Break out the champagne substitute. Our humble efforts have finally come to the attention of internet climate giant And Then There’s Physics (real name unknown).
Interestingly, his or her comments section appears to be infested with skeptics in and out of disguise.
Someone called ‘Victor’ venemously mocks the host/hostess with,
Feeling lonely/ignored? Write a post about consensus.
‘John Hartz’ then agrees with our own Ben Pile’s nomenclature system, writing,
If the consensus enforcer shoe fits, wear it!
‘Magma’ endorses, almost verbatim, what I’ve been saying for years about the evidentiary bankruptcy of our recursively-spurious opponents—my emphasis:
Naturally enough the second thing the consensus enforcers did was to enforce a consensus on the consensus studies. They’re not stupid, you know. It’s turtles all the way down.
At that point it all veers a bit far right for my taste, with a ‘David Appell’ claiming that,
Alex Jones is quite sane.
ATTP must have his panties/her bra in a knot right about now. The disloyalty. The betrayal.
What happened? Did the non-existent debate hit some kind of tipping point while I was asleep?
Anyway, flock on over to ATTP’s and leave a comment.
Just kidding.
UPDATE: On a whim I decided to read the OP itself, and I’m glad I did. It’s even funnier than the vigorous debate comments section.
The pièce de résistance would have to be this astrobionomical understatement from Anders:
Climate science is a little unusual in that there is research into quantifying the level of consensus.
Um, yeah. That is a little abnormal. And the insights keep coming:
In most research areas, this isn’t necessary, because…
Dear reader, what do you think the author wrote next? (No cheating by reading the post.) Was it:
a) …consensus has nothing to do with science, which is much more interested in a little thing we call evidence. As the late great Michael Crichton observed, poetically if not literally: “If it’s science it’s not consensus, and if it’s consensus it’s not science.”
b) …a consensus is defined—in the rules of science itself—as having an evidentiary weight of 0.0, leaving the entire subject of consensus far beneath the radar (and dignity) of scientists and scientifically-literate citizens alike.
c) …a consensus is defined—in every English dictionary known to man—as a majority opinion, and opinions are like anuses in science, only not as interesting.
Before you answer, bear in mind: ATTP has claimed to be a scientist and therefore must know the first thing (if not the second or subsequent things) about how science works.
Locked in your answer? Good.
Wrong. Not even close.
What Anders actually wrote is:
…all you really need to do is ask someone.
I must confess to feeling a bit silly now. I’d always assumed that ATTP—for all his/her climate comprehension difficulties—was at least competent in their own field, something called astrobiology (don’t ask).
But apparently Anders is evidence-illiterate even on his or her own astroturf. From the sounds of it, reading the literature is too hard for him/her. Even the classic astrobionomy textbooks are above his/her pay grade, it seems.
Instead our pseudonymous friend has no choice but to wander the halls of the University of Edinburgh, accosting random colleagues and asking, “What do 97 out of a hundred bioastrologers think about [insert any one of the great open questions in bioastrology today]?”
One has to wonder what kind of wild-ass guesses they fob Anders off with. After all, we’ve established that NOBODY EVER QUANTIFIES CONSENSUS IN THE NON-PATHOLOGICAL SCIENCES. So it follows, if you know how to reason—and please don’t tell ATTP this—that whatever his or her workmates say in response to such an imbecilic question has to be calculated ex posteriori. Or as our Scottish conspecifics would say, out of their arses.
I swear that’s the last time I fall for the Gell-Mann fallacy. Until the next one.
I’ve said it before: weep. Weep for Scotland.
Climate Scepticism 
Does Ken claim that he has learned (ever) which end of a telescope (or microscope) to look into?
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Will,
Haha. Whoever this “Ken” is, you’ve skewered s/h/it with a masterstroke of teleaggression (or microaggression). Ouch.
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I don’t think Thomas Kuhn would agree with Michael Crichton, it is difficult to have a paradigm (in the sense of Kuhn) without a consensus. I would point out though if you want a polite, constructive discussion with ATTP, this is probably not the best approach.
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‘I don’t think Thomas Kuhn would agree with Michael Crichton’
Sure, but that’s OK. Crichton was talking about how scientists should work if they aim to do science scientifically. Kuhn was more interested in how they *do* work, for better or worse. I often find myself arguing at cross purposes with someone because of the ambiguity of the question itself (what is science?).
If ATTP wants a polite, constructive discussion he can always have it here, where he’s welcome. I can’t have it at his place, where I’m not welcome.
Unfortunately he’s chosen not to acknowledge the last three (at least) comments I’ve written asking him if he’d like to have a conversation with me.
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Is there a “best approach” to a constructive discussion with the Seer of Blackford Hill?
How do you debate with a theriomorph?
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Does that mean a were-something? Or does it refer to somebunny with an animal-themed pseudonym?
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I disagree “paradigms” are more or less inescapable, sometimes scientific discoveries are made (such as special relativity) that really do change the way that we look at the world, and there is a paradigm shift that happens when they ocurr. However, mostly science progresses by small incremental changes, which implies that there will always be much that science agrees on. Kuhn rather overstates things, e.g. incommensurability, but that is human nature. There are many obvious examples, evolution by natural selection, plate tectonics, relativity, inflationary cosmology where if you just ask someone working in that field, they will with high probability be able to tell you what the majority of scientists accept as true, in other words there is a paradigm on which there is consensus.
“If ATTP wants a polite, constructive discussion he can always have it here, where he’s welcome”
but only be being willing to ignore the jibes and insults etc., I don’t think I’d bother for very long as it just gets in the way of substantive discussion and frankly gets rather boring rather quickly.
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Dikran,
Crichton was a bit sloppy in his wording and came uncomfortably close to implying that there *is* no consensus in science. I don’t believe this (and I doubt he did either), which is why I prefaced the short quote with “poetically if not literally.”
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Dikran,
you bring up the interesting topic of human nature. It’s human nature that the use of ‘jibes and insults etc.’ by person A against person B, with whom they disagree, is in inverse proportion to time spent in honest, one-on-one exchange of points of view. Conversation produces empathy. To put it another way, ‘jibes, insults etc.’ increase with psychological distance from the target.
You’re right that personal abuse can get boring, at least for readers who don’t share the writer’s contempt for person B. But then again, I write for my own amusement, and this topic doesn’t bore me yet.
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” It’s human nature that the use of ‘jibes and insults etc.’ by person A against person B”
There are lots of things that are human nature, the point of being a mature civilized person is to be able to over-ride your human nature, if only in the interests of furthering your aims. If you want to show that someones ideas are incorrect, then the best way to do that is to have a substantive discussion of the substance of the arguments and not allow it to be derailed by jibes and insults or “nature of the discussion” discussions.
If person A is contemptuous of person B, then that is a recipe for confirmation bias on the part of person A. If person A is insulting and dismissive towards person B then A put himself in a position where he can no longer admit that he is wrong and B is right because he will have made himself look utterly foolish by having been so insulting and dismissive of someone who was correct all along.
Sure you write for your own amusement, but the insults and contempt is likely to mean that you won’t achieve much more than that.
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Posted on the wrong thread. Trying again
Satire?
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Satire? Far from it.
Are you amenable to having a conversation with me?
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Dikran,
this is a great description of the dangers of escalating the emotional ante in Climateball (and controversies in general):
“If person A is insulting and dismissive towards person B then A put himself in a position where he can no longer admit that he is wrong and B is right because he will have made himself look utterly foolish by having been so insulting and dismissive of someone who was correct all along.”
Is there much doubt that this is why establishment scientists like Karoly, Girgis and Mann will never in a million years be able to bring themselves to politely thank McIntyre for correcting them?
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Just to put your mind at ease, Dikran, I’ve never allowed hostilities to escalate to the point where I’m unwilling or unable to admit my interlocutor is right about something… about which they’re right. If you can bring yourself to peruse the abattoir that is Deltoid’s dreaded Brangelina thread you will see 5 examples of me doing just that: conceding a point to someone whose existence I’m on record as opposing.
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ATTP,
Are you amenable to having a conversation with me?
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I hate to say this, but McIntyre has been pretty insulting/dismissive towards me, which wouldn’t encouraging me to thank him if he spotted an error in some of my work. I would like to think that I would still do so anyway, but at this point it shouldn’t be the expectation. A lot depends on how you go about demonstrating the error, if you are rude you can’t expect politeness in return and if you get it, it is something to be commended, rather than its absence criticized. In my experience it isn’t a reasonable expectation that the author being criticized will even accept the criticism as valid, no matter how strong the evidence. ;o)
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Yes but have you been insulting to McIntyre? That’s the key question. If not, you shouldn’t lose too much face by admitting he’s right about something. Or if you do, it isn’t predicted by the theory you elaborated above (and with which I agree).
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Not that I am aware of. I suspect I was more blunt when I first started discussing climate online, but I realised (see above) that I would rather keep the discussion on the science and that being insulting/dismissive/blunt is counterproductive as it just introduces the opportunity to get away from the science and have a “nature of the discussion” discussion or worse still a tiresome rhetoric-fest. This is why I recommend (on Nick’s blog) turning the other cheek every now and again and why I would hope that I would be gracious enough to give thanks anyway if an error was spotted.
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Brad,
Perhaps a touch unfair to describe Ken in those terms, only his arguments which invariably morph into something quite different with unnerving and unpredictable frequency.
I have no evidence that Eli suffers from this problem though there is a famous animated film called The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Whether it is intended to be biographical I couldn’t comment.
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ATTP,
Amenable? Conversation? To having? With me?
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— “Sure you write for your own amusement, but the insults and contempt is likely to mean that you won’t achieve much more than that.” —
An analogy was offered to Ken, several times, yet he still seems confused, emotional and angry about why the conversation didn’t go the way he wanted… In fact two analogies… One was being a prick at a party, the other a drunk arsehole at the pub.
It is as if Ken stumbling in, drunk shouting, having cast himself as Socrates in his head, ‘the problem with you c***s is that you don’t know how to have a f***king conversation‘ is a pluasible invitation to a good faith exchange.
Your advice is probably best directed to him. Yet you tell him over at that place, instead,
— “Perhaps they would prefer to be ignored or ridiculed like most of those that claim to have evidence against the consensus on general relativity, or evolution by natural selection, or the various other elements of science on which a strong consensus exists. Not that I am condoning ridicule, but going out and performing studies and publishing papers is engaging and engaging constructively, what more do the want (other than a different answer)?” —
Which is if course the Brian Cox mode of engagement. So in that sense has some advocates, but it marks them out as… Well, let’s say ‘motivated by bad faith’ rather than ‘prick’ or ‘arsehole’. The point being that you’ll never get to find out, really, what the objection to general relativity, evolution, or climate change is on that basis. Neither will you establish whether or not any of those things have actually been objected to. See, the ‘insults and contempt’ make it ‘likely to mean that you won’t achieve much more than that’.
But that is the point of Ken’s mode of engagement. And of Consensus Enforcement. It is the way conversations go with Ken, and many of that ilk, even with no sceptics present. Any deviation from the binary understanding of the debate, or of a linear or deficit model of public understanding of science and policymaking, results in the same performance from a number of individuals. Not a massive contingent, and not all connected, for sure. But there are enough people who do seem to have internalised the climate debate, and it seems to produce the same expression of character, for us to observe it and identify it as a phenomenon.
Conversations, between any parties in the debate, is always far more productive without that tendency present. And as non-sceptic, consensus perspectives have identified, the strategy of shrill, overbearing consensus messaging has not succeeded, and has in fact, conceded much ground to us evil deniers.
