Odin2 lets debate Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao "Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements"

At EarthSky.org I read a good article yesterday explaining the reasons why the so called "Global warming hiatus never happened."

Going though the comments section one "odin2" made numerous posts.  Superficially many sounded sciencie and "proper" for example at one point scolding another commenter:  

"Your post is not responsive to the peer reviewed article that I cited or my post. There is a vast difference between making adjustments and corrections and manipulation fabrication of data. But, if you define the climate models as "reality' then manipulating the observed data to fit the observations is OK in the minds of Believers. Isn't it?"

But, look at the wording of that.  Who's being the "believer" of what?  No intelligent person has ever claimed that climate models are "reality" - they are tools to help teach us about our climate.  Also in real life, adjustments and corrections are justified and documented in the literature.

But OK, I'm a sucker for chasing such tossed bones and couldn't resist looking up the article in question.  Turned out to be by a couple economics professors; and it's printed in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics; and it turns out to start with a gish gallop of Republican/libertarian soundbites attacking Al Gore's AIT that liberally misrepresents AIT in the bargain.  

Then it goes on to model a hypothetical asymmetric information game: "Moreover, we introduce a new player in the game..." - "There are N+2 risk-neutral players in the game: N ex ante identical countries, a message sender, and an IEA(International Environmental Agreement). Each country faces a binary decision: whether or not to make one unit of abatement." 

  

It turned out to be a "What if?" exercise, nothing more.¹

The article had nothing to do with climate science, let alone fluctuations in the surface temperature record.

After getting my belly full of odin2's game, I decided to write him a note.  Now I'm posting a reworked version over here as an invitation to him (or any like minded) for a constructive debate.  

Counter the following explanation regarding the nonexistence of a "global warming hiatus" - I promise to post serious comments as a stand-alone visitor blog post and then I can review his rational criticism and comments with my own followup blog post, including an invitation for further response.

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Dear odin2, 

Been reading your comments. None showed any interest in understanding what's going on within our climate system, just a series of 'gotchas.'  That's why I want to invite you to consider what this is about from a real world perspective.

Seven billion humans adding on the order of three gigatonnes of greenhouse gases month after month into our thin atmosphere. It is without doubt increasing our atmospheric insulation and without doubt that continues warming our "global climate engine" 24/7/365 - Without hiatus, even if we aren't capable of tracking every joule and fluctuation.

Did you know that while warming our planet our atmosphere absorbs more moisture, with it's latent heat, which is then incorporated into storm systems.  An energized climate system means more extreme weather - the more we warm it, the more extreme the weather.  Simple unavoidable physics.  As real as compounding interest.  No amount of Faith can change that.

You know we're already experiencing the first waves of destructive onslaughts of coastal flooding. Our farmlands are already under siege from extreme droughts punctuated by torrential downpours. Power plants have likewise experienced the first waves of reduced power production and even shut downs.

All the while the Republican/libertarian PR machine has the deep pockets to keep churning out the Odins of the world, dedicated to poisoning and derailing every attempt to teach and learn about our planet's global climate system.  Overpowering every dialogue with "science by rhetoric" supported only with a hubristic disregard of evidence, and a self-certitude in their political aims, that beats all.

Obin2 why is it that you all have such contempt for the "environment"; nurturing healthy eco-systems; and the health of our biosphere?  It's like you just can't fathom that we depend on our Earth's good health for everything.

What's so difficult to understand about manmade global warming anyways?  

Increasing the insulation of a virtually closed system WILL energize the components within that system, no matter how difficult or incomplete measuring it's details are.

Try to understand that the laws of compounding interest are part of nature too?  Trends need be taken seriously, not ignored.

Beyond that I want to observe that it's like you folks don't have the slightest appreciation of, or sense of kinship with our planet.  To the Republican/libertarian mindset, the thought of protect or nurturing our planet does not compute on any level.

But it goes beyond Earth, it's like these people don't even care about maintaining mankind and civilizations' accomplishments.  Such as our cities, power grids, mega-farms, global travel and trade networks. They take it all for granted.  So sad. 

I fear familiarity has bred contempt, and that those Republican/libertarians who swallowed the Reaganomics pill that too much is never enough, are now trapped within an antechinious spiral where nothing but their primal desire to 'consume all' exists and all who interfere with that are considered enemies.

