How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

[TrueSceptic]

I had never heard of Steve McIntyre until he and Phil Plait battled valiantly for top science blog last year. I don't read his blog and no little about him... but I was reading a thread on Richard Dawkins' forum and someone linked to this article in the American Chemical Society's ES&T journal. It discusses the Mann/McIntyre dustup pre-Wegman. The tone is, shall we say, dismissive of McIntyre, for right or for wrong.

I see that the National Research Council of the NAS also published a report of this incident... I will have to read that when time permits.

I answer Michelle's post and include a Dawkins quote, then I read this. Spooky!

 

[mhaze]

Blah Blah Blah Blah. Let's see. Is there a hockey stick? Hmm.....
There was in the 2001 IPCC report. 2007 report, it is out mostly.
Guess McIntyre's published articles (along with others, incidentally) cause that.

 

[TrueSceptic]

This thread is about one issue - AGW - and a form of pseudo-sceptic, the convinced GWSceptic.

GWSceptics do not flip-flop, they don't budge an inch from their conviction. They are not true sceptics. Sceptics are open to persuasion, those guys ain't, no matter what happens. They are abusing the proud name of "sceptic".

CD, I disagree: they flip-flop all the time, hence the OP.

The one thing, the only thing, they are fixed on is "it can't be anthropogenic CO2, well maybe a tiny bit but no more than that". That is the one invariant, and every other claim exists to support that one inviolable assertion.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Dup

 

[Alric]

Blah Blah Blah Blah. Let's see. Is there a hockey stick? Hmm.....
There was in the 2001 IPCC report. 2007 report, it is out mostly.
Guess McIntyre's published articles (along with others, incidentally) cause that.

Let me show you again. Its right here:

 

[TrueSceptic]

And he's a porn star!

http://wsare.usu.edu/pub/sare2000/041.htm

[qimg]http://wsare.usu.edu/pub/sare2000/jpg/41.jpg[/qimg]

<snort> <cough> <choke>

 

[CapelDodger]

CD, I disagree: they flip-flop all the time, hence the OP.

The one thing, the only thing, they are fixed on is "it can't be anthropogenic CO2, well maybe a tiny bit but no more than that". That is the one invariant, and every other claim exists to support that one inviolable assertion.

I take your point. It brings to mind the spoof piece quoted (I think) on this thread : "Each of these has been proven to be the cause of global warming that isn't happening".

 

[a_unique_person]

Blah Blah Blah Blah. Let's see. Is there a hockey stick? Hmm.....
There was in the 2001 IPCC report. 2007 report, it is out mostly.
Guess McIntyre's published articles (along with others, incidentally) cause that.

The Hockey Stick has only ever been about 10% of the AGW case. It's importance has neither grown nor diminished.

 

[mhaze]

The Hockey Stick has only ever been about 10% of the AGW case. It's importance has neither grown nor diminished.

Arguably it's importance has grown, as it has become clear how many AGW supporters cling desperately to pseudo science or disproven concepts, including a certain non mentionable ex VP who will not correct his presentations or movie to reflect current scientific understanding.

Thus I suggest a continued insistence on your part that the hockey stick is real.

 

[Alric]

Thus I suggest a continued insistence on your part that the hockey stick is real.

I tend to label as real things that I can see with my own eyes.

 

[TrueSceptic]

I take your point. It brings to mind the spoof piece quoted (I think) on this thread : "Each of these has been proven to be the cause of global warming that isn't happening".

Yes it was. From this link,
In summary, each and every one of the above has been found to be the true culprit responsible for global warming which does not exist.

It could be expanded to
Global warming is entirely natural, unstoppable, and beneficial, and does not exist.

 

[CapelDodger]

I tend to label as real things that I can see with my own eyes.