Up your game.
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dikranmarsupial, Steve M was probably more blunt than he realised when he first started blogging but did you first engage with Steve M in a positive frame of mind or were you immediately ‘blunt’ because you felt he was on the attack? Were you there to observe whether he was ‘blunt’ with his first dealings with Steve Jones and Michael Mann or did he only turn blunt when they shut the door in his face? Many of us were polite when we started. Over a decade later and little progress and what’s the point in being polite? All it does is lure your side into thinking we can be hustled.
You could say because we want something, to which I’d reply ‘ditto’. Only you want a lot more than we do and from a much more reluctant audience.
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“Over a decade later and little progress and what’s the point in being polite? All it does is lure your side into thinking we can be hustled.”
It doesn’t seem to be doing much good here either. I have been polite in my discussions here, and yet you are responding in a partisan and hostile manner. As I explained earlier the point in being polite is to keep your own cognitive biases in check and not to give your “opponent” (if you really want to view it that way) an opportunity to avoid the substance of the scientific argument.
“Steve M was probably more blunt than he realised when he first started blogging”
actually the rudeness to which I referred was this year.
“but did you first engage with Steve M in a positive frame of mind or were you immediately ‘blunt’ because you felt he was on the attack?”
IIRC I tried to discuss the flaw in the paper under discussion in a reasonable scientific manner. The “he was on the attack” bit is irrelevant, that isn’t how science works, you look at each argument on its merits. Again the focus on motivations is dull and unproductive, a discussion of the science would be more interesting.
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— “you are responding in a partisan and hostile manner. —
You are asking Tiny to account for your account of Steve M’s treatment of your claim.
That’s quite hostile and partisan, in fact.
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BenPile wrote “You are asking Tiny to account for your account of Steve M’s treatment of your claim.”
no, I didn’t ask any such thing. I pointed out that ““Over a decade later and little progress and what’s the point in being polite? All it does is lure your side into thinking we can be hustled.” is “partisan and hostile”. It is self-evidently partisan as it talks of “your side”, and the suggestion that “your side” is trying to “hustle” the other is obviously hostile. I did explain however the point of being polite, even when others are not.
“That’s quite hostile and partisan, in fact.”
No, there is nothing hostile and partisan in pointing out a comment is partisan and hostile, especially if the message is that we are better off avoiding being partisan and hostile (if only four our own good) and that it is a good idea to turn the other cheek occasionally (which is the polar opposite of hostile).
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ATTP,
would you be amenable to having a conversation with me?
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The only mention of Dikran/Cawley at CA this year seems to be here. People can judge for themselves whether they think it is insulting or rude.
Also, it’s worth recalling where it was that insulting, hostile attacks started in the climate blogosphere, as I mentioned at Nick Brown’s blog.
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But what is it you want to say dikranmarsupial? So far it seems to be that we need to follow science’s rules. A common refrain and one that completely misses the point of public involvement in the CO2 outcome.
Steve M and quite a lot of other people followed the rules and it carries no weight with a large portion of the consensus si…
If we can’t talk about sides it’s going to get very confusing. How should I refer to non sceptics?
Other fields have a lot to teach the climate community but it steadfastly ignores everybody that criticises it. Shrug. We can all do that.
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Paul Matthews I didn’t say that the rudeness was at CA. It is a pity that this focus on a specific bit of rudeness is detracting from the key point I was making, which was turning the other cheek and remaining polite is a good idea, and not getting uptight if someone doesn’t thank you for pointing out their errors etc. The “but they started it” is not a particularly good excuse for not responding in a more mature manner. Yes S McIntyre was dismissive towards me/my argument, no I didn’t particularly care for that (not many would), however I am sufficiently grown up that I didn’t feel the need to respond in kind, so I didn’t.
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tinyCO2 writes “But what is it you want to say dikranmarsupial?”
in response to
“the message is that we are better off avoiding being partisan and hostile (if only four our own good) and that it is a good idea to turn the other cheek occasionally”
The message seems pretty clear to me.
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… and you still haven’t said what you are complaining about, but you continue to whine about it, while saying that you hate to do so!
I wonder if you are a sockpuppet of WottsLeftofPhysicsKen. You are behaving in exactly the same way he does.
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— “It is self-evidently partisan as it talks of “your side”, and the suggestion that “your side” is trying to “hustle” the other is obviously hostile. —
Isn’t Tiny making the same point then, pointing out that there are existing dimensions to the debate. Is it any more hostile than your implication above that it is *we*, not Ken who need advice on conduct?
Given that this is a debate about a debate, and possibly even more meta than that, it hardly seems unreasonable. We’re not talking here about the right form of analysis of tree ring data.
I didn’t read Tiny’s comment as particularly either partisan or hostile, though it was categorically debate-weary, your interventions seemingly coming to the rescue of someone we are fairly sure has acted like a prick/arse/Consensus Enforcer (all my words, and I make no apology for them).
I did read, perhaps wrongly, your discussion about McIntye as partisan. Though this may have been introduced by Brad who points out that McIntyre’s work hasn’t been gratefully received. But again, Brad also raises the point that the debate precedes the argument. I’m not sure of the he-said-she-said of it, and you gave no link.
However, I did agree with this:
it isn’t a reasonable expectation that the author being criticized will even accept the criticism as valid, no matter how strong the evidence.
In my experience, most consensus positioning of consequence has the luxury (and I mean exactly ‘luxury’) of not having to account for itself in the face of criticism. It is well protected from it institutionally, by which I don’t mean merely large research budgets, accommodation behind the walls of the academy, or the patronage of the great and good — all of which are true. There is a significant political momentum to the climate debate, which carries the objects of criticism regardless. In other words, and for example, the ‘impact’ of the 97% survey far outweighs its virtue, or contribution to understanding.
This isn’t a value-free debate, even when it is about analysis of tree ring data.
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And once all four of them have been slapped?
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BenPile “Is it any more hostile than your implication above that it is *we*, not Ken who need advice on conduct? ”
My advice about turning the other cheek and staying polite and sticking to the science was not specifically directed at either side, at least not intentionally.
“I didn’t read Tiny’s comment as particularly either partisan or hostile,”
If you don’t see suggesting that the opposing side is attempting to hustle the other as partisan or hostile, then I think we differ on the meanings of those words.
“though it was categorically debate-weary, your interventions seemingly coming to the rescue of someone we are fairly sure has acted like a prick/arse/Consensus Enforcer (all my words, and I make no apology for them)”
O.K., sorry I am not interested in bandying insults about, I think the discussion has run its course for me.
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Ben:
Exactly. And it’s precisely that meaning of ‘institutionally’ that has received such a shock from the vote for Brexit. Significant political momentum vapourised. It remains unclear how to apply to climate but it’s well worth asking the question.
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— My advice about turning the other cheek and staying polite and sticking to the science was not specifically directed at either side, at least not intentionally.
But science isn’t the whole of it. Indeed, Ken is resistant, in fact, to discussing the ‘science’, though he mentions it a lot. He prefers to talk about character. Indeed, his entry into most debates is precisely an attack on character, like this one,
— “Except this is so obviously stupid, that I’m amazed anyone with a basic understanding of the topic would possibly excuse it.” —
… which wasn’t made here, amongst climate sceptics but over at klimazwiebel, which is a far-more consensus-oriented site. It was made in reaction to a point about over-emphasis on science, which creates more problems for consensus messaging than it solves.
How to ‘stick to the science’ when the topic might not even be ‘science’, and when Ken’s mode of ‘engagement’ is disruptive to any normal conversation?
— “O.K., sorry I am not interested in bandying insults about, I think the discussion has run its course for me.” —
That’s up to you. If you don’t think they are adequate descriptions of Ken’s behaviour — which you seem to be here to defend — then there is limited point in discussing it with you, either. It would be different if there was any possibility of defending Ken’s trolling, for example if the conversations here were as hard to follow as your exchanges with Steve M, thereby making it hard to detect the alleged rudeness. But Ken just isn’t quite so subtle either as you, or Steve. I don’t think he can help himself, and that’s the point.
You seem to be suggesting that we should suffer Ken’s transparent derailing. I said we should simply ban him and delete his posts.
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Debates with warmists are always surreal. They want to set rules to suit their position and then expect everyone else to follow them.
Moaning about Steve M’s attitude is not ‘turning the other cheek’. It’s pretending that you’re on a higher plain and at the same time putting the knife in.
It would be an interesting experiment for him to try the same ‘why don’t you turn the other cheek’ at warmist sites under a new pseudonym. I’m sure they would not take kindly to a stranger’s first posts, being an admonition for being unfriendly to sceptics.
If you want to engage, engage. If you want to criticise, expect it returned with extra force. And I accept the same is true of sceptics at warmist sites. But publicly funded scientists, trying to save the planet, really do have to behave better than us plebs. Or not. Their choice.
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I must say I find it somewhat ironic that little Kenny Rice and his sycophants are whining about other posters being somewhat – shall we say – short with him, when he is perhaps the most regularly abusive, patronising blogger in the climate science field. One of life’s self-elected victims is Kenny.
As for being an “astrobiologist”…Yeah, right!
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I can see from the comment log that Ken Rice has made 356 comments to this site. That’s 10 more than Brad Keys. It’s more than Paul who has made 285, or Ian who has made 142.
The idea that Ken hasn’t been given the opportunity to set out his case, isn’t plausible. Instead, he has been hostile from the outset. Moreover, Ken’s hostility dominates, and the volume of his posting overwhelms any possibility of simply ‘turning the other cheek’, let alone either indulging his posts or ‘sticking to the science’.
Dikran’s claims here, as politely as they are framed, turn to smoke when we ‘stick to the science’/empirical facts. I don’t expect him to welcome the criticism.
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To get round to the subject of the post – ATTP’s blog post – why we attack the consensus. Of course he gets the reasons wrong.
For me there are two reasons. The first is because the consensus is an easy target. It’s not hard to persuade people that an issue as complicated as CAGW shouldn’t be anywhere near a consensus yet. It was one of my early red flags. There were too many unknowns and exposed flaws for me to credit any kind of consensus. Either it was uselessly vague (which it is) or people were lying.
Which is my second reason for attacking it. Too often it is used as a buoyancy aid for bad science or just wild claims. No matter how extreme and implausible the claim, it only has to be mentioned in conjunction to the 97% to magically become fact. I’ve seen a sceptic quote the IPCC report only to be rebutted with the consensus. What? Yep, the consensus was that the IPCC report was watered down to fit the political landscape. If scientists were allowed to speak freely, they’d be saying much more scary things. If it wasn’t for peer review, the literature would be even more wacky than it is now…
And to a certain extent that’s true. Dr Lew is right but for the wrong reasons. We’ve reminded them that there are consequences to exaggerating for effect. Sooner or later you will be judged against reality. Queue wider uncertainty bands and stick them in the consensus. But apparently reigning in warmists’ imaginations and making them stick loosely to the fats is a bad thing.
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Tiny — “To get round to the subject of the post – ATTP’s blog post – why we attack the consensus.”
It’s not even the consensus that’s attacked. Just moments after Geoff reminded Ken that the consensus is broad enough to encompass many consensus positions, Ken tells his audience,
— “In climate science, however, there are claims that there is no consensus, and – consequently – there are studies aimed at establishing if there is one and, if so, quantifying it. The basic consensus is that we are causing global warming and, if you consider relevant experts, or relevant papers, you find that the consensus is probably somewhere between 90% and 100%.
So where are the ‘claims that there is no consensus’, if that is the consensus?
The point you rightly make is that the consensus is therefore a trivial truism, under which all sorts of claims are made, many of them completely wild. Which makes Consensus enforcement all the more a bizarre. How many times has the trivial truism been pointed out to Ken?
Ken claims that his…
–” …impression of the consensus enforcer narrative is that it is largely supported by those who don’t like what the consensus suggests, but who don’t have the confidence – or ability – to present their views in a manner that is particularly convincing.”—
Indeed the Consensus Enforcer narrative is precisely one that precludes discussions of substance! Ken’s inarticulateness causes him to stumble over the truth accidentally. The consensus doesn’t tell us much of any necessary consequence, and so exploring the actual substance of the consensus and its consequences is anathema to the Consensus Enforcer, who must sustain the notion of ‘Science’ vs. ‘deniers’.
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We have to remember that there are more than one type of evil denier out there. The most elusive but most most mentioned is the moon hoax denier. The one that rejects everything, is funded by oil billions, is at once incredibly cunning and stupid and is single handedly stopping significant action on climate change in every country in the world. The warmists mention this mythical beast all the time. The trouble is, it’s attracting quite a public following. What kind of trouble are the warmists in when their self generated, fictional enemy is doing better in opinion polls than they are?
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Tiny, but the thing is, top expert scientists have shown that the evil deniers are carrying out a Subterranean War on Science and that Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources.
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Yeah and one of these days I’m going to find my way into the money tunnels.
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Oh no, the dreadful Brulle paper makes its appearance again. Does he ever actually specify who gets funded? Or is it, as with the consensus enforcers on this site, just a tissue of suppositions and assertions?
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Didn’t McIntyre try to reset the debate by commenting as Nigel Persaud on a few blogs? To this day, Eli Rabbett seems indignant about it.
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Tiny,
“We have to remember that there are more than one type of evil denier out there. ”
Anyone who denies evil has led an enviably sheltered existence.
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ATTP,
what is it about me that scares you to the point where not only won’t you converse with me, you won’t even tell me that you won’t converse with me?
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Fair amount of victim bullying going on here. Whining about being wronged does not give you leverage over others, nor has anybunny here been so wronged that anything goes in return as CK Gunsalus would point out. (Oh yeah Eli knows he is asking for it but old bunnies need a hobby and no Nigel did not try and reset any debate he just tried to collect some rent 🙂
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ATTP,
What if I promise NOT to bring up the fake research you participated in on your employer’s dime?
What would you have to fear then?
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Thabk you Eli….that felt like the verbal equivalent of a rabbit wrinkling its nose
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Dikran sayz “but only be being willing to ignore the jibes and insults etc.”
Maybe Dikran should have a look how Richard Told has been lynched by the mob on Ken Rice’s own blog? Brother, let me take the grain of dust out of your eye, when you yourself do not see the bit of wood in your eye?
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Richard Tol of course, darn spel chekket 😦
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Do you really care to see how deep the rabbit hole is, Mr.Rabett?
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Because of Eli’s odd intervention, I went across to his site and was then diverted to James Annan’s puritanical site. He is not getting the point of Reiner Grundmann’s intervention other than as a piece of egotism.
Annan is a very strrange chap. Apparently well educated, but he has no people sklls.
“”I know that people like to add on their favourite hobby horses of climate variability and social vulnerability etc, and some of the wording is vague, but the basic problem that has motivated and dominated the research agenda for many years is due to us pumping out millions of tonnes of fossil-fuel-derived CO2 into the atmosphere. Cut net emissions to about zero and the problem is solved.”
A verbatim quote. http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/wickedly-simple.html
So…the science has spoken and it says that we need to cut emissions to zero.
You can see why he does not like the Grundmann position. Richard Tol explains to him that this problem is not like cfcs and the ozone layer.
“Grundmann is correct that we’ve been more successful in solving the problem of the ozone layer than the problem of climate change. He argues that this is partly because climate policy is modelled on ozone policy, even though the problems are structurally different.”
The usual players, inluding ATTP pile in, missing the point.
Grundmann steps in to say:
“The simple point I tried to make (but which did not get across) is that wicked problems do not have a stopping rule. They are embedded in other problems, and the expression of other problems. In the ozone case, all drivers of ozone depletion were industrially produced. The policy problem was still complex and daunting (industry resistance). But the ultimate stopping rule was clear, and it clearly expressed in Susan Solomon et al 2016. No such thing exists for “climate change”, as defined by the IPCC.”
He does not extend his argument but I hold it to mean that with the ozone problem, the solution was to hit the refrigeration industry – a few hundred companies…thing solved. But CO2 is another matter. Grundmann does not seem to say it expilicitly but I hope I understand his reasoning, otherwise I would be as impovwrished an intellectual as Annan or Rabbett.
With Co2, the dynamics are different and you have to use a different approach. To start with, there are extraction industries – coal, oil, gas, etc.
Then there are users – power, steel, automotive..etc
Then there are entire countries that rely on extractive industry revenues – the Gulf States, Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela
Then to cut CO2 emissions, you have to do something about the millions of people in Africa, South America and Asia who burn wood and dung and ….
So you want the whole world to change civilisation….
http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/wickedly-simple.html
Then you realise that you are dealing with simpletons. If Annan cannot get back to San Francisco, he will weep. But the 3rd world can burn up as long as he is concerned.
Clinate science at the cutting edge. Me first.
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Nope, Vlad and Est took care of that for Eli
Est: The geothermal gradient is just a theory endorsed by the anti-shovel lobby, as shown by these emails which hide the decline. Really, it’s cool down there.
Vlad: Are you crazy? Look, if we dig any deeper the mantle will start to melt by decompression and the hole will fill with lava, how do we adapt to that?
Est: Well, the last time there was a pit full of molten lava, our ancestors survived by not living in it.
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I wonder how many tonnes of CO2 were released building Annan’s bicycle….
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Man, the problem with Grundmann’s take is that there is a stopping rule. Stop emitting greenhouse gases
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Just when I thought CliScep would never publish a post as un-Liked as my last one (the “joke” about doctors discriminating against the denialetariat), I go and do it again.
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Eli thinks that we can survive without emitting Co2….is he real?
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so Eli does not care about mega-deaths…is that the Eli way? No more cute Eskimos…
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Brad…I would like to think that Eli is not evil, because he posted a picture of a rabbit….but he seems to be a sociopath
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Eli
I said it earlier but here is the precis:
For ozone, just negotiate with he industry.
“With Co2, the dynamics are different and you have to use a different approach. To start with, there are extraction industries – coal, oil, gas, etc.
Then there are users – power, steel, automotive..etc
Then there are entire countries that rely on extractive industry revenues – the Gulf States, Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela
Then to cut CO2 emissions, you have to do something about the millions of people in Africa, South America and Asia who burn wood and dung and ….
So you want the whole world to change civilisation…”
Still too hard?
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Science has spoken, according to Eli…”stop emitting greenhouse gases”.
He appears to mean it. he wants millions of people to die. But these moronic scientists will not let real people try to speak on their behalf. Eli and James Annan really want millions of people to die, and they will never ever admit it.
I thought Michael Tobis was a sociopath. He is a cudddly psychobunny compared with Rabett and Annan.
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man in a barrel: “He appears to mean it. he wants millions of people to die.”
Make that billions.
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Strikes me it’s got nothing to do with CO2 really.
These weirdos just don’t like mankind, it’s as simple as that.
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Eli Rabett ,(31 Aug 16 at 11:31 pm)
summed up clmate science for us in four words: ”stop emitting greenhouse gases” and Man in a Barrel and Catweazle correctly spelled out the implications.
If you’re looking for a Single Solution to Everything it’s got to be a Final one.
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Guys, guys. Slow down, ease up, rein in, chill out.
Eli merely wants everyone to stop breathing. What we do after that is entirely up to us.
As I keep explaining: he’s guilty only of caecotrophy, not psychopathy.
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Geoff:
Back to Isaiah Berlin and pluralism for me. It necessitates smaller solutions, which is a disappointment to some self-anointed elitists, but also less unnecessary deaths, possibly to the tune of billions.
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“Exactly. And it’s precisely that meaning of ‘institutionally’ that has received such a shock from the vote for Brexit. Significant political momentum vapourised. It remains unclear how to apply to climate but it’s well worth asking the question.” Richard Drake.
Our politicians and their buddies have been out of touch for some time. They surround themselves with an artificially constructed public. In the fictional public, there’s no real objection to mass immigration, they all want to cut CO2 and they’re just waiting for the EU world the politicians are planning for them. Only it isn’t true. The Brexit vote was a shock but it could have been even bigger. I don’t think anyone knows how many people lurched one way or the other at the last minute. Even people I know who were 100% for staying in, wavered as they stood in the voting booth. It was only the likely vindictiveness of the EU that saw them vote to remain.
Similarly, for the benefit of climate science (and the planet if CO2 is a problem) the warmists have to come out of their fictional society. Nobody in the real world wants to reduce their energy consumption and renewables aren’t fit for purpose. Warmists need to understand how much they’re asking for. At the very least it would generate a bit more humility. They would see that the least of their problems are fossil fuel companies or blogging sceptics. Their real barriers are the plebs. The billions of people who just want a nice life and know that cheap fossil fuels is part of the route. They measure it in their petrol receipt and their gas bill. They hear it when their employer expresses concern about energy costs. Unlike us or our Guardian reading opposition, they can’t express themselves without dropping into a politically incorrect hole. But deep down we all feel the same. Few people are prepared to sacrifice their economic position for anyone else, let alone a stranger. Sure, they’d be happy to cut CO2 if it was easy and didn’t cost very much. Wouldn’t we all? Unlike previous generations they’re hard to force. They have democracy and aren’t afraid to use it.
That doesn’t mean that mankind isn’t capable of massive sacrifice, we just need a really good reason. And climate science isn’t up to the job. Until they drop ‘this is how we do science’ and take up ‘it has to be the best of the best, please tell us how we can improve it’ we have a stalemate. Stalemate with growing disinterest which will achieve what so far sceptics haven’t. The US might not have reached peak enthusiasm but in Europe, enthusiasm is clearly on the decline.
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I wonder when the climate scientists will visit the King of Saudi and ask him to stop selling oil, for the good of the planet.
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Over at And Then There’s Not Replying To Brad, some wag has asked them what the Consensus actually is.
One BBD suggests.
— “the scientific consensus is that warming is real, is us, and is potentially hazardous.”
izen, however, admits that,
— “…it is context dependent and largely a marketing exercise.” —
But finishes with what I’ve always agreed is the approximate consensus…
— “The IPCC WG1 section is as good a statement of that as any. “–
However, Tom Curtis offers a 6-point yawnfest, the last of which…
–“The economic cost of mitigating global warming (ie, restricting its likely increase) is less than the economic cost of allowing the increase to occur without specific strategy to avoid it, and adapting to the consequences when considered in global terms. —
Has zero to do with science — i.e. WGI — and everything to do with subjective economic, social and political presuppositions, to be charitable.
Dikran’s version is that,
— “I don’t think there is a single “consensus position” per se, but we can reasonably ask if there is a consensus on a particular question.” —
Which is, of course, contra Ken’s claim that,
— “The basic consensus is that we are causing global warming…
And this is significant because it’s also Ken’s claim that,
— “In climate science, however, there are claims that there is no consensus”
Again, Ken’s inarticulateness makes understanding him so much harder. If it were the case that ‘claims that there is no consensus’ really emerged from ‘in climate science’, then there would, ergo, be no consensus. It’s sufficient to say ‘there are claims that there is no consensus’.
