This is both my personal learning project and my contribution in the struggle to confront the ongoing Republican/ libertarian assault on rational science and constructive learning, as manifested in their malicious strategic Attacks on Science ~ A collection of articles, scientific resources, plus my own essays and indepth critique of various presentations from unidirectional-skeptics ~ Hopefully a resource for the busy, yet discerning, student who's concerned about the health of our Earth
1000frolly's project is taking longer than expected. I'm approaching it slightly differently, but it's too long, and too depressing, and in the end it'll just be more information to ignore. That's why I decided to take a break and post something simple and constructive and that I've been wanting to do for a while.
A summary of near 200 linkable global warming and climate change myths followed by clear explanations of why said myth is misleading. It's a great resource for becoming acquainted with all the information that climate science contrarians hide from their public and themselves. It was put together by those hard working dedicated volunteers at SkepticalScience.com.
This is a reposting of the last 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.
I wrote this after a good week had passed and the dust settled, and having had a chance to think about the entire episode. I found Jim's behavior so strange, I decided to ask him about it. Of course, no response was received. That's why I now find it curious that he's been creeping around here lately, like a kid with a new pea shooter.
Jim talks big, but there's no substance behind his words. Prove me wrong Jim, let's have that debate. How about it? A thoughtful, substantive one, in writing. Posted at our respective blogs for others to judge.
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Saturday, February 7, 2015
Jim Steele watts up with your venomous self-indignation?
Dear Jim Steele,
With time to reflect, I'm confused by your display of moral outrage in that January 7thWUWT broadside? Come on, lighten up, you should recognized the Shakespearian overtones and appreciate we were made for each other.
Besides, it was you who jumped into my lil climate change sparing camp over at SkepticForum back last spring.... you were the big shot daring anyone to dispute your nonsense. Did you really think I was going to allow your Republican/libertarian "hey no worries, it's all a hoax" challenge to go unanswered? Then in your IEEE 'climate science horror' series and LandscapesAndCycle you're the one that told folks to check original sources. Well, I have and I've received responses including many full texts of published studies from:
This is a reposting of the third 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 I take a closer look at what Steele said about USHCN temperature data, in particular examining the way he misrepresents California temperature trends. AlsoVictor Venema explains some of the reasons why temperature data must be adjusted.
Peter Miesler Helps Expose USHCN Homogenization Insanity - WUWT
That's Mr. Jim Steele talking in that title, I myself intend to expose something quite different. Although it'll be a few days before I'm ready to comment on the USHCN itself and the way Mr. Steele puts their data to work, (too many other things going on, for now I offer the following reading list courtesy of VV at VV).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Victor Venema at Variable Variability put together a good reading list of articles that look into temperature adjustment:
The astronomer behind And Then There's Physics writes why the removal of non-climatic effects makes sense. In the comments he talks about adjustments made to astronomical data. Probably every numerical observational discipline of science performs data processing to improve the accuracy of their analysis.
For now I want to focus on two more fundamental issues: 1) Why does Mr. Steele rely on a few graphs based on a data set he also belittles as next to worthless? 2) Why doesn't he allow the copious observational evidence to guide his convictions - rather than obsessing over fractions in a very complex data set?
I don't have the free time for sitting around and reading books, fortunately with AudioBooks I can still get at and digest many quality book. One I've listened to a couple times is George Marshall's "Don't even think about it" which I found quite thought provoking, though I don't personally embrace everything he writes. Then a couple days ago while chasing down another disingenuous contrarian claim I stumbled onto a short video where he summarized his ideas. It inspired me to listen to something a bit longer and more satisfying that wrestling with yet another con artists' science bashing trash-talk. At least Marshall shares some enlightening thoughts that we can build on. (Even if he leaves out a very important key to our inability to grasp what's going down upon our planet - namely, our general disconnect from appreciating our physical planet and the pageant of evolution that got us here.) Still, since it fits right into the theme of my musing and struggle to wrap my head around the Republican/libertarian rejection of the realities of our physical world and their ability to totally wrap themselves within a cocoon of a concocted enemy saturated make-believe narrative - one that excludes all reflection and self-skepticism, I've decided to dedicate a post to his talk. First, I share his quickie overview, followed by an hour long talk followed by a Q/A moderated by George Monbiot. This I follow with a list of time-signature talking points for the interested student, in turn followed by some thoughts regarding our disconnect from the realities of our physical planet Earth.
A witty, insightful, and groundbreaking take on one of the most urgent questions of our time: Why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, do we still ignore climate change?