It appears that "the hockey-stick" has become abstracted from the actual graph which originated the term. Which is tio say, there's a usage of "the hockey-stick" which actually means "climate science orthodoxy". That's my reading of it, anyway. Yes, the shape is still there on the climate reconstructions, but "the hockey-stick" has moved on. Now it means the whole crisis-ridden theory that's just one (or maybe two) more death-knells from obliteration.

Boy are those guys at the Copenhagen Conference going to have red faces, what with the rapid cooling that's going on. (Irony)

 

[CapelDodger]

Yes it was. From this link,
In summary, each and every one of the above has been found to be the true culprit responsible for global warming which does not exist.

Thank you . I still get a giggle out of that, and I sooooo wish I'd said it myself.

It could be expanded to
Global warming is entirely natural, unstoppable, and beneficial, and does not exist.

Indeed, let's not forget the benefits, nor the opportunities. Options on Siberian land are ridiculously cheap, and we're talking the Grain-Belt of the future here. There's a killing to be made if you have the right contacts. Which, as it happens, I do, through my old KGB handlers who've since gone private. I can get you in on the bottom rung.

 

[CapelDodger]

Arguably it's importance has grown, as it has become clear how many AGW supporters cling desperately to pseudo science or disproven concepts, including a certain non mentionable ex VP who will not correct his presentations or movie to reflect current scientific understanding.

Thus I suggest a continued insistence on your part that the hockey stick is real.

Look at the graph which Alric posted, particularly on the circled bit towards the upper-right. There you see the shape that originated the term "hockey-stick". So what exactly do you mean by the "hockey stick [not being] real"?

Am I right in thinking that by "hockey-stick" you mean "entire edifice of climate science"?

It would naturally appear to you that the hockey-stick is of importance because you keep bringing it up. It's in the nature of a bore not to notice how self-absorbed they are. They remember every conversation as having turned to their chosen obsessions; what they don't register is that they have no other conversation than their own pet subjects.

It's in the nature of a self-promoter like Steve McIntyre that he keeps on about his one tarnished "triumph" because without it he's got nothing. Except the retrospective cooling of the US in the early 90's, which may still have some legs to it.

In summary, the hockey-stick looms enormously large in your world, but not so much in the normal one. The same can be said about Al Gore. ("... a certain non mentionable ex VP ..." - if you're playing the victim card there that's really sad, if you're not it's still sad. Do you dream about him?)

 

[CapelDodger]

The Hockey Stick has only ever been about 10% of the AGW case. It's importance has neither grown nor diminished.

It's often forgotten that climate reconstructions aren't a phaenomenon of the AGW era, scientists have been at it since the last glaciation was first recognised. Mann et al was just a continuation of a process. Back in the 19thCE when the solar cycle was first identified there were immediate efforts to find correlations with past climate, which naturally meant reconstructing past climate by proxies and extracting signal from noise. Claims were made, and were shot down, within the developing field of statistics. Statistics and climate reconstruction were wedded at birth.

If it weren't for AGW and its implications, the paper would have been just another in an obscure subject. Climate reconstructions aren't an end in themselves, they're a means towards pinning down what climate science needs to explain.

 

[Round Robin]

[...]
Am I right in thinking that by "hockey-stick" you mean "entire edifice of climate science"?
[...]
In summary, the hockey-stick looms enormously large in your world, but not so much in the normal one. The same can be said about Al Gore. ("... a certain non mentionable ex VP ..." - if you're playing the victim card there that's really sad, if you're not it's still sad. Do you dream about him?)

Your point about the "hockey stick" being a proxy for A/GW is an interesting one. Some self-serving history:

My first experience in looking at GW started only a few months ago when two of my managers started poking me with a rhetorical stick because they fancy me liberal and, therefore, I must be a "warmer". One started with "did you hear that global warming stopped?" and then proceeded to go off on a ranting diatribe on Al Gore. I asked him what "The Goracle" (I felt like poking him back) had to do with the science and he just responded that a British judge declared that his movie was FLAWED. (emphasis his)

Another manager told me to stop "blindly trusting science" (he vaguely accused me of argument from authority when I mentioned the NAS and the AAAS--I knew better than to mention the IPCC with him) and to "just read State of Fear and you'll understand." When I asked him what a science fiction writer knew about this that thousands of scientists missed, he said, "read the book; his arguments are sound." End of discussion, but not before another crack on Gore.