There certainly seems to be no consensus on what the consensus is, however, amongst its staunchest enforcers. Curtis gives the game away most, of course, with his inclusion of economic claims. But there’s plenty more amongst those candid replies, not to say the consensus itself, which includes sceptics.
Consensus Enforcers are promiscuous with the science that seemingly forms the consensus. The real object of their ‘consensus’ is not the substance of WGI or any IPCC report, but the authority of institutional science.
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Absolutely.
What strikes me again and again is that there is no go to reference resource other than the IPCC reports for what is or what is not current. And the IPC report is designed to obscure how little definitive information there is. We don’t even have an agreed series of measurements. There’s no version numbering so not only do we know which is the latest graph, chart, theory but we can’t observe the old versions because there’s few public archives. Where there are archives, there are no public records of what adjustments were made and why.
A lot of small companies work the same way. They’re too busy making progress to dot the is and cross the ts. Then something happens and/or they attract the attention of the authorities. They end up in deep water because vital records have been lost or were never made or are a complete mess. Climategate should have been that wakeup call. But wasn’t. They’re still operating more like a little back street business than a multi trillion dollar conglomerate.
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Science Denial and Conspiratorial thinking-Professor StephanLewandowsky
https://environmentaljusticetv.wordpress.com/2016/08/30/science-denial-conspiratorial-thinking-prof-stephan-lewandowsky/
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Without wishing to be drawn into the abyss of vituperation, I quoted Edward P Dowd on this site once. Not sure about the consensus on its expressive eloquence but in my opinion (as humbly arrogant as it is) Mr Dowd’s recommendation still holds for me. https://cliscep.com/2015/11/01/some-thoughts-on-climate-change-is-real-and-important/ which leaves me with some empathy with Dikran.
I have been away for some time but on returning to the wonderful world of climate change discussion it seems as shrill as ever. Nothing has changed much, the claims get more preposterous by those with vested interests and data is bastardised to a level where I’m expecting Mr Tumnus to make an appearance at GISS. But all that aside, I still concur with Mr Dowd even if Mr Tumnus did turn out to be a lying little shit.
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We could always let the crap hit the fan and then retroactively attempt to prevent it.
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Welcome back to Badgerbod.
Taking up Ben’s comment above on the discussion of what the consensus actually is over at ATTP, the most popular interpretation (which includes Ken himself) appears to be acceptance of the AR5 attribution statement, i.e. fossil fuel emissions are extremely likely responsible for more than 50% of warming since 1950, with the best estimate (based on a simple probability density function graph) being 110% – which allows for some cooling due to natural variability/anthro and natural aerosols. But this isn’t science, it’s statistics, it isn’t so much based upon empirical evidence, but upon attribution studies and climate model runs. I keep quoting Pierre Darriulat’s opinion of the AR5 attribution statement, I know, but it sums up so nicely all that is wrong with the ‘science’ which makes its way into IPCC’s WG1 SPM:
“Such a report must refrain from ignoring basic scientific practices, as the SPM authors blatantly do when claiming to be able to quantify with high precision their confidence in the impact of anthropogenic C02 emissions onglobal warming. Statistical uncertainties, inasmuch as they are normally distributed, can be quantified with precision and it can make sense to distinguish between a 90% and a 95% probability, for example in calculating the probability of getting more than ten aces when throwing a die more
than 10 times. In most physical problems, however, and particularly in climate science, statistical uncertainties are largely irrelevant. What matters are systematic uncertainties that result in a large part from our lack of understanding of the mechanisms at play, and also in part from the lack of relevant data. In quantifying such ignorance the way they have done it, the SPM authors have lost credibility with many scientists. Such behaviour is unacceptable. A proper scientific summary must rephrase the main SPM conclusions in a way that describes properly the factors that contribute to the uncertainties attached to such conclusions.”
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/WrittenEvidence.svc/EvidenceHtml/4360
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BRANDONRGATES: “We could always let the crap hit the fan and then retroactively attempt to prevent it.”
The crap isn’t going to hit the fan BRG, or not the crap you’re wetting your bed over, at any rate.
Mankind is no more capable of significantly changing the Earth’s climate than significantly changing the time the sun rises and sets.
And no matter how much you hoot and howl and wave your little arms and stamp your tiny feet and swear blind that black’s white, there is absolutely not one iota of empirical evidence to the contrary.
So stop frightening the children with your Chicken Little apocalyptic prognostications and get a life!
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To take a different tack for Brandon, let’s assume the planet is in severe danger. Until there’s a reliable ‘solution’ to any of the problems with cutting CO2, the only way to reduce it in any significant way is to have little, do little and go nowhere. You may or may not add nuclear but it’s not a complete alternative and isn’t cheap. You can also add renewables but they’re about as effective as throwing your money into the wind. It’s an interesting guesture but the rest of us would rather not. Every step closer to a low CO2 future will be more painful than the last. Governments and the public are balking now.
Relying on technology that isn’t currently on the market is a fools errand. Fusion has been a few years away from a working model for 50 years. Even when you have the technology you have to roll it out, which could take decades.
Look at your own CO2 and ask ‘am I as low as I could go or as low as I want to go’? Be aware that blaming others for your lack of action is just an excuse. There are people the world over that have the right CO2 foorprint… they just live horrible lives. Without sensible alternatives we would all have to live a horrible life. I’m sure that there isn’t a person here who would talk you out of putting your CO2 where your mouth is. So the only one stopping warmists are themselves. Get on with it.
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@brad
“I write for my own amusement”
I have to take issue with this claim. You write for my amusement too.
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@Barry Woods 01 Sep 16 at 12:23 pm
OMG! One wonders how low Lew can go in the course of his exercises in self-exculpatory “revisionist” drivel.
I’ve said it before – and, at this point, I have little doubt that he and his co-“thinkers” will provide opportunities to ensure that it is worth saying again: Lew and his lesser-light cohorts (whether behind the scenes, or front and centre) put the likes of “revisionist scholars” – such as Ernst Zundel and David Irving – to shame!
Amazing. Simply amazing.
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CATWEAZLE666,
The evidence combined with theory I have suggests otherwise — but being omniscient, you already knew that.
TINYCO2,
Reliable solutions (not in “scare quotes”) don’t invent themselves. That means doing something and going somewhere. And besides, hundreds of millions of warmunists not showing up for work for the rest of their lives to “save” the planet wouldn’t be much better for the economy than the alarmist strawman scenario of taking away everyone’s fossil energy without suitable replacements would be.
And I’m sure there isn’t a person here who would follow that example. So your appeal to hypocrisy, while certainly self-satisfying for you, isn’t really any more a practical solution than you assert renewable energy is. If dragging you kicking and screaming out of the Carbon Age by political force is what it takes, so be it. Same for anti-fission zealots of any political alignment or ideology.
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The idea of consensologists staying at home doing nothing appeals to me, in fact, it would be even better if they were 2 metres underground.
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It’s consensuologists, you cynic!
Haha. And lest anyone wilfully misinterpret MiaB’s jest as some sort of death threat, I’m sure he just wishes Naomi Oreskes to return to her career in the mines beneath Western Australia.
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Damn you, Brad… I am in ISIl, targeting consensus WASP ‘s, like Lew and his bum chums
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Nb, that was satirical, for Eli and the hard of understanding
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Damn it’s difficult to zero in on these guys who change their views every minute
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I know the feeling.
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Barry:
“Science Denial and Conspiratorial thinking-Professor StephanLewandowsky”
That’s too good! So, Lewandowsky’s sub-literate habit of substituting conspiratorial for conspiracist isn’t just a slip of the tongue. It’s the title of his video.
How did this mediocre mental midget become a professor? At a university? In the actual, non-Onion universe?
Oh, I see:
OIC.
Only In Climate™.
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Brandon “And I’m sure there isn’t a person here who would follow that example”
What part of being sceptical of CAGW do you not get? It’s one of the perks of the position.
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Now where, oh where has Eli read the same sort of nonsense. Oh yes, the dire threat of the Montreal Protocols to kill the poor
Just substitute CO2 emissions for CFCs and rinse.
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Eli,
“Just substitute CO2 emissions for CFCs…”
Your own excerpt explains that CO2 is NOT a substitute for CFCs.
Or are you now suggesting that because the poor somehow managed to survive the Protocols of the Elders of Ozone, nobody has anything to lose by signing up to the Protocols of Eli “Stop Breathing” Rabett?
OK, Perfesser, you first.
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How about Eli heard the same bleats about how CFCs gonna kill the poor. BTW Lucia is much better at parsing.
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Uh, yeah, Brad got it.
(Eli presumably means that switching from CFCs was supposed to kill the poor, but hey: close enough for government work.)
Eli probably didn’t know this, being a chemistry teacher and all, but abstaining from CO2 exhalation *will* kill the poor.
Nah, what is Brad saying? That can’t be right—Eli once heard a different claim, which turned out wrong; ergo all claims are wrong.
Logic With a Rabbit continues next week…
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I love the smell of parsed rabbit in the morning.
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TINYCO2,
Certainly not the C.
How very privileged of you.
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BRAD KEYES,
Human respiration amounts to about 8.5% of fossil fuel emissions. Produce food without desequestering carbon to do it, and breathing becomes carbon-neutral.
Unless perhaps the poor start eating coal directly.
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Brandon,
“Produce food without desequestering carbon to do it, and breathing becomes carbon-neutral.”
Uh, no. Accounting doesn’t work that way.
The only conceivable scenario in which “breathing becomes carbon-neutral” is if we all spend our entire lives in the middle of a field exhaling directly onto one of these magical non-desequestering food crops. Then, if the stomata are sufficiently voracious, MAYBE you could call breathing carbon-neutral.
“Certainly not the C.”
So you don’t regard AGW as catastrophic? Good to know. Welcome to denierdom.
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BRAD KEYES,
Dual-entry accounting most certainly does. One entry you left out is photosynthesis, which fixes atmospheric carbon.
My crystal ball is on the fritz, and my magic 8-ball keeps changing its story. I’ve decided that I’m not curious enough on others’ behalf to let them find out empirically.
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“Dual-entry accounting most certainly does. One entry you left out is photosynthesis…”
No, the two columns for human breathing—which you said could be made carbon-neutral—are headed:
— breathing in
— breathing out
Photosynthesis plays no role in human breathing. That would be what we call (euphemistically) creative accounting.
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Brandon,
“My crystal ball is on the fritz, and my magic 8-ball keeps changing its story. I’ve decided that I’m not curious enough on others’ behalf to let them find out empirically.”
So you think there’s a reasonable chance AGW could turn out to be catastrophic?
Yet you don’t know what CAGW means?
I’m confused. No, wait—you are.
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The Planet is 4.543 billion years old. It’s supported carbon-based life forms for 3.8 billion years. We don’t have great estimates of CO2 levels much past 500 million years (at least not that I can lay hands on quickly) but if we’re trusting models today …
… GEOCARBIII’s central estimate peaks at 7,000 ppmv CO2 around 500 million years ago. We’re at 400 today, the range over the past million years has fairly reliably varied between 180 and 300.
If the sum total of respiration on this rock isn’t carbon-neutral, please explain to the class how it is that CO2 didn’t head north toward 100% like a bat out of the proverbial hot place.
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It might help to read my original comment in context, and not infill, interpolate, or otherwise invent information which isn’t there. I thought all sceptics knew this.