Thus they never once slow down enough to consider the consequence of their hubristic disregard. 

Our children, and other living creatures, will be paying dearly for their thoughtless arrogance.

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#1)  odin2's "scientific" offering

Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements

1. Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao
2. http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/02/24/ajae.aau001.full

"Our research questions are as follows:

Why do Al Gore, the IPCC, and the mainstream media varnish their reports to accentuate the damages of climate change?

Is there any hidden economic rationale for the phenomena?

What are the welfare consequences to the climate issue?"

"Our model builds on the canonical IEA model first proposed by Barrett (1999) in which N identical countries individually decide on whether to participate in an IEA, and then the resulting IEA makes binary decisions on emission abatement.⁷ We deviate from this model in two main aspects. First, as in Hong and Karp (2012), we allow countries to randomize their decisions about whether to participate in the IEA. Second, and more importantly, we assume that the damage from climate change is uncertain. 

Moreover, we introduce a new player in the game: a message sender who has private information about the damage from climate change, and decides whether or not to propagate this information. In the main parts of our analysis, we interpret the message sender as being an international mass medium that has an informational advantage relative to the public. …"

"Conclusions
This article offers a rationale for the phenomenon of climate damage accentuation or exaggeration on the part of the international mainstream media or other pro-environmental organizations. …"

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It's a freaken head game, a "what if" exercise, composed of politically motivated assumptions, unsupported by any real world science!  

I challenge odin2, et al. to identify what they consider serious Earth science in this paper about an economic model game -   

Further I challenge them to show where Hong and Zhao address the issue of global surface temperatures, (which is what the EarthSky article was about), or anything else pertaining to climate science for that matter.

Beyond that I challenge him/them to dispute my following summations, with rational arguments and evidence.

As for the article's supporting literature, they cite a number of papers that turn out to come from what can be described as the Republican/libertarian echo-chamber.  A patiently constructed alternate universe of think tanks and such, a community of 'experts'  that are openly dedicated to "free" market ideology over everything.  

A community where science is conducted in an echo-chamber according to a litmus test and where malicious misrepresentations, lies, slander, and ruthless bullying are considered "Free Speech" and fair play.  

Their echo-chamber science fiction is defended through repetition, rejecting all competing evidence and attacking the messengers.  All dedicated to stopping the public from learning about how their planet operates.

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Here's the EarthSky.org article that started it all.  

Global warming hiatus never happened

Studies had suggested that global warming slowed or paused since 1998. More thorough research shows the global warming “hiatus” likely never happened.

http://earthsky.org/earth/global-warming-hiatus-never-happened-study-says

You’ve probably read in recent years that global warming has slowed, or even paused. A handful of studies indicated this apparent pause, but more thorough research – published June 5, 2015 in the journal Science – suggests the so-called global warming hiatus was what some scientists are now calling “a temporary mirage.” Researchers report that – contrary to slowing or stopping – the Earth continued getting warmer at a rate very nearly like that predicted by climate models throughout the first early years of this century.

…

Now, however, it appears possible that the earlier results suggesting a hiatus resulted from a shift during the last couple of decades to greater use of buoys for measuring sea surface temperatures. Temperatures collected by the buoys were being used in the global temperature records maintained by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of four major keepers of records on global temperature along with NASA, the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the UK Met Office. NOAA had recently increased its coverage of sea surface temperatures by 15% by adding buoys.

Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina and lead author on the new study in Science, said that buoys tend to give cooler readings than measurements taken from ships, which, by the way, take their measurements via the temperature of water taken in by a ship’s engine as a coolant. 

So the apparent global warming hiatus might have been a temporary glitch in scientists’ understanding of the data being collected. …

http://earthsky.org/earth/global-warming-hiatus-never-happened-study-says

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In the sad, but true, even if humor - Department

Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans

BY Andy Borowitz  | The New Yorker | MAY 12, 2015

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.”

More worryingly, Logsdon said, “As facts have multiplied, their defenses against those facts have only grown more powerful.”

While scientists have no clear understanding of the mechanisms that prevent the fact-resistant humans from absorbing data, they theorize … for the complete article and comments visit: Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans