doubt there was significant quantities of free hydrogen in Earth's early atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere like many of the atmospheres beyond the asteroid belt has lots of methane but it's very cold. At warmer tempratures methane readily oxidises into CO2 + H20. If CH4, H2O and O2 are detected in significant quantities in an alien atmosphere it's basically a "smoking gun" for the presence of life.
Yes! Innocent until proven guilty applies to the cop as much as it does to Watts. Good and bad cops exist because good and bad people exist.
Yes, does thier rant on the 911 leak mean the republicans will stop furiously hyping the CRU leak?
Life is reponsible for the O2 we see today, it's the waste product of plants photosynthesisng CO2. It's not that farfetched to think we could terraform the venutian atmosphere to contain a lot more O2 by simply sprinkling airborne photosynthetic micro-oganisimis on it.
The entire Earth came from dust and gas. Sure some of it may have arrived a little late in big chunks or clouds but the reason our atmosphere has the composition it does now is that life changed it from something like Titan's atmosphere to what we see today. In otherwords life and the atmosphere co-evolved on this planet and they continue to do so, neither would exist in their current form without the other.
The atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere are collectively know as the biosphere. If we find a spectra from another planet's atmosphere that has a similar composition to ours then our current state of knowledge would demand the conclusion that life created it. And yeah, it's worthwhile looking. IIRC scientists have already determined the atmospheric composition of several exoplanets.
I agree, the first line of defence against so called 'evil' is personal responsibility but it's certainly not a gaurentee. There was a site operating here in Oz that would encourge teenage boys to "get even" by posting embarrasing pictures of the ex-girlfiends. The site would then charge the ex-girlfriend exorbident admin fees to have it removed. I'm not sure if it's still up but I wouldn't be surprised.
Well said! Appologies for misreading your post.
I find no other alternative but to agree to disagree.
There are none so blind as those who cannot see.
Cutting of funds might work for spammers but these people are propogandists, they are not doing it to make money they are spending money to make laws. The health industry are certainly not alone in this modern avalanche of propganda, most sites that prominently claim to be "grassroots" or "feedom loving" are neither.