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If human breathing (remember: the topic is human breathing) is carbon-neutral, please explain to the class how we’re not all dead from respiratory acidosis.
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Brandon “How very privileged of you.”
No, no, it’s open to all. In fact people all over the world are taking the opportunity to not give CO2 a second thought, and getting on with their lives.
I doubt many sceptics mind that money is spent on researching new energy technologies. It’s frittering money by rolling out renewables that aren’t fit for purpose that upsets us. Pinning your hopes on a technology that doesn’t yet work is not a viable plan. What if those technologies don’t emerge? Just becuse we want something and throw loads of money at it, doesn’t guarantee a breakthrough. So what’s plan B?
Plan B has aleady started. It’s a subtle and not so subtle plan to keep the lowest emitters where they are. Make the poorest pay for the green whims of the richest. It’s all rather ugly.
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Brandon,
I did read it in context—that’s HOW I was able to perform a perfectly justifiable infilling of your meaning. Very clearly, to anyone who speaks English, you were saying words to the effect that you’d rather not let the world find out “empirically” whether or not AGW was going to turn out to be catastrophic.
After denying any knowledge of what CAGW meant.
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BRAD KEYES,
Because the human body isn’t the sum total of the biosphere (remember: the topic is human breathing in the context of global atmospheric CO2 concentration).
Let me check my own brain for the actual information stored there … er, nope, you’re wrong …
… WAAAYYYY wrong.
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Lets imagine that 50% of people are worried about CO2 and 50% aren’t. Which is the smartest plan – for the 50% to get on with whatever they think is needed (even if it’s their half of what’s needed) and hope the other side will eventually follow suit. Or do nothing but whine until the other half agree? Which is more important, cutting CO2 or not letting the nasty deniers get away with doing nothing?
After all, a Di Caprio, a Gore and an Obama would equal a lot of the CO2 footprints of the CO2 bloggosphere.
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TINYCO2,
… all who meet the membership conditions of The Club. To wit:
Meanwhile, those of us who think such a requirement carries with it significant risks are supposed to go live in a cave and stop breathing. It’s implied (but not entailed) that this course of action might gain some credibility from those obtaining the perquisites of privileged existences.
I didn’t realize all my eggs were in one basket. When did that happen?
lol. Africa has either been getting screwed over or neglected by the western world for several centuries now … which centuries mostly did not include “greens” in the sense used here. Now all of a sudden, The Club want to ensure the downtrodden poor have access to their fair share of the fossil fuel cornucopia.
Pull my other one.
I can spin a good yarn myself, you know. Here’s one:
Plan A is polluters pay. Plan B is the fabrication from whole cloth which makes “greens” look bad whilst The Club pretend to not be blocking Plan A.
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“Plan A is polluters pay.”
And what if they say ‘no’? And remember the ‘polluters’ are most of the western world, rich or poor. The pesky little devils vote for the person who says ‘I’m not sure we need to’. That makes it a very big club.
And you don’t have to stop breathing – just do whatever it is you think we should all be doing. That way you’d be halfway there, rather than nowhere.
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Brandon,
“Let me check my own brain for the actual information stored there … er, nope, you’re wrong …”
My mistake. So you DON’T think there’s a reasonable possibility that AGW will turn out to be catastrophic.
Good to know. Welcome to denierdom.
“‘After denying knowledge of what CAGW meant.’
“… WAAAYYYY wrong.
Ah, so you DON’T deny knowing what CAGW means.
Progress!
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Brandon,
I said:
“If human breathing (remember: the topic is human breathing) is carbon-neutral, please explain to the class how we’re not all dead from respiratory acidosis.”
Your, er, “explanation” to the class was:
“Because the human body isn’t the sum total of the biosphere”
What the? That doesn’t explain why we haven’t all dropped dead from respiratory acidosis despite the (alleged, by you) carbon-neutrality of human breathing.
It doesn’t even address the topic.
F minus.
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Brandon is in possession of the “evidence” and the “theory” which suggests that man has a “significant” impact on the climate; thus we may reasonably assume that “significant” may very soon turn to “catastrophic” unless we urgently reduce CO2 emissions. Fair enough. I think we all know enough about the “theory”; it would be nice though if he could share the “evidence” with us, then we can all pack this lark in and get on with the urgent mitigation business.
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There’s a sly bit of misdirection that warmists use – blaming ‘the polluter’. By this they mean companies. Now while each company has its own energy impact, the ultimate polluter is the customer. So if I demand petrol, all the CO2 emitted by my vehicle is mine. I might not be responsible for any energy wasted getting that fuel from the ground to my tank, but I must accept that to get it there, there is an inherent energy cost. Any inescapable pollution (ie CO2) from that activity is therefore also mine. Anyone who chooses green product A over cheap product B is responsible for the differences in pollution (and the calculation of ‘green’ is very complex and not reflected by any claims the company might make). So if ‘the polluter pays’ it means WE pay. Companies might be the ones taxed but they’ll just pass that on to us.
Warmists are bemused how few people have fallen for theit ‘polluter pays’ trick.
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What’s the point of trying to get the science right with Brandon when he can’t seem to get the words right? It strikes me as a rather forlorn hope.
Semantics matter.
But hey, that’s my hobby-horse. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck. If I’m right about Brandon (and I hope I’m not), you’ll need it.
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BRAD KEYES,
That’s a false statement. The original question was about what folks are sceptical of: What part of being sceptical of CAGW do you not get?
My answer, *for myself* was: Certainly not the C.
Stripping out the potentially confusing double-negatives, I’m saying, “I’m sceptical of the catastrophic part myself.” Implication: the A part of the GW not so much. Some folks are sceptical of all four letters … which is fine, been there done that myself.
Of course I know what it means, I just don’t know if it will be catastrophic. Much also depends on the threshold for “catastrophe”. Slippery word that, especially when used as a cudgel to bash interpolated and homogenized Chicken Littles.
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So you don’t NOT get the “C”, is that what you meant?
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Now your comments no longer seem delirious.
I’ve never been so happy to be wrong about someone, with apologies to Thorin Oakenshield. Sorry for misjudging you, Brandon.
You’re yet to explain how the heck human breathing (in, out, in, out, in, out) can possibly be described as carbon-neutral, but let’s quit while we’re ahead and drink a toast to belated mutual comprehension.
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And many sceptics including myself accept a certain amount of AGW. It’s the C that is in question. But the C determines what you do about CO2. What you would be prepared to do for ‘mildly annoying’ is very different from ‘oh god, oh god, we’re all going to die’.
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TINYCO2,
Putting your words in my mouth could constitute not-so-sly misdirection on your part.
I mean polluter pays. As in end users. That’s what pricing carbon entails. They who use the most carbon pay the most for it.
Your best options from here on out might be to prove that I’m lying or take my words at face value. Which?
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Brandon has changed his tune. He started with “We could always let the crap hit the fan” but now he’s saying he’s sceptical about catastrophe.
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Well, interpreting Brandon’s statements charitably, couldn’t he coherently:
– be skeptical about it, in the sense of doubtful as to its catastrophicness,
– yet have little appetite for finding out “empirically” whether he’s right?
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BRAD KEYES,
Correct; I know what “C” means (catastrophic) and I get why folks are sceptical of it.
Not at all, most kind. I’m sure I can live down to expectations in other ways. Just now I’m pondering what other d!ck!sh things to say to you about the carbon cycle. I’ll probably sleep on it.
Cheers.
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Aaarrrghh! Science ensnared in a mire of terminology. You were right Brad.
Nobody KNOWS whether AGW is significant. Nobody KNOWS for sure if it even exists. Certainly nobody KNOWS if it will turn out to be ‘highly dangerous’ to human civilisation and the planet. All we KNOW is that the planet has warmed (in fits and starts) since the Little Ice Age ended and that some of this warming MAY be attributable to anthropogenic GHG emissions, according to physical theory. Sadly, there is next to NO empirical evidence of a human fingerprint on modern climate change, but there is growing evidence of the influence of natural processes which drive climate change and these MAY have contributed significantly to the rise in GMST circa 1750-2016. That’s it. NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH “evidence” to justify the current economic/social/environmental madness which is whimsically termed “climate mitigation policy”.
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Brandon but you made out that there was a Club, which suggests a certain amount of exclusivity. I pointed out that the Club includes most people in developed and developing countries. Why use ‘the polluter’ when you mean ‘us all’ (since those emitting much CO2 are unlikely to be reading this). Most people don’t think of themselves as polluters, and would interpret it as the original use of the phrase which was directed at companies that directly polluted rivers or the air. Whether you intended to use that misdirection, doesn’t negate my point that warmists often do.
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missed out a ‘not’ there – those not emitting much CO2
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BRAD KEYES,
Yes. With the added kick that the only way to be sure of castastrophe is to actually let it happen. That isn’t our preferred mode of operation, we anticpate threats and hedge them all the time. Sometimes things get through the screen. Screwjacks installed upsidedown in aeroplanes’ tailfeathers, one crashes, people die, lawsuits happen … eventually engineers get involved and make the thing better so *that* doesn’t happen again.
We can tolerate post hoc hazard mitigation on small scales. Cranking on the parameters of the entire planet when we don’t the full design specs, or even an operators’ manual to speak of … yeah, that makes me a little twitchy.
Ok, now I really must retire for the evening.
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“With the added kick that the only way to be sure of castastrophe is to actually let it happen.”
No, that’s not the only way. They could do better science. Science that meets a much better level of rigor than peer review (ie getting a few mates to give it a read through). It might still not be conclusive but it would be a lot more credible.
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TINYCO2,
I lied, I’m still awake. I disagree strongly. There is no substitute for hard data. I don’t look at forward-looking predictions, no matter how “good” the science, as being “sure” — only plausible and only as good as their underlying assumptions. I also consider that the physics models, for all their countless flaws, are the most robust link in the chain. Start getting into biology models, economic models which rely on AOGCM output … that uncertainty propagates. It’s as far from being sure as I can imagine, especially when “actual” data carry a good deal of uncertainty with them.
I can only say with honest reasonable confidence that we’re warming, that we’re doing most of it and at a rate that looks to be a geological eyeblink. The geologic past does offer some hints about the consequences of a rapidly changed environment. Those two things form the basis for most of my precautionary position.
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— “There is no substitute for hard data.”
— “…physics models, for all their countless flaws, are the most robust link in the chain…” —
The hardest data in the world can yet be asked the most stupid question in the world, and cannot reply, ‘that is a stupid question’.
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Then get on with it, reduce your CO2 or fund whatever you think works, we’re not stopping you. I require more. Most people require more. How do I know? Because they’e not getting on with it, they whine about rising energy costs, they haven’t done the easy stuff, let alone the hard. eg The green reject nuclear. Either accept that action on CO2 isn’t going to improve much until the hard data arrives or perhaps see that the science isn’t doing everything it could to persuade.
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@Hoi Polloi
Wottsywotts indeed allows rather unpleasant comment on his blog. His treatment of Matt Ridley (a doctor of biology, a peer of the realm, and a best-selling author of popular science books) is a good example.
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Richard, the latest wisdom from expert scientists in the peer-reviewed literature says that Matt Ridley is guilty of entrenched denial.
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ATTP Denizen “izen” is now trying to smear David Romer’s name, but seems unable to tell him from Paul Romer, Lester Romero and Cato the Elder — all in an attempt to find an excuse not to have to read David Romer’s textbook on Advanced Macroeconomics.