Will responded to the final installment of my series back at #1, and considering that he tossed the "AGW is religion" turd at me, I decided Will's comment deserved the spotlight and a closer look. (supporting links at the bottom)
Yours is not a debating site (1) but instead is an AGW religious site (2). I destroyed the AGW conjecture with one of my arguments that you did not disagree with but then decided just to ignore. (3) There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 0.0 (4) and hence CO2 does not affect climate. (5)
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Will, good to hear from you, sad to hear you didn't learn a thing. Now let me say this about that:
Yours is not a debating site (1) If not, it's because AGW contrarians hide from anything that forces them to produce rational responses in writing. They fear it because it exposes their weak underbelly, no substance, just a lot of flimflam. ____________________________________________
but instead is an AGW religious site (2) Then as if to highlight the hopelessness of attempting to communicate with one of your persuasion you lob that idiotic religion meme at me. Religion is a belief system, our climate understanding is based on a huge body of scientific facts - even if you choose to ignore most of it and misrepresent the rest.
I challenge you, or anyone else, to explain how you arrive at such a conclusion? Heck, can you even explain what it means; what do you think makes AGW a religion?
Will: ... I myself was once a Sierra Club member. I developed a soft spot for that part of the world after having gone to summer camp between Sequoia and King Canyon National parks and then doing a lot of back packing in the Southern Sierras but since then the club's politics has driven me away.
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This is ridiculous, what in the world does the Sierra Club have to do with honestly learning from the body of authoritative evidence regarding manmade global warming?
I agree the Sierra Club isn't what it once was, so what?
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Will: Maybe I inherited a soft spot for the mountains from my father who was born in a mining town in the mountains of southern CO.
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So what? Besides, consider the miner's legacy - knowing how to take stuff out of the ground, maximize profits, then run and leave huge messes behind for others to clean up. Trust me, I've seen it, I lived in Silverton 79/85 and worked at the Mayflower Mill 83/84ish (crusher operator and ball/rod mill operator) - even worked underground (track crew - Gladstone) for a few months - so I've seen it from the inside. I also watched the Animas River run orange/yellow yuck this past autumn.
But, what's all that got to with understanding climate science?
Will H. responded over at ClimateDepot, so I will share his comment along with my three part response. ___________________________________________________________
I have no idea as to how I can respond at your political site. Right up front you state, "Will, I don't get your point." That really sums up your entire response. I cannot help that. The problem must be with you. You do not understand what I have been presenting but you are trying to twist it in terms of the AGW religion so as to make political points on your very political site. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Let me say this about that, in three parts: citizenschallenge to Will H. onOct 21, 2015 at 5:54 PM Will, for starters it would be good if you didn't use fragments to misrepresent what I wrote. Or perhaps I should write: Why am I not surprised you would pull such a decoy?
Allow me to explain, you were going on about: "... greenhouse gases has nothing to do with how real greenhouses stay warm. ..." My response read:
CC wrote: Will, I don't get your point. Of course, everyone knows that when talking about "global greenhouse effect" we are using a figure of speech, such as "Black Hole" or "Big Bang" - they are catchy and they stick but everyone knows they are labels. We all understand that Earth's global "greenhouse" is very different from a gardener's greenhouse. What's the point in bringing it up?
Incidentally, here's some information on that:
"The mechanism is named after the effect of solar radiation passing through glass and warming a greenhouse, but the way it retains heat is fundamentally different as a greenhouse works by reducing airflow, isolating the warm air inside the structure so that heat is not lost by convection.[2][3][4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
Will, as for not knowing how to respond - there's a comments section right below the article. Responding is as easy as filling in the text box. If you wanted to do a more extensive rebuttal I've assured you I'd even be willing to offer you your own civil 'guest blog post' and promise not to alter it, though I will be following up with my own review in a subsequent post. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ citizenschallengeWill H. (a second comment) Oh, and Will I'd like to correct something else. "Right up front" what I stated was:
"CC responds: Will, I agree with you. There is a plethora of valuable information out there for those who want to learn about our planet and how society is impacting our Earth's eco-systems and its climate engine. I myself have been learning about it since pre-internet days, ever since my long ago high school science classes in the early 1970s.
As for people "who came up with these ideas" - keep in mind who they really are. You know the very curious, smart, focused students who after years of dedicated study, evolved into skeptical professional full-time scientists, who have gone on to investigating and learning about our climate - generations worth with the goal of better understanding how planet and its climate system workings.
