Contemplating the Contrarian Mind in Action #2

{edited 5/30, AM}

So it continues, Krischel has responded to my last response.  
For the rest of the story see my previous post "Contemplating the Contrarian Mind in Action" 
Other than that, not much going on writing wise, clients are cracking their whips so I have other work to soak up my time for a while.  But I'll be back.  ;- )

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krischel Says:  

May 29, 2014 at 16:37 @citizens challenge:
K-1) A set of google search parameters isn’t a citation. If you have a paper, or set of papers to cite, *specify* them.

(http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/is-climate-science-falsifiable/ )

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CC says: You act like you don't appreciate that scientists have been looking at climate changes in deep time long and hard - and they have learned a great many things, that you wouldn't know about if you aren't interested in learning from them.  For example:

Neoproterozoic 'snowball Earth' simulations with a coupled climate/ice-sheet model
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6785/full/405425a0.html
A 'snowball Earth' climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6980/abs/nature02408.html

For a realistic review of climate models and how they are used by scientists here's an informative review written by a real climate scientist. 

On mismatches between models and observations 

Gavin Schmidt climate modeler NASA GISS @ 13 September 2013 

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/on-mismatches-between-models-and-observations/

Contemplating the contrarian mind in action

{I did some clean up editing Friday morning - OK, time to call it done 10:00 mtn, got a fence to get back to building.
Did some more clean up editing, clarifying, added some links - 5/28 morningish - the fence is done, looks great :- )  
K's reply, with my response was added 5/28 evening, tad late, what can I say.}

There's an interesting article by Jos Hagelaars over at MyViewOnClimateChange.wordpress
"Is Climate Science falsifiable?"  It led to a dialogue that I've participated in, the most recent comment was too ripe not to pick and too long not to share over here.  K seems to think things should be argued to death and that the vaguest suggestions deserve more attention than learning about the basic fundamentals.

Worse K just seems to be tossing out headlines from denialist websites, but there's no indication that K has spent anytime seriously trying to learn about the underlying issues of these various topics.  Something that's all too common among the "science skeptical" crowd.

KJ, why shouldn't Earth have an Advocate?

Last summer I reposted an excellent collection of AGW education videos that was compiled by one "Greenfyre." Last week I received the following comment regarding Greenfyre - I figure it deserves it's own post

On 5/15/14 KJ aka TxSmiler  wrote: "Please be honest enough to post this background information on Greenfyre. Greenfyre is the Internet blog and screen name for a radical environmental activist, Mike Kaulbars from Ottawa, Canada. He is a founder of the Earth First! chapter in Ottawa, Canada, an eco-terrorist organization with a long history of violence and sabotage." 

Really now?  How long and just how "violent"? 


Is Mike actually implicated in anything serious, besides perhaps arrested at protests?  Seems to me your "Eco-terrorist" has the ring of hysteria about it.

Updated with quote from Mike Kaulbars' - (see comments):

"iii) (KJ) makes no mention of anything I actually did, probably because everything I have ever done has been strict Gandhian nonviolence with no violence to people or property in any form." 

Oh and speaking of honesty, when will you be honest enough to acknowledge and examine the "causes" and "issues" Earth Firsters were/are fighting for - in an increasingly apathetic world?

Can you explain why someone shouldn't be an advocate for this Earth, the thing all of us dearly depend on... or don't you appreciate we rely on the good health of our Earth's biosphere and the stability of its Climate engine?

Speaking of 2014… looks like it's show time

I spent a little time at SkepticForum this morning trying to continue my dialogue with Jim and da boyz.  It's flabbergasting the important stuff they totally refuse to acknowledge.  Their absolutist contempt for the experts who study these geophysical realities is another horror show in 'disconnect'.  As for their endlessly contrived Gish Gallops it's impossible to keep up with it all - That's why it's important to stand back once in a while and review the big picture.

What I keep struggling with is trying to comprehend how folks can allow their own personal political inclinations and personal convictions and egos - which we all possess to one degree or other - to so totally blind themselves to what's happening in front of their faces.  Like, come on already, refusing to admit mistakes and to learn from new lessons is a pretty dang crazy way to go through life.

Please review these recent reports - 
Manmade Global Warming is for real, it's here.  Actually, look around you'll find that CAGW has already arrived - 
How long will this state of denial continue?

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In February the UK’s Royal Society (RS) and the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 
jointly issued a report (Climate change: Evidence & Causes) 

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),  “What We Know”

IPCC Working Group II – ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, 

IPCC Working Group III – ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’.

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Other important recent reports:

Jim Steele this is 2014 !

Lately I haven't had much time for this, but Mr. Steele smacked me with another one yesterday.  After reading his SKEP thread reprinted below and his full article and looking up some stuff I started a response but it's such a gish gallop with the guy, then I got all caught up in an aside now I've run out of time. So I'll just post it over here.  Let him know I'm doing my homework and I'll be back. 

Re: Amputating Contrary Data:Stock & Trade of Climate Alarmi

Post #46  by JIm Steele » Thu May 15, 2014 6:14 am

Not only did warming alarmist amputate data that showed improving polar bear condition, in a dubiously named 2012 article " Effects of climate warming on polar bears: a review of the evidence" they amputated data that reported it is actually heavy ice years that are the worse for seals and bears.