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Let’s see. Plants convert CO2 to O2, Humans raise plants, Animals eat plants Humans eat plants and animals, but please, no bunnies. Seems to be pretty carbon neutral to Eli.
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Paul, that’s called an open pit mine,
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Richard, This has always been a very unpleasant feature of the Alarmist climate blogosphere. Real Climate allows the same thing. Are the moderators just lazy or do they actually think they are so righteous that smearing people you don’t like is just fine?
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A (grown man dressed as a) bunny in Daisyworld says,
— “Plants convert CO2 to O2, Humans raise plants, Animals eat plants Humans eat plants and animals, but please, no bunnies. Seems to be pretty carbon neutral to Eli.” —
But just as easily…
Humans convert fossils to CO2. Plants eat CO2.
The myth of balance haunts the fully-grown adult male speaking about himself in the third person.
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Ben, I think this aphorism courtesy of bill Murray may be apposite here.
“it’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person”
In fact, that could apply to evangelical CAGW apostles in general.
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Matt King Coal, who profits off the coal mine on his land and who took one of the largest banks in the UK broke? That the Matt King Coal you blathering about Dickie?
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Poor Eli, probably drooling after licking LSD off his organic rabbit pellets. Northern Rock was a small bank, very small in fact. The run on its liquidity was orchestrated by a BBC journo called Peston who was best mates with Gordon Brown the PM. The bank is still paying out on its bonds. Ridley was a non executive chairman, not the CEO. Try to get your facts straight.
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Richard,
Maybe you could provide some examples; just so that I know the kind of thing that you regard as “unpleasant”.
Why would any of this matter? And, again, some examples might be nice; just so that I can have some idea of what you regard as “unpleasant”.
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Wottsywotts has forgotten what happened in the past on his blog. So he asked Richard Tol to tell him. Some people are so biased they see everything through the prism of their prejudices. Lots of comments by WebHub and Dhogaza are very rude and insulting and lies to boot. The treatment of Judith Curry is shameful too.
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DY,
No, I asked Tol for examples, so that I can see what he regards as “unpleasant”. It’s quite hard to tell, given what some seem to condone, and say, themselves (some examples from you might be interesting too).
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KRice, So instead of taking Tol’s criticism seriously you are already looking to discredit it. You are really rather dishonest if you don’t regard WebHub and Dhogaza as examples of extreme impoliteness and in fact libelous tripe. But you allowed them free reign on several threads. Why is that Ken?
A hint. You need to try to take other people seriously and respect their views. If you hold politically motivated characatures of them, then you like Lewandowsky may appear to be a hypocrite.
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DY,
No, I’m asking for some examples.
Again, some examples would be nice. I’m not a fan of discussing other people when they aren’t present, but both those you mentioned have had comments moderated (and they’re not alone). So, no, they have never had free reign. I will add that apparently my blog is also bad because I moderate (censor?). People really need to make up their mind. Should I moderate “unpleasant” comments, or not?
Bizarre. I’m guessing you don’t read your own comments before posting them?
Let’s also be clear. You’re complaining about “unpleasant” comments on my blog, while suggesting – on another blog – that I’m possibly both dishonest and a hypocrite. In fact, you can almost not make a comment to me, or about me, that doesn’t imply such things. So, somehow, you think I should do something about “unpleasant” comments on my blog (even though you can provide no examples of such comments) while feeling free to make “unpleasant” comments on other blogs. You don’t, I imagine, see the irony in this?
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— “People really need to make up their mind. Should I moderate “unpleasant” comments, or not?” —
Yes. Start with your own, here, and go away.
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Ben,
Come on, just ban me. I won’t complain.
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You already complained over at your ridiculous website, and I can’t ban you.
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My two cents on the rudeness debate…
I genuinely doubt our opponents have the wherewithal to comprehend our justification for calling people like Mann and Lew the frauds that they are. To ATTP’s ilk, it simply looks like a (false) defamatory claim. So our behavior might (if I can begin to speculate on what goes on in the mind of a slave, which I probably can’t) grant our opponents the moral licence to use (false) defamatory rhetoric of their own, especially if they’re in a bad mood after publicly losing an argument or six.
Well, instead of speculating, how about you tell me, ATTP: is that why you feel entitled to harbor on your blog the nastiest kinds of libel against ‘our’ ‘side’ without losing a wink of sleep? Because you think we do the same?
Am I warm?
Oh wait, I forgot—you’re scared of me.
Would someone else mind asking ATTP on my behalf?
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Of course, KenRice, there is a difference between libelous lies and true observations about your record. You still can’t be bothered to search your own blog instead ignoring true statements here. That’s your right but does make most think less of you.
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David,
was that your response to my request:
“Would someone else mind asking ATTP on my behalf?”
If so, cheers. Let’s see what he has to say.
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TINYCO2,
I’m not going to go off-grid and live in a cave while attempting to obtain carbon-neutrality by the unnecessary mechanism of not breathing. Not only do I not want to do that (which I take to be your point), it doesn’t solve the problem that the collective “you” don’t want to do it any more than I do, and almost certainly would not.
However, this is amongst the privileged perquisites of having membership in The Club: everyone else makes the sacrifices “greens” say we all should make, Club members continue to enjoy all the benefits of a fossil-fired modern lifestyle.
Or so some members of The Club think. We might rewind to some of your previous rhetorical questions:
Lets imagine that 50% of people are worried about CO2 and 50% aren’t. Which is the smartest plan – for the 50% to get on with whatever they think is needed (even if it’s their half of what’s needed) and hope the other side will eventually follow suit. Or do nothing but whine until the other half agree?
Do members of The Club actually imagine that 50% of the industrialized world’s population going back to subsistence farming and/or hunter-gatherer nomadism would benefit the economy?
Obviously. How much more is the question.
That isn’t what you know, it’s what you’ve inferred because … reasons. My turn to say, “I require more”.
Many do, as I’ve noted previously, and it does irk me. What of it. It’s not like “greens” are the only obstacle standing in the way of replacing coal- and gas-fired plants with fission.
I’m not much one for fatalism or false dilemmas. I really don’t much care for arguments that nebulously handwave at what “science” isn’t doing as a justification for *choosing* to reject its findings. I find myself wondering how a cogent evidence- and theory-based argument might actually persuade someone prone using this kind of fallacious reasoning.
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MiaB,
“Thabk you Eli….that felt like the verbal equivalent of a rabbit wrinkling its nose”
What about another species of vermin: the common (or brown) punitive psychologist?
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Ben,
I meant that I won’t complain if you ban me, which I have neither mentioned, nor complained about, on my blog (since you haven’t banned me). This is obvious, right?
DY,
Maybe you need to define what you mean by “unpleasant”.
I have searched my blog. I can’t find anything that is more unpleasant than the kind of things you typically say. Maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t think so. I’m also extremely confident that there is nothing on my blog that is as unpleasant as what goes on here; a site where you seem to fit in quite well.
If I could care less, I would.
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You could care less, Ken, if you tried really hard. Please, for all our sakes, give it a 110%.
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Man in a Barrel:
“Northern Rock was a small bank, very small in fact. The run on its liquidity was orchestrated by a BBC journo called Peston who was best mates with Gordon Brown the PM. The bank is still paying out on its bonds. Ridley was a non executive chairman, not the CEO. Try to get your facts straight.”
I have a lot of difficulty with this. Northern Rock may have been relatively small, as banks go, but it was a very substantial UK company, part of the FTSE 100 I believe. Yes, Peston played a part in the run on the bank, but it wouldn’t have happened if the bank wasn’t bust. I’m not sure what you mean by “the bank is still paying out on its bonds”. It was nationalised by the Government without compensation, and some investors (shareholders, not depositors) lost small fortunes. A friend of mine is £10,000 down as a result. Another firm of which I have a great deal of knowledge, which worked closely with Northern Rock, went bust as a result of the bank going down, 100 people lost their jobs, and the owners underwent financial turmoil for years. Ridley, as non-executive chairman, was responsible, along with his fellow non-executive directors, for supervising the activities of the executive board. As Chairman, he had a great deal of responsibility for what went on. One could argue quite strongly that they obviously failed to do their jobs probably. And, non-executive or not, he and his fellow directors were handsomely remunerated for very modest amounts of work,
None of this is in any way relevant to Matt Ridley’s views on science and climate change, and bringing it up amounts to that old trick of playing the man, not the ball. But, as you say, try to get your facts straight.
ATTP
You and I don’t get on, but I’m almost starting to have some sympathy with you. Yes, you should moderate comments on your website, and I believe you should do more of it, and do it more even-handedly. But I’m glad to hear that you do moderate comments. And I think some of the attacks on you on here are getting a bit out of order. Admittedly, you do bring much of it on yourself (I repeat my view that you’re the most irritating person on the internet), but I can’t see that these by and against you are conducive to anything much at all.
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When I was younger, we had neighbours either side of us, two old women, who would gossip to each other over their fences, across our garden; always on the general theme “He said, she said, etc.” This ‘politeness debate’ brings back childhood memories of sitting at the back door, wondering when the hell they were ever going to shut up so I could go and play in the garden.
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Mark, on your second point – by and large I agree with your reasonable attitude and diplomatic/conciliatory tone. It’s tricky when you’re always being niggled at and teased and passive/aggressively breathed over, while topics under discussion recede into the far distance and become fond memories, to always be entirely restrained. It’s asking too much.
Anyway, it is a side issue.
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Ian Woolley
Thanks for the response. I understand the irritation with ATTP, and I understand why some of the responses to him are made. I’ve bitten back at him on occasion, too, when I thought he was out of order. But of late, I just think things have been going a bit far. I enjoy this site, many of the articles, and much of the writing style. It would not be so good, in my opinion, if the edge was taken off its acerbity. But still…
ATTP might or might not be trying to provoke people and to derail the threads. If that is his aim, there is a real danger of him being allowed to succeed. If it isn’t his aim, then nevertheless, there is a danger of the site becoming less interesting, and some of the comments turning off any disinterested readers who find their way here, in my opinion.
So, please keep it entertaining and as fresh as you can manage (it can’t be easy), but I would humbly request that some of the bile is turned down a bit.
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Thanks (x 100) for the feedback Mark.
What’s your position on the other variables: choler, melancholia, vitriol and spleen?
Have we achieved the right balance of those bodily fluids at least?
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Yes, everything else is fine!
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“Nobody KNOWS whether AGW is significant. Nobody KNOWS for sure if it even exists. ”
ya.. and unicorns too
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Steven,
“ya.. and unicorns too”
So then: you’re provisionally sure there’s no such thing as AGW?
Just like you’re provisionally sure there’s no such thing as unicorns?
Barring some astonishing revelation of their existence?
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Brandon
“Let me check my own brain for the actual information stored there … er, nope, you’re wrong ”
I have to laugh when skeptics mind read. Science read? never.
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Steven, please try to keep up. We’ve (Brandon and I) sorted that particular comedy of errors out already.
He used a negative, in response to a negative question, leading to ambiguity as to whether he was answering in the negative or the affirmative.
No mind-reading was necessary to produce the ensuing confusion.
In fact, I relied solely on a lo-tech approach:
Word-reading.
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PS your contempt for skeptics (a superset of scientists, FWIW) doesn’t seem to have mellowed with the passage of time. You now accuse skeptics (a superset of scientists) of failing to read any science, ever.
Who hurt you?
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“Well, instead of speculating, how about you tell me,
ATTP: is that why you feel entitled to harbor on your blog
the nastiest kinds of libel against ‘our’ ‘side’ without
losing a wink of sleep?