But through it all, I noticed that Al Gore, like the "hockey stick", also seemed to be treated like a Proxy for the whole AGW theory. My managers would attack him because they already hated him, I thought--as though bringing him down would bring A/GW theory, which he embraced, down with him. They did not, I noticed, take on the NAS.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Your point about the "hockey stick" being a proxy for A/GW is an interesting one. Some self-serving history:

My first experience in looking at GW started only a few months ago when two of my managers started poking me with a rhetorical stick because they fancy me liberal and, therefore, I must be a "warmer". One started with "did you hear that global warming stopped?" and then proceeded to go off on a ranting diatribe on Al Gore. I asked him what "The Goracle" (I felt like poking him back) had to do with the science and he just responded that a British judge declared that his movie was FLAWED. (emphasis his)

Another manager told me to stop "blindly trusting science" (he vaguely accused me of argument from authority when I mentioned the NAS and the AAAS--I knew better than to mention the IPCC with him) and to "just read State of Fear and you'll understand." When I asked him what a science fiction writer knew about this that thousands of scientists missed, he said, "read the book; his arguments are sound." End of discussion, but not before another crack on Gore.

But through it all, I noticed that Al Gore, like the "hockey stick", also seemed to be treated like a Proxy for the whole AGW theory. My managers would attack him because they already hated him, I thought--as though bringing him down would bring A/GW theory, which he embraced, down with him. They did not, I noticed, take on the NAS.

I would be concerned that managers where you work are behaving like this. What business of theirs is it what you think about GW, and how do they get to be so ignorant anyway?

 

[Round Robin]

I would be concerned that managers where you work are behaving like this. What business of theirs is it what you think about GW, and how do they get to be so ignorant anyway?

Oh, I'm not fussed really. It's not uncommon to "drop ranks" around here and have a good political or scientific row. They are both staunchly Republican and very far-right politically so they are, I suspect, reflexively anti-Gore. US politics have gotten so polarized lately that, for a non-trivial swath of our population, even scientific issues get swept up in the scramble to take sides: "I like Gore, therefore AGW is real." / "I hate Gore, therefore AGW is fiction." That's an oversimplification to be sure, but it seems like that sometimes.

 

[CapelDodger]

Oh, I'm not fussed really. It's not uncommon to "drop ranks" around here and have a good political or scientific row. They are both staunchly Republican and very far-right politically so they are, I suspect, reflexively anti-Gore. US politics have gotten so polarized lately that, for a non-trivial swath of our population, even scientific issues get swept up in the scramble to take sides: "I like Gore, therefore AGW is real." / "I hate Gore, therefore AGW is fiction." That's an oversimplification to be sure, but it seems like that sometimes.

Al Gore does seem to have been promoted to iconic hate-figure for the US right. (I don't hear much about him from the US left except in disparaging terms - political dynast, patrician, Establishment Democrat, that sort of thing, and it's hard to argue with ). He seems to have knocked Jimmy Carter off the top step.

Around here we tend to subject the right-wing "Al Gore" tic to gentle mockery when it's brought up as relevant to science. None of the pro-science mob ever cite "Al Gore as a source.

In the UK, all of the major parties (Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Scots Nats, Plaid Cymru) compete over how seriosuly they take climate change. Mind you, weather has always been something of a British fixation . We don't get anything extreme, we just get lots of it. Geography dictates, so waddya gonna do? You can't buck geography.

 

[CapelDodger]

I would be concerned that managers where you work are behaving like this. What business of theirs is it what you think about GW, and how do they get to be so ignorant anyway?

Don't get me started on the suits. My "MBA" tic is barely suppressed as it is, after four years of retirement.