It really is that simple. Here, let one explain it.
OK Will, there is something else, now that I've had time to think about it. You call my site political - (full disclosure I am mirroring this dialogue over at WUWTW.)
But, still what I see is me explaining my position best I could followed by referring to one authoritative study after another. My focus is constantly on better understanding what's really happening upon our fantastic Earth and continually learning more about her. … and sharing that information - yet you yell that I'm political and that AGW is a religion.
I mean that's hysteria talking there - just like that Lord of the Flies land I mentioned at another comment recently. [let me add - Political !? How about a little introspection here? Just, look at ClimateDepot's Morano he's a certified alpha political-operative, Mr. Swift Boat himself, politics it's all he knows and winning is all he cares about - and his blog CD is about as political as it gets.] I mean think about what you are doing !
Why you gotta think I'm some flaming enemy? - Dude, if we found ourselves on a job-site working together, just a couple people with a job to do - bet we'd get along just fine and get the job done, shake hands and go home feeling good about the day. (That is, if you, like me, possess a sense of integrity and pride in workmanship and a job well done. As a Navajo friend used to say: "I put my pride into that job.")
I'm not an idiot and I'm not your enemy, you simply choose to hate me out of your own insecurity and fears."
Recently in my snippets of free time I've been commenting at a couple Republican/libertarian climate science denying blogs (yeah, I'm still trying to make sense of what's going on inside their heads). At ClimateDepot.com I've had a couple go-arounds under a story that declares lying about serious science and what scientists are reporting is some kind of "free speech right" - rather than the act of malicious fraud against the people that it is.
One character has responded to my debate challenge by giving a fairly lengthy account of what he believes. I am happy to use it as a learning opportunity for interested onlookers. As it is, my response has too many words and links for posting over there, so I'll post it over here and invite Will to have a look.
Climate Depot - 'Debate no more! Jailed for scientific dissent?!' 9/17/15
Will, are you really up for this game? If so - can you please explain precisely what you mean by "convective greenhouse effect" - I ask you not because I'm confused by what CGE is, but rather I want to find out if you actually know what that means, so that we can establish a level playing field.
Also I notice you didn't offer any links to anything that hints of scientific inquiry - do you have any links to support your claims and notions? Please share. I look forward to a productive dialogue.
cheers, cc
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I was surprised to receive Will's lively response. Though he didn't share any links to sources he'd learned from, I appreciate the opportunity to respond and point out his deep misunderstanding and his various attempts at deception.
I reproduced Will's entire comment below - I have not deleted any words, only added breaks to make room for my commentary including links to authoritative sources for some solid background information.
Will H. writes: I am not playing games. I will explain it but not very precisely.
I am not the one who came up with these ideas. For a more precise explanation you can look it up on the Internet yourself.
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CC responds: Will, I agree with you. There is a plethora of valuable information out there for those who want to learn about our planet and how society is impacting our Earth's eco-systems and its climate engine. I myself have been learning about it since pre-internet days, ever since my long ago high school science classes in the early 1970s.
As for people "who came up with these ideas" - keep in mind who they really are. You know the very curious, smart, focused students who after years of dedicated study, evolved into skeptical professional full-time scientists, who have been investigating and learning about our climate for generations with the goal of understanding its workings better. It really is that simple. Here, let one explain it.
Although I've been temporarily diverted from my Steele climate science horror story project, I haven't forgotten about it. For instance, responding to Steele's outlandish Jan 7th WattUpWithThat post claiming to "expose USHCN Homogenization insanity" I had promised more information, but there are only so many hours in a day.
Fortunately, today there were a couple posts over at SkepticalScience.com that give an excellent review of this topic. In one Dr. Kevin Cowtan, a bona fide expert in the field explains weather station calibration adjustments, the why and how they're done along with comparing adjusted to unadjusted data.
The second "bulletin inventories rebuttals to two recent articles by Christopher Booker published in the UK's Daily Telegraph claiming that climate scientists have nefariously manipulated temperature data in order to propagate the "myth of manmade climate change".
With thanks to SkepticalScience.com I'll check this off my list and let Dr. Cowtan and John Hartz take it from here:
Two new reviews of the homogenization methods used to remove non-climatic changes
Two new reviews of the homogenization methods used to remove non-climatic changes
By coincidence this week two initiatives have been launched to review the methods to remove non-climatic changes from temperature data. One initiative was launched by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a UK free-market think tank. The other by the Task Team on Homogenization (TT-HOM) of the Commission for Climatology (CCl) of the World meteorological organization (WMO). Disclosure: I chair the TT-HOM.