Because you think we do the same?
The idea of consensologists staying at home doing
nothing appeals to me, in fact, it would be even better
if they were 2 metres underground.
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“Steven, please try to keep up. We’ve (Brandon and I) sorted that particular comedy of errors out already.
He used a negative, in response to a negative question, leading to ambiguity as to whether he was answering in the negative or the affirmative.”
Too funny.
I read his original comment and was not confused. Cause English is my first language.
You read his comment, tried to read his mind, defended your interpretation, showed ZERO
appreciation for ambiguity , and then apologized.
you cant make this shit up
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Steven,
First you quote me explicitly refusing to mind-read, preferring to ask the person in question to answer in his own words so as to make speculation unnecessary.
Then you quote someone else expressing their understandable hatred of consens[u]ologists.
The only question this raises is:
why?
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“PS your contempt for skeptics (a superset of scientists, FWIW) doesn’t seem to have mellowed with the passage of time. You now accuse skeptics (a superset of scientists) of failing to read any science, ever.
Who hurt you?
############
more failed mind reading.
context son.
“skeptics” is shorthand, do the math. no need to apologize, you are already sorry. ( double meaning)
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“First you quote me explicitly refusing to mind-read, preferring to ask the person in question to answer in his own words so as to make speculation unnecessary.”
Ah no you infilled and were quite proud of it.
read son.
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“Then you quote someone else expressing their understandable hatred of consens[u]ologists.
The only question this raises is:
why?
############
juxtaposition
look it up.
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“Cause [sic] English is my first language.”
Says the guy who apparently doesn’t know the difference between semantic and pedantic.
I say “apparently” so as to make no secret of the fact that I’m just guessing what went on inside your brain when you decided to criticize me for quibbling with a definition on semantic [!] grounds.
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“Haha. And lest anyone wilfully misinterpret MiaB’s jest as some sort of death threat, I’m sure he just wishes Naomi Oreskes to return to her career in the mines beneath Western Australia.”
“Then you quote someone else expressing their understandable hatred of consens[u]ologists.”
Juxtaposed.
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“I did read it in context—that’s HOW I was able to perform a perfectly justifiable infilling of your meaning. Very clearly, to anyone who speaks English, you were saying words to the effect that you’d rather not let the world find out “empirically” whether or not AGW was going to turn out to be catastrophic.”
apparently?
ya right.
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“I say “apparently” so as to make no secret of the fact that I’m just guessing what went on inside your brain when you decided to criticize me for quibbling with a definition on semantic [!] grounds.”
““I did read it in context—that’s HOW I was able to perform a perfectly justifiable infilling of your meaning. Very clearly, to anyone who speaks English, you were saying words to the effect that you’d rather not let the world find out “empirically” whether or not AGW was going to turn out to be catastrophic.”
Ya, plenty of doubt there.
Good mind reading bradly
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As far as I know it was perfectly correct to make this inference:
“Very clearly, to anyone who speaks English, you were saying words to the effect that you’d rather not let the world find out “empirically” whether or not AGW was going to turn out to be catastrophic.”
Are you suggesting Brandon didn’t mean that??
Very well, read his mind and tell me what he meant.
I can only go by what his words meant.
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“Says the guy who apparently doesn’t know the difference between semantic and pedantic.”
too funny. juxtaposing quotes is pedantic.
back to your dictionary Bradley…
jeez this is more fun than a morning at Goddard’s, who knew..
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Now, class…. class… (obscure reference to 70s comedy album) Shut up!
Thank you
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“skeptics” is shorthand, do the math.
If you’re too lazy to write what you mean, don’t complain when the rest of us have to do the odd bit of mind-reading just to make sense of your comments.
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Why would you rhetorically juxtapose a comment expressing hatred of skeptics with one expressing hatred of consensuologists, as if you were making some sort of point thereby?
Do you actually think there’s a moral equivalence there?
Or that it’s hypocritical to criticize one comment and not the other?
Please confirm. I’d hate to be accused of jumping to conclusions by reading your mind, transparent as it is.
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““PS your contempt for skeptics (a superset of scientists, FWIW) doesn’t seem to have mellowed with the passage of time. You now accuse skeptics (a superset of scientists) of failing to read any science, ever.”
A smart person practicing methodological skepticism would ask
“what did you mean by skeptic?” answer : those who deny climate science 9 I’m not fond of the denier word)
A smart person would know the difference between skepticism as a philosophical position and METHODOLOGICAL skepticism which is a behavior.
A smart person would ask “do mean all?’ or why didnt you use the weasel word “most” or “many”
Answer, I mean most “contrarians” that I encounter if you want to be Pendantic
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Steven,
” You read his comment, tried to read his mind, defended your interpretation, showed ZERO
appreciation for ambiguity , and then apologized.”
Because nothing shows “appreciation for ambiguity” like all-caps.
“too funny. ”
Laugh it up, you fucking douchecanoe. I make no apologies for apologizing for my misunderstanding. That’s how my momma raised me: pathologically polite.
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“Why would you rhetorically juxtapose a comment expressing hatred of skeptics with one expressing hatred of consensuologists, as if you were making some sort of point thereby?
because I write for my amusement and I found it funny.
Do you actually think there’s a moral equivalence there?
I dunno. I found it funny. I’m generally opposed to making moral judgments.
Or that it’s hypocritical to criticize one comment and not the other?
They are juxtaposed. For a reason. calculate son
Please confirm. I’d hate to be accused of jumping to conclusions by reading your mind, transparent as it is.
Confirm what? I find amusing things. I put them together.
Then some serious twit gets his panties in a knot and his reasoning in a knot as well.
Question: what did it mean to you and why?
its just words.. get the dictionary and it will tell you what that juxtaposition means..
hmm. maybe language doesnt work that way.. what do you think?
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” “what did you mean by skeptic?” answer : those who deny climate science”
Nobody answering that description around here. Wouldn’t your spleen be better vented in a more target-rich environment?
“I’m not fond of the denier word”
Yeah, we’ve noticed your aversion to saying what you mean.
Pro tip:
Say what you mean.
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” A smart person would know the difference between skepticism as a philosophical position and METHODOLOGICAL skepticism which is a behavior.”
An even smarter person would notice that neither of those senses includes the denial of climate science, and that your “shorthand” therefore remains as silly as ever.
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:Nobody answering that description around here. Wouldn’t your spleen be better vented in a more target-rich environment?”
Nobody? Catweazel.
game set match.
thank you for playing.
But lets see.
Answer
1. is c02 a ghg?
2. Are we adding c02 to the atmosphere?
3. Will adding c02 to the atmosphere warm the planet?
4. Will doubling c02 warm the planet between 1.5C and 4.5C
answer.
there are more questions.. but start with those
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” I dunno. I found it funny. I’m generally opposed to making moral judgments.”
Ah, how quickly you shift your weight to the back foot when challenged.
OK, Steven, we get it. You write random shit because the arrangement of the glyphs on your monitor makes you giggle for private reasons. (Couldn’t you get the same jollies offline, without wasting other people’s time? Just putting it out there.)
Better trolls, please.
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“(I repeat my view that you’re the most irritating person on the internet)”
Perhaps once.
Now he has comfortably been usurped by Steven Mosher, who hasn’t posted a single thing to do with science for years, and has degenerated into nothing but plain downright abuse of anyone who is sceptical of his utterly rigid – religious even – idiosyncratic interpretation of the “science”, mainly based on his equally idiosyncratic “homogenisation” of the climate databases and evangelical promotion of the progressively discredited
computer gamesclimate models.Of late he has apparently become completely obsessed with unicorns.
A shame really, once upon a time he was quite a balanced, informative commentator, and always worth taking note of, even if you disagreed with his POV on some particular aspect of the matter under discussion.
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“An even smarter person would notice that neither of those senses includes the denial of climate science, and that your “shorthand” therefore remains as silly as ever.”
“PS your contempt for skeptics (a superset of scientists, FWIW)”
I was addressing this. skeptics ( those who deny climate science) are not a superset of scientists
병신아
Jeez, read fur chisssake, 씨발놈아
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“Nobody? Catweazel.”
OK, I’ll bite.
Forgive me for not taking your word for this. Does Catweazel seriously think there’s no such thing as climate science? If so, please quote him saying that.
“game set match.”
Sigh. No.
Quote first. Then we’ll see.
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“Jeez, read fur chisssake, 씨발놈아”
I can’t read fur. Please stick to English, if you can.
I repeat: no sense of the word “skeptics” includes climate science denial, so your “shorthand” is at best a gibberistic idiolect.
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OK, Steven, we get it. You write random shit because the arrangement of the glyphs on your monitor makes you giggle for private reasons. (Couldn’t you get the same jollies offline, without wasting other people’s time? Just putting it out there.)”
“But then again, I write for my own amusement, and this topic doesn’t bore me yet.”
too funny.
“Couldn’t you get the same jollies offline, without wasting other people’s time?”
the same jollies? how can I get the jolly of juxtaposing offline? makes no sense.
There is a particular unique joy that can only be had online.you provided it. thanks!
Did I waste your time? bill me 2 cents, that’s a fair rate
If you think it’s a waste of time, then just shut up. Simple.
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“I repeat: no sense of the word “skeptics” includes climate science denial, so your “shorthand” is at best a gibberistic idiolect.”
of course it does. In the context of internet debates on climate science people often refer to those who dont believe as “skeptics”, deniers, contrarians.
You really should get out and read.
simple example of this shorthand
WUWT blogroll: “skeptical views”
in context every reader knows what this means.. and rule number 1.
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“how can I get the jolly of juxtaposing offline?”
Easy. (Hint: look up ‘juxtaposition’ in a dictionary.)
“But then again, I write for my own amusement, and this topic doesn’t bore me yet.”
My narcissism, my blog.
Your narcissism, your expense. Two cents please. No personal checks.
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:I can’t read fur. Please stick to English, if you can.”
Since you have trouble with English I figured I would try a different language, 개새끼
Oh, tell catweazel he believes in climate science, cause there are no skeptics ( translation— climate science deniers ) here.
nobody.
too funny..
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“In the context of internet debates on climate science people often refer to those who dont believe as “skeptics”, deniers, contrarians.”
I’d never refer to someone who denied climate science (if I ever met one) as a skeptic.
But then, English is my first language. YMMV.
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Bradley
‘There is a particular unique joy that can only be had online.you provided it. thanks!”
Which word didnt you get? there is a particular joy in juxtaposing online.. how can I get that joy
offline..
The dictionary was no help.
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Is there a catweazel [sic] here? Catweazel?
A troll called Mosher wanted me to let you know you “believe in climate science, cause there are no skeptics ( translation— climate science deniers ) here,” whatever that means.
Don’t ask why. No effing idea what goes on in the brains of a troll.
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“I’d never refer to someone who denied climate science (if I ever met one) as a skeptic.”
you should get out more
‘“I repeat: no sense of the word “skeptics” includes climate science denial, so your “shorthand” is at best a gibberistic idiolect.””
What you meant to say is that YOU dont use the word that way.
But… Many other people do. For example, as I pointed out, WUWT blog roll
You could leave your cozy blog and read other places too. Shit I think in my book we referred to those who deny climate science as “skeptics” as you know.. opposed to “warmista” and “lukewarmers”
context son.
look it up
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Still waiting for the Catweazle quote asserting that climate science isn’t real.
Pending that, I repeat: nobody round here answers that description.
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Class… class…. Shut up!