Polar bear experts Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher {check out the links I added} (who predicts by the middle of this century, two-thirds of the polar bears will be gone due to rising CO2) published in a section titled, “Why progressively earlier breakup of the sea ice negatively affects persistence of polar bearsubpopulations" to illustrate the importance of ringed seal pups they wrote, “In the mid-1970s and again in the mid-1980s, ringed seal pup productivity plummeted by 80% or more for 2–3 years…. A comparison of the age-specific weights of both male and female polar bears from 1971 to 1973 (productive seal years), to those from 1974 to 1975 (years of seal reproductive failure), demonstrated a significant decline in the latter period.”

They referenced those years of bad seal and bad bears in Stirling’s 2002 paper. But if you actually read that paper Stirling contradicted his own “review of the evidence” writing, “Heavy ice conditions in the mid-1970s and mid-1980s caused significant declines in productivity of ringed seals, each of which lasted about 3 years and caused similar declines in the natality of polar bears and survival of subadults, after which reproductive success and survival of both species increased again.” In 2012, Stirling coauthored another paper with a seal researcher and concluded all declines were caused by heavy ice years. Their paper proposed that “the decline of ringed seal reproductive parameters and pup survival in the 1990s could have been triggered by unusually cold winters and heavy ice conditions that prevailed in Hudson Bay in the early 1990s, through nutritional stress” 

{my red highlights}

Here we have a favorite tactic.

Think about what's going on here,  
Steele is reaching back to the seventies, eighty when conditions had been relatively stable, and had been for millennia (even considering the LIA/MWP).  

Amount of old ice in Arctic, 1987 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMYTh8vWRNY

Cloud .Tube

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climatecentraldotorg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1J09xL0NGQ

Anthony Watts' Dog Whistle, re Sea Level Rise

{Updated 5/13/14 with breaking news, also check comments for another example of Anthony's dishonesty}

OK, here's an example of Anthony's dog whistle in action:

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Anthony Watts 

"Study: sea level rise acceleration still uncertain, we won’t have statistical certainty until 2020-2030 

Anthony writes: "This is a bit of a bombshell to those that claim sea level rise is accelerating and certain. From the University of Southampton: …"

Now watch how one of Anthony's pals, Jim Steele, runs off to proclaim scientists can't "… determine if there has been any change in the rate of sea level rise".  Even though a reading of the report makes clear they are talking about something quite different, and in fact, they explicitly reaffirm:

“By developing a novel method that realistically approximates future sea level rise, we have been able to add new insight to the debate and show that there is substantial evidence for a significant recent acceleration in the sea level rise on a global and regional level. ..."

Open letter to Judith Curry, a basic climate lesson.

{In the previous post, I offer the background to understand why I feel justified writing this letter.
For the record final edits noon-ish May 9, 2014 - then sent to Dr. Judith Curry at Georgia Tech.}  

Dr. Judith Curry, 

Why do you ignore the most important basics?  Why do you expect every distal detail to be quantified before we can draw critically important conclusions from the core of what scientists have learned?

Why your focus on uncertainties that amount to inconsequential minutia when placed next to the big certainties and the looming threat to society, to say nothing of our biosphere as we've come to love it?  

Why did you devolve into this mesmerist intent on distracting your audience from the critically important lessons without which none of the rest of climate can make any coherent sense?  

We have a planet that is nearly a closed system!
It is a heat distribution engine composed of oceans, land, ice and atmosphere.

The Judith Curry Collection

I've been working on an open letter to Dr. Judith Curry and since there's no room there for getting into all the reasons I feel justified in writing such a letter to this scientist who traded in her standing among scientists as a respected colleague, for her current standing as an adored celebrity for the Global Warming Denial PR Community, I've compiled this collection of articles that look into various aspects of Judith Curry's brand of science in a vacuum, and science by rhetoric.

Years of Living Dangerously the creepy side of the internet debate

{Updated 5/8/14 with counter-invitation to Mr. Steele, quoted at the end of this article.}

A while back I tried to engage the "ScottishSkeptic" in a constructive debate by taking his "The Sceptic View (Rev. 0.5)" and reviewing it's various claims - which I countered with my opinions, which I supported with copious links to authoritative work by the experts.  In response ScottishSkeptic threatened me with legal action claiming copyright infringement, although he backed down and invoked William Connelley to mediate, but that didn't work out as he'd hoped either and I was shown to have acted ethically and legally.  Which was about the last I heard of the ScottishSkeptic who never did confront my claims debunking his points in a constructive learning focused manner.

Now it's Jim Steele, the man who feels he has the right to misrepresent climate science and maliciously attack the character of scientists he disagrees with, who's threatening me, though not with legal action.  Nor by any challenge for a constructive debate.  No, he has chosen the veiled threat of stalking and physical confrontation.  It's neatly framed so plenty of deniability - still see for yourselves if the whole thing don't feel creepy:

Judith Curry's cynical game: "CAGW Memeplex"

Judith Curry PhD, posted the following at her website where she seems to take endless joy in spinning evidence; injecting impossible expectations; misrepresenting the work of colleagues; and adding ever more layers of confusion rather than clarity. 

This was written by Andy West who tries to 'look inside the heads' of folks who see current geophysical trends as leading to catastrophe down the line...

"CAGW memeplex"

Posted on November 1, 2013

Written by Andy West, endorsed and posted with pride by Judith Curry at her blog.