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Simple Question About AGW

CapelDodger said:
The lie involved the predicted warming (by the Hansen et al model) during the 90's, which goes directly to the sensitivity. In essence, the lie was meant to convey that the estimated sensitivity was way too high, and that's the message a lot of people seem to have got from it, going by the reaction in the GWSceptic camp. It was quite the thing for a while, before the more recent alternatives (warming stopped in 1998, troposphere, stratosphere, Mars, Pluto, Antarctic sea-ice - it's been a creative first decade of the 21stCE) turned up.

Perhaps Michaels already saw which way the wind was blowing (it don't take a weatherman to know that, after all). He's not been knocking himself out trying to deny the warming, he's been concentrating on the "it doesn't matter" fall-back line all along, knowing you guys will thank him (and the Cato Institute) for it when the time comes. Clear minds remain focused on the strategic objective of an operation, and in this case that's to prevent any regulatory or behavioural action being taken to curb CO2 emmissions.

I could be wrong, of course. I may have mis-overestimated him.
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My understanding is that Hansen's 3 scenarios were not of different assumptions about sensitivity but of 3 different trends of CO2 output.

Regardless, Michaels was being dishonest in showing only the one scenario. This quite nicely summarises what happened and also tells us about some other examples of Michaels's failings.
 
CapelDodger said:
Hopefully he's getting the care he so clearly needs :).

Since Tokie determinedly martyred himself I guess this thread is open territory now. Let's not even get into what the "Simple Question" was in the first place.

Tokie. Gone, but not forgotten. Nor mourned, if I'm any judge. He was an embarrassment even to his friends.
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Maybe, but I don't recall anyone on the GWS side correcting him.
 
mhaze said:
Sure looked way too high to me....eg, not a lie.

Well, but now we are hindcasting, then they were trying to predict.

How do you lie when predicting?
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This was about testifying to Congress in 1998 about projections Hansen had made in 1988.

See my other message.
 
TrueSceptic said:
My understanding is that Hansen's 3 scenarios were not of different assumptions about sensitivity but of 3 different trends of CO2 output.

Regardless, Michaels was being dishonest in showing only the one scenario. This quite nicely summarises what happened and also tells us about some other examples of Michaels's failings.
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Was not Michaels' abbreviated graph the one used in Crichton's State of Fear? I have a co-worker who is convinced that GW is fiction after having reading that novel.
 
Round Robin said:
Was not Michaels' abbreviated graph the one used in Crichton's State of Fear? I have a co-worker who is convinced that GW is fiction after having reading that novel.
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Given the huge amounts of fiction about GW in the media and press, and that promulgated by far left radical environmental groups, I can certainly understand his thinking GW is fiction.

Oh, wait? There was a fiction book about the GW fiction? Which fictions, the ones I mentioned in the prior paragraph?
 
mhaze said:
Oh, wait? There was a fiction book about the GW fiction? Which fictions, the ones I mentioned in the prior paragraph?
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My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario, so by including it solely in his testimony, Michaels was committing what I would consider to be a "lie of omission". When Michaels testified, the observed data was correlating with "Scenario B" reasonably well--and this is what Hansen did suggest as the most probable, AFAIK.

Alfred Lord Tennyson said:
A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.
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Round Robin said:
My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario, so by including it solely in his testimony, Michaels was committing what I would consider to be a "lie of omission". When Michaels testified, the observed data was correlating with "Scenario B" reasonably well--and this is what Hansen did suggest as the most probable, AFAIK.
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Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual".

Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
 
mhaze said:
Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual".

Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
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mhaze, my source was memory, but this quote from Hansen on the APS site seems to validate it:

James Hansen said:
In my testimony in 1988, and in an attached scientific paper written with several colleagues at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and published later that year in the Journal of Geophysical Research (volume 93, pages 9341-9364), I described climate simulations made with the GISS climate model. We considered three scenarios for the future, labeled A, B and C, to bracket likely possibilities. Scenario A was described as “on the high side of reality,” because it assumed rapid exponential growth of greenhouse gases and it assumed that there would be no large volcanoes (which inject small particles into the stratosphere and cool the Earth) during the next half century. Scenario C was described as “a more drastic curtailment of emissions than has generally been imagined,” specifically greenhouse gases were assumed to stop increasing after 2000. The intermediate Scenario B was described as “the most plausible.” Scenario B had continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions at a moderate rate and it sprinkled three large volcanoes in the 50-year period after 1988, one of them in the 1990s.

Not surprisingly, the real world has followed a course closest to that of Scenario B. The real world even had one large volcano in the 1990s, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which occurred in 1991, while Scenario B placed a volcano in 1995.
In my testimony to congress I showed one line graph with scenarios A, B, C and observed global temperature, which I update in Figure 1. However, all of the maps of simulated future temperature that I showed in my congressional testimony were for scenario B, which formed the basis for my testimony. No results were shown for the outlier scenarios A and C.

Back to Crichton: how did he conclude that I made an error of 300%? Apparently, rather than studying the scientific literature, as his footnotes would imply, his approach was to listen to “global warming skeptics.” One of the skeptics, Pat Michaels, has taken the graph from our 1988 paper with simulated global temperatures for scenarios A, B and C, erased the results for scenarios B and C, and shown only the curve for scenario A in public presentations, pretending that it was my prediction for climate change. Is this treading close to scientific fraud? Crichton’s approach is worse than that of Michaels. Crichton uncritically accepts Michaels’ results, and then concludes that Hansen’s prediction was in error “300%.” Where does he get this conclusion?
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I also read through the thread TrueSceptic linked and it seems like this question was put to rest a long time ago... Is it so hard to believe that Michaels may have been dishonest?
 
Round Robin said:
mhaze, my source was memory, but this quote from Hansen on the APS site seems to validate it:

I also read through the thread TrueSceptic linked and it seems like this question was put to rest a long time ago... Is it so hard to believe that Michaels may have been dishonest?
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I need only repeat what I've already said now that you have validated it:

Originally Posted by mhaze
Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
 
mhaze said:
I need only repeat what I've already said now that you have validated it:

Originally Posted by mhaze [qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif[/qimg]
Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I don't follow you mhaze. Hansen says this:

James Hansen said:
Scenario A was described as “on the high side of reality,” because it assumed rapid exponential growth of greenhouse gases and it assumed that there would be no large volcanoes (which inject small particles into the stratosphere and cool the Earth) during the next half century. Scenario C was described as “a more drastic curtailment of emissions than has generally been imagined,” specifically greenhouse gases were assumed to stop increasing after 2000. The intermediate Scenario B was described as “the most plausible.” Scenario B had continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions at a moderate rate and it sprinkled three large volcanoes in the 50-year period after 1988, one of them in the 1990s.
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(my emphasis)

How does this contradict my memory that he considered Scenario B as the most plausible?
 
Round Robin said:
How does this contradict my memory that he considered Scenario B as the most plausible?
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It doesn't, of course. It should be crystal clear (to anyone who isn't an over-the-top zealot) that Michaels twisted the truth beyond recognition and then some.
 
Round Robin said:
Well, let's see. You said -
Originally Posted by Round Robin
My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario, so by including it solely in his testimony, Michaels was committing what I would consider to be a "lie of omission". When Michaels testified, the observed data was correlating with "Scenario B" reasonably well--and this is what Hansen did suggest as the most probable, AFAIK.
​
And I responded -

Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....

And then after another interchange -
I need only repeat what I've already said now that you have validated it:
Originally Posted by mhaze
Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....