The WMO is one of the oldest international organizations and has meteorological and hydrological services in almost all countries of the world as its members. The international exchange of weather data has always been important for understanding the weather and to make weather predictions. Its main role is to provide guidance and define standards to make collaboration easier. The CCl coordinates climate research, especially when it comes to data measured by the national weather services.
The review on homogenization, which the TT-HOM will write, is thus mainly aimed at helping national weather services produce better quality datasets to study climate change. This will allow the weather services to provide better climate services to help their nations adapt to climate change.
Homogenization
Homogenization is necessary because much has happened in the world between the French and the industrial revolution, two world wars, the rise and the fall of communism, and the start of the internet age. Inevitably many changes have occurred in climate monitoring practices. Many global datasets start in 1880, the year toilet paper was invented in the USA and 3 decades before the T-Ford.
As a consequence, the instruments used to measure temperature have changed, the screens to protect the sensors from the weather have changed and the surrounding of the stations has often been changed and stations have been moved in response. These non-climatic changes in temperature have to be removed as well as possible to make more accurate assessments of how much the world has warmed.
Removing such non-climatic changes is called homogenization. For the land surface temperature measured at meteorological stations, homogenization is normally performed using relative statistical homogenizing methods. Here a station is compared to its neighbours. If the neighbour is sufficiently nearby, both stations should show about the same climatic changes. Strong jumps or gradual increases happening at only one of the stations indicate a non-climatic change.
If there is a bias in the trend, statistical homogenization can reduce it. How well trend biases can be removed depends on the density of the network. In industrialised countries a large part of the bias can be removed for the last century. In developing countries and in earlier times removing biases is more difficult and a large part may remain. Because many governments unfortunately limit the exchange of climate data, also the global temperature collections can only remove a part of the trend biases.
There has been a vigorous discussion of weather station calibration adjustments in the media over the past few weeks. While these adjustments don't have a big effect on the global temperature record, they are needed to obtain consistent local records from equipment which has changed over time.
Despite this, the Telegraph has produced two highly misleading stories {that are bouncing around the echo-chamber} about the station adjustments, the second including the demonstrably false claim that they are responsible for the recent rapid warming of the Arctic.
With time to reflect, I'm confused by your display of moral outrage in that January 7thWUWT broadside? Come on, lighten up, you should recognized the Shakespearian overtones and appreciate we were made for each other.
Besides, it was you who jumped into my lil climate change sparing camp over at SkepticForum back last spring.... you were the big shot daring anyone to dispute your nonsense. Did you really think I was going to allow your Republican/libertarian "hey no worries, it's all a hoax" challenge to go unanswered? Then in your IEEE 'climate science horror' series and LandscapesAndCycle you're the one that told folks to check original sources. Well, I have and I've received responses including many full texts of published studies from: Dr. Ainley, Dr.Breckner, Dr.Fretwell, Dr.Guillaume, Dr.Jenouvrier, Dr.Kaiser, Dr.Kato, Dr.La Rue, Dr.Tate, with a couple still in the pipeline. {And that's just for my most recent project reviewing your 7/1/14 "Blinded by Beliefs, Penguin Poop" article. Due to be posted any day now.}
Be happy! Here we are, "Citizenschallenge" vs. "LandscapesAndCycles"
You the defending champ of "NoWorries - it's a hoax" vs. Me the advocate for "Learning about our Global Heat Distribution Engine"
We've even achieved an audience. All we need is a good cartoonist to document it. ;- )
For the record, I hold no animosity towards you the person Jim Steele, (a fellow child and lover of the Sierra Nevada Mtns), and I don't understand why any needs to be fabricated.
My issue is with the words and memes and nonstop derision poured onto scientists who don't deserve it. My target is the misrepresentation of the scientific process and published papers and the ignoring of inconvenient facts and observations. My goal is educational, both my own and anyone else who might be interested.
Please, never forget it's the dishonest claims... those false Republican/libertarian memes you parrot, who are my enemies, not you personally! I'm simply striving to convince you, and onlookers, of the errors in your words. Sincerely, Citizenschallenge
Here's a slight digression. While Jim and I are engaged in our little "climate science horror story" altercation, the big boys running our country are playing the same intellectually dishonest juvenile games as Mr. Steele does. For instance, Oklahoma's Senator Inhofe, now Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, a force not to be dismissed. This man has real power and yields it with brutal efficiency.
