Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Steele saga - Repost 4/5 - Jim can you clarify your argument?

  

This is a reposting of the forth of five responses I made regarding various aspects of Jim Steele's 1/7/15 WattsUpWithThat 'essay' - in light of Steele's recent comment, I think it's only fair to bring it up again.


Here's an example of my process in action and using these incidents to further my own understanding.  While Jim was off at his private club trashing me, I was trying to find a way to simplify the issues for more constructive discussion.

I tried boiling it down to it's most fundamental and came up with two basic questions for Jim.  I figured this would be a good place to start our debate, but Mr. Steele pretended not to hear.  

How about it Jim, you've had over a year to stew on it.
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Friday, January 30, 2015
Mr. Jim Steele, Can you clarify your argument?

A) That wildlife biologists working in extreme conditions and over continental landscapes make mistakes?

B) Disputing that Anthropogenic Global Warming with it's profound changing climate driven landscapes alterations causes adverse cascading consequences for wildlife and eco-systems (read our biosphere) 

Can Mr. Steele come clean and explain what his fundamental thesis is?
I have been wrestling with Mr. Jim Steele's YouTube "Climate Science Horror Story" talk to the IEEE for quite a while because it slammed right into my long-time {some call it} obsession with trying to grasp how people can so easily lie to themselves about something as fundamental as understanding and appreciating how our fantastic, beautiful, bountiful, wonderful planet Earth functions and how our society and we ourselves are damaging it.

Besides the YouTube talk Mr. Steele has a blog "Landscapes And Cycles" and his spiel is that local landscapes and natural cycles are ALL important and that we the people should disregard the global.  His talk ignores that natural cycles and wildlife dynamics operate within the biosphere which is dependent on our Earth's protective atmosphere… which regulates the conditions our biosphere inhabits.  

To me it seems that Jim and his public doesn't want to recognize that we exist within a "global heat distribution engine" and that as with any engine when we supercharge it with extra fuel/energy {just like at NASCAR} that engine will break loose.


What I find particularly confounding is that Mr. Steele's audience,... ok, let me call a spade a spade "The Republican/libertarian community" ...

This Republican/libertarian community also seems incapable of transferring the realities of "compounding  interest" onto down to Earth day to day realities of our life supporting biosphere. 

I'm thinking about all this because I've finally returned to focusing on my next "climate science horror story" installment which has been in the works seems like for-eeva.  What can I say, delays created by my own chaos and jobs and obligations, the inevitable delays caused by corresponding with a number of the scientists Mr. Steele singles out for scorn - then that most recent distraction Mr. Steele's own pathetic yet threatening WUWT Rage, which led to still more time spent on distractions and correspondences, hello San Francisco State University administration.

Now that I'm finally sitting here, back to fully focusing on Steele's 'penguin poop' presentation, I realized this all boils down to something very simple.  

Yes, there have been mistakes made within wildlife census studies - big tad-da I say.  Like those studies aren't incredibly difficult undertakings with mistakes inevitable.  

The real question is: do we want to learn from those mistakes as the scientists themselves are doing, or should we fabricate those "mistakes" into political bludgeons intent on destroying the important information being gathered?

Mr. Steele never hints to his audience that the scientific community is alive with informed skepticism and respectful, constructive arguments that bring flaws to the forefront of the discussion.  For instance, none of these "mistakes" Mr. Steele weaves into his high drama "science horror stories" went unnoticed within the community of knowledgeable experts.  

Worse, he never mentions that in the real world many of his proclaimed "climate horror stories" have the scientists' themselves questioning their own results, suggesting new research and methods and collaborations, while incorporating new scientific findings into their current endeavors.  Steele never cops to any of that.  Nah, he's too busy demonizing serious full time professionals.

But more to the point of what I'd like objective folks to ask Mr. Steele: 


Mr. Jim Steele what are the lessons you want us to learn?
 what are the questions you want us to ask ourselves?

A) That wildlife biologists working in extreme conditions and over continental landscapes make mistakes?

B) Disputing that Anthropogenic Global Warming with it's profound changing climate driven landscapes alterations causes adverse cascading consequences for wildlife and eco-systems (read our biosphere)

I suggest that Mr. Steele keeps jumbling up those two distinct issues as thought they were the same thing?  They are not.  What's up with that?

Can Mr. Steele come clean and explain what his fundamental thesis is?



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