And you then said -
I'm sorry, I don't follow you mhaze. Hansen says this:
(my emphasis)
How does this contradict my memory that he considered Scenario B as the most plausible?
​
Well, what else do you want me to do? Repeat myself a third time? I have no idea (or interest) what goes on in your memory, I only corrected a statement you made that was quite wrong.
My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario
​
And then I asked a relevant question -

Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
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mhaze said:
[/INDENT]Well, what else do you want me to do? Repeat myself a third time? I have no idea (or interest) what goes on in your memory, I only corrected a statement you made that was quite wrong.
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My statement was not wrong, and I have posted proof from Hansen himself.

You seem to think that "Business as usual" = "Most Probable". I don't.

Scenario A was included as an upper bound, as Hansen said, and he used Scenario B as a basis for his testimony to Congress.

I do not wish for you to repeat yourself, mhaze. If you still think I am too thick to understand your point, it may be better for you to go on thinking that rather than for the two of us to litter this thread further on a topic that has been thrashed to death before.
 
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varwoche said:
It doesn't, of course. It should be crystal clear (to anyone who isn't an over-the-top zealot) that Michaels twisted the truth beyond recognition and then some.
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Michaels misrepresented Hansen to such a degree that it can only be considered fraud. It was a blatant straw man.
 
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Round Robin said:
My statement was not wrong, and I have posted proof from Hansen himself.

You seem to think that "Business as usual" = "Most Probable". I don't.

Scenario A was included as an upper bound, as Hansen said, and he used Scenario B as a basis for his testimony to Congress.

I do not wish for you to repeat yourself. If you still think I am too thick to understand your point, it may be better for you to go on thinking that rather than for the two of us to litter this thread further on a topic that has been thrashed to death before.
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No, you haven't posted "proof" from Hansen. You've posted what he had to say some time after the events occurred, his point of view. Do I think "Business as usual" refers to "Most probable"? Did I say that? Don't think so. As Hansen used the phrase (and it is a standard industry phrase by the way) it referred to no government control or restrictions on emissions such as were incorporated in Scenario B and C. Business as usual simply meant, everything wildly and capitalistically careening forward.

Well, that's what happened, isn't it? The controls that he requested in the absence of which he asserted Scenario A would be likely were not put into place.

Now let's see where we are going.

First you say
Hansen never put forward Scenario A as a probable scenario. ​
Yep, he sure did. Business as usual was what we got.

Then you say
How does this contradict my memory that he considered Scenario B as the most plausible?
​
Hmm...no relation between that and the correction I made. Then you say
You seem to think that "Business as usual" = "Most Probable".
​
Hmm...no relation between that and any of my comments, but you do preface it by saying "you seem to think".

Why all the shifting goalposts? Sheesh.

Now, why was it none of your prime sources (including Hansen himself) wanted to tell you about Hansen saying Scenario A was "business as usual?"
 
mhaze said:
Round Robin said:
Well, let's see. You said -
Originally Posted by Round Robin [qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif[/qimg]
My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario, so by including it solely in his testimony, Michaels was committing what I would consider to be a "lie of omission". When Michaels testified, the observed data was correlating with "Scenario B" reasonably well--and this is what Hansen did suggest as the most probable, AFAIK.
​
And I responded -

Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....

And then after another interchange -
I need only repeat what I've already said now that you have validated it:
Originally Posted by mhaze [qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/helloworld2/buttons/viewpost.gif[/qimg]
Oh, well, now you can correct your understanding. Scenario A was cited by Hansen as "business as usual". Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....

And you then said -
I'm sorry, I don't follow you mhaze. Hansen says this:
(my emphasis)
How does this contradict my memory that he considered Scenario B as the most plausible?
​
Well, what else do you want me to do? Repeat myself a third time? I have no idea (or interest) what goes on in your memory, I only corrected a statement you made that was quite wrong.
My understanding is that Hansen never put forth "Scenario A" as a probable scenario
​
And then I asked a relevant question -

Wait - your sources didn't tell you that? I wonder why....
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You discount RR's evidence because the source is Hansen himself. Care to provide an impartial source? (Ignoring the fact that Hansen made clear what he meant 10 years before Michaels's presentation.)
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