Tragically for our children this Senator Inhofe is an absolutist with open contempt for serious science (see here and here) and anyone who disagrees with him on anything.
I mean this is the Senator who brought in a writer of pulp thrillers to testify on climate science! Worse, Inhofe's fiction author was in the middle of a book-selling campaign for his most recent yarn. But than, that was no coincidence, was it? Farcical though it seems this paperback writer was put in front of a US Senate committee that was charged with learning about what professional climatologists were discovering - a fiction story peddler! And Republican's are good with that.
Then Inhofe used this storyteller's words to justify ignoring what actual professional scientists, who have dedicated their lives to understanding these processes, were trying to convey. What up with that? And now this powerful Senator has repackaged another fable, the infamous Medieval Warming Period's "Lamb Graph" - of no purpose but to waste yet more precious time - rather than getting down to business.
That's Mr. Jim Steele talking in that title, I myself intend to expose something quite different. Although it'll be a few days before I'm ready to comment on the USHCN itself and the way Mr. Steele puts their data to work, (too many other things going on, for now I offer the following reading list courtesy of VV at VV).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Victor Venema at Variable Variability put together a good reading list of articles that look into temperature adjustment:
The astronomer behind And Then There's Physics writes why the removal of non-climatic effects makes sense. In the comments he talks about adjustments made to astronomical data. Probably every numerical observational discipline of science performs data processing to improve the accuracy of their analysis.
For now I want to focus on two more fundamental issues: 1) Why does Mr. Steele rely on a few graphs based on a data set he also belittles as next to worthless? 2) Why doesn't he allow the copious observational evidence to guide his convictions - rather than obsessing over fractions in a very complex data set?
The courier font are Mr. Steele's words lifted from his January 7th, 2015 WattsUpWithThat blog post. "Peter Miesler Helps Expose USHCN Homogenization Insanity and Antarctic Illusions." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
¶6 I have referred to Yosemite’s temperature trend because it represented similar trends recorded in USHCN data throughout montane California, from the north at Mt Shasta in the Cascades, to Lake Tahoe (where my research was focused) and south to Death Valley. Likewise the peak warming in the 20s and 30s supported past analyses of California’s climatologist illustrating California’s rural counties had not experienced any warming that exceeded the 30s.
~ ~ ~
Check it out, here Mr. Steele relies on a two decades old study that affirms the Urban Heat Island effect. There is no climatologist out there that would disagree, and every climatologist will also explain that real though UHI effect is, it does not make a fraction of the global impact that humanity's injecting some 3 gigatonnes per month of insulating greenhouse gases into our atmosphere does. (think: compounding interest)
Goodridge, James D. "Comments on regional simulations of greenhouse warming including natural variability." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 77.7 (1996): 1588-1588.
Also, one might ask, what do today's climatologists think?
I stumbled onto a recent talk given by Dr. Andrew Dessler that does an excellent job of describing the alternate reality that climate science denialists have so successfully fabricated. It was sad seeing that it's only had 174 views in the three and half months it's been out.
And since I do get tired of the depressing grind of cataloging, researching and trying to wrap my head around Mr. Steele's malicious nonsense, I decided to listen to the fresh air of a serious scientist discussing the world, even if in this case it's the alternate reality of the manmade global warming denial community. As is my habit I took some notes and figure I may as well post it over here and perhaps encourage a few more folks to view it... and think about it.
Dessler's basic message is that we are dealing with an ideological problem and not a scientific one. Successfully confronting the challenges will take something other than getting more and better scientific information out there.
It makes sense to me. Consider my pal Mr. Steele's basic MO is to find flaws in wildlife population counts and uses that to deny the physics of global warming and its impacts - it's insane. But because he's feeding an ideologically entrenched audience, they buy it since they aren't interested in learning, all they want is reassurance.
As for my ideology, I love this planet and it's many wonders and have been attuned to it since early childhood, which is what led me to my love of science, which is the only vehicle to truly appreciating our Earth's wondrous magnificence.
I also love my, now grown, children and am heart broken by the diminished world be are leaving behind for them. Watching us consume and destroy it's marvels one by one has been a profound tragedy to me. Thus I engage in this effort to add my feather weight towards counter-balancing the dishonest politically motivated nonsense being produced by the likes of Mr. Steele, Anthony Watts and the rest of the Climate Science Denial Industry.
Andrew Dessler's The Alternative Reality of Climate Skepticism