Thank you
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“:Nobody answering that description around here. Wouldn’t your spleen be better vented in a more target-rich environment?”
Nobody here denies climate science?
1. is c02 a ghg?
2. Are we adding c02 to the atmosphere?
3. Will adding c02 to the atmosphere warm the planet?
4. Will doubling c02 warm the planet between 1.5C and 4.5C
answer.
I’ll wait . Its fun
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You do realize, don’t you, that climate science is not a hypothesis and that “denying climate science” is therefore virtually gibberish?
I say “virtually” because it could mean one thing, and one thing only: denying that there is climate science.
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“Still waiting for the Catweazle quote asserting that climate science isn’t real.
Pending that, I repeat: nobody round here answers that description.”
Hmm “not real?”
Go back and read harder Bradley
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STEVEN MOSHER: “Nobody? Catweazel.”
Really?
Please point out any post of mine that denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas with the ability to absorb photons of certain energy levels.
Or one that denies that as a result of that property it can have some effect on the surface temperature of the planet by delaying the transit of those photons to space.
Or that denies that the climate is an effectively infinitely large open-ended non-linear feedback-driven (where we don’t know all the feedbacks, and even the ones we do know, we are unsure of the signs of some critical ones) chaotic system – hence subject to inter alia extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and bifurcation.
Go on, I challenge you.
If you consider that there is any denial of science in stating that it is my informed opinion based on a lifetime of applying the science of thermodynamics, physical chemistry and the dynamic behaviour of gases up to and including Navier-Stokes, with a fair helping of statistical analysis and latterly moving entirely into computing, including designing software to analyse the behaviour of complex systems, that mankind’s emission of CO2 – only one of an effectively infinite set of influences on the vast system of climate – is capable of significantly changing the Earth’s climate in some way that will prove catastrophic – or even predominantly detrimental – to mankind or the ecosphere in general, then I plead guilty as charged.
However, it’s rewarding to know I’ve got under your skin sufficiently deeply to have caused you to make a complete and utter fool of yourself not just on this blog but apparently on several others too, not that it has been particularly difficult.
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“What you meant to say is that YOU dont use the word that way.
But… Many other people do. For example, as I pointed out, WUWT blog roll”
Are you seriously telling us that when Anthony Watts calls their views “skeptical”, he’s calling the people on his blogroll deniers of climate science?
Too funny.
You can’t make this shit up. Oh, wait, you just did
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1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes but to what degree and don’t the trees love it
4. Not as fast as the data will
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Steven,
I’m not about to answer your tedious battery of ideological litmus tests because even if I said no to every single one, it would NOT constitute denial of climate science.
But you’d have to know what ‘science’ means to get my point, so I’m probably wasting time explaining this.
Night-night
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“Still waiting for the Catweazle quote asserting that climate science isn’t real.”
catweazle666 | August 31, 2016 at 11:03 am |
Jim D: “Well, AGW is generally accepted by everyone.”
You’re making stuff up again Jimbo.
It is nothing of the sort, as a quick reference to any number of poll results will clearly demonstrate.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I accept it too, I simply believe it is way too minuscule to be detected amongst the noise, and there is no credible scientific evidence to the contrary.
Mankind can no more significantly alter the Earth’s climate than significantly alter the time the Sun rises and sets.”
The science is pretty clear on the detectability. And pretty clear on our capacity to alter the the climate.
So, ya, I’d call catweazel a denier.
But he is here
He can answer one question.
1. The best science shows a ECS between 1.5C and 4.5 for doubling C02. it is within our capacity
to dump way more c02 than just double. Further it is within our capacity to dump HFCs which are even more potent than c02. In short, the science holds that it is within our capacity to alter the climate
EVEN IF ECS is low. Catweazel… do you deny this climate science?
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There are more catweazel quotes bradley
See.. I read many places.. try it?
or stay cozy
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“Catweazel… do you deny this climate science?”
“This”? ROFL
What is the sound of one troll backpedalling? Now we know.
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“So, ya, I’d call catweazel a denier.”
No you wouldn’t. You’re not fond of the word “denier.”
You’d much rather obfuscate your utterances with a proprietary word-substitution cipher.
OK really gotta go now. I leave the bridge in the hands of capable billy-goats Catweazle, Badgerbod et al.
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“I’m not about to answer your tedious battery of ideological litmus tests because even if I said no to every single one, it would NOT constitute denial of climate science.”
Ah well yes it would.
But go ahead and answer.
you cant.
Again, you seem to be hung up on definitions..
So let me give you an operational definition.
“denial of climate science”
1. is c02 a ghg?
2. Are we adding c02 to the atmosphere?
3. Will adding c02 to the atmosphere warm the planet?
4. Will doubling c02 warm the planet between 1.5C and 4.5C
That’s a good start. When folks use the term “deny climate science” they generally point to
a denial or refusal to believe in one of those tenets of climate science.
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“No you wouldn’t. You’re not fond of the word “denier.”
i may not be fond of the word, but it seems you cant understand “skeptic”
so, I’ll use what I am not Fond of. I’m not Fond of medicine, but sometimes you are forced to take it.
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“You’d much rather obfuscate your utterances with a proprietary word-substitution cipher.
OK really gotta go now. ”
Word substitution? Err No.. Shorthand is not word substitution.. it is SHORTHAND
it is phrase SHORTENING
is english really your first language
But cool, run along..
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“This”? ROFL
which letter is giving you trouble?
There is more climate science… we will start with This set of statements.
basically the core beliefs.
Now you could just say
“maybe I spoke too quickly when I said Nobody here was a climate science skeptic
or
maybe I should define what I mean by climate science skeptic?
Either way..
I take it Bradley that you cannot answer simple questions.. I listed 4.
Read some science. It’s in English. I hear that language has dictionaries.
too funny.
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Judith Curry has some newer references about misconduct in science and an editorial in Nature saying that we need to take misconduct seriously. Lew and ATTP are you reading this?
http://www.nature.com/news/stop-ignoring-misconduct-1.20498?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160901&spMailingID=52195183&spUserID=MjA1NTM1Nzc4OAS2&spJobID=1000097132&spReportId=MTAwMDA5NzEzMgS2
Denial that there is a problem is I think not the response the public expects from “science communicators.” The part about negative consequences for whistle blowers is deserving of attention I think. Consensus enforcement is not limited to climate science it seems.
Here’s another one Lew should perhaps read:
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/08/29/why-do-scientists-commit-misconduct/
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“I’m not about to answer your tedious battery of ideological litmus tests because even if I said no to every single one, it would NOT constitute denial of climate science.”
Huh?
1. is Co2 a GHG?
That you think this is IDEOLOGY tells me already you are a denier (I hate that word,병신아)
Do you really think this is a litmus test?
Its a frickin question about physics and a central tenet of climate science.
if you sad no, then, we could fairly conclude that you “denied climate science” ie, refused to believe in a basic core piece of climate science.
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You can almost see the spittle on the laptop
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“Are you amenable to having a conversation with me?”
too funny
Some (avoiding the controversial term “skeptic”, or climate science denier, or whatever) want to have
a “debate”
Simple.
resolved: C02 is a GHG
but bradley thinks this question is ideological? wtf?
Its hard to debate the science with people who think simple questions are ideology.
Anyway. debate #1
Bradley you take the pro side: resolved: C02 is a GHG.. present your case..
too funny.
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You can almost see the spittle on the laptop
Beats the substance on your keyboard.. dude, use two hands to type. I know its thrilling to step into ring with me.. but sheesh.. get a grip… no wait.. loosen your grip, your chicken is well choked
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Bradley…. your bench is really thin.. and kinda, creepy
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BADGERBOD
I’ll be back.. I;ll give you an hour to figure out something smart to say.
dont use big words, bradley will be reading.
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I am humbled by your vituperative reasoning
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STEVEN MOSHER: “EVEN IF ECS is low. Catweazel… do you deny this climate science?”
Look up the word “SIGNIFICANTLY in a dictionary, Mosher.
Then show the bit of that definition that conflates it with DETECTABLE.
Read my post harder and point out where I have denied any of the SCIENCE pertaining to atmospheric CO2, as opposed to OPINIONS about the empirical effects and consequences of that atmospheric CO2 on the climate – a different matter altogether, which is by no means settled**, no matter how much it would suit you and your professional activities for it to be.
And stop digging. You’re in a hole.
** Concerning climate sensitivity, this is a post of mine from some time ago:
I believe it is incontrovertible that the whole AGW debate revolves around the increase in temperature caused by a doubling in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide – commonly referred to as climate sensitivity, and that over the past three decades many billions of dollars have been expended researching this extremely important value. A low value indicates that we have little or nothing to fear from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a high value indicates that we may have a serious problem.
I doubt anyone on either side of the debate can disagree that this is a very important issue.
So let us see how much progress has been made over the last couple of decades pinning down this extremely important number.
The IPCC is commonly regarded as the most reputable authority on such matters, so let us see how estimates of the climate sensitivity have changed over the five IPCC Assessment Reports from 1990 to the present day, a period of some two and a half decades.
Here are the ranges of value given by the five IPCC Assessment Reports that have been published to date.
So, despite the expenditure of many billions of dollars on research, estimates of the low and high limits of this essential parameter have not changed in 25 years.
The original 1.5°C to 4.5°C estimate came from the 1979 Charney report.
Click to access charney_report.pdf
So it is in fact 35 years.
Unimpresssive…
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Pixies, you forgot the pixies, and their brass knobs.
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That’s the “best science” Catweazle, so don’t complain. In fact it was so ‘new and improved’ last time around that they didn’t even need to state a “best estimate” for ECS/TCR because everybody ‘knows’ AGW is real and significant now.
It’s been fun watching Mosh on here, I must admit, but he’s not really making much headway, aside from the odd pinprick on the rather firm and generous buttocks of climate scepticism – and annoying Brad. Perhaps he’ll stop enjoying himself so much and up his game.
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Catweazle: Vital point, well expressed. This is scientific progress?
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This seems the key paragraph from Mosher:
How long do we safely have to assess whether this is really what ‘the science holds’? That seems to me to be one of the defining questions among sceptics broadly defined.
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I do find it curious that someone who has a degree in English has such poor communication skills.
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Mosher would benefit from thinking through his comments before hitting the POST button. Use numbered points and keep them short and clear. There are “too many words” Steven.
Also, it is probably pointless to rehash the greenhouse effect for the billionth time. Does it really matter if some doubt it?
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It’s good Saturday night entertainment though. In consecutive comments he says someone’s chicken is choked, then says someone’s bench is thin, and then challenges someone to say something smart.
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“Also, it is probably pointless to rehash the greenhouse effect for the billionth time. Does it really matter if some doubt it?”
I don’t doubt the GHE myself, but Mosher’s tedious harangues can only increase one’s sympathy for the small minority who do.
Wait, what am I saying—”harangues”?!
That can’t be right. This isn’t ideological.
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Wottsywotts aka the Physics Troll demands examples, but when asked to substantiate his own invective he diverts or runs away.
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” but when asked to substantiate his own invective he diverts or runs away.”
Diverticulitis has wrought a terrible toll on the climate terribilist community. This month alone we’ve had >200 cases wheeled in to the ER, writhing in agony. It’s an awful disease. Robs them of everything—their mobility, their social life and even what little dignity they had.
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Steven Mosher,
Far too many people don’t openly appreciate tactical ambiguity. I suppose that’s the point, eh?
Much to his credit, Brad did eventually interpolate me properly, past apology and to the point of calling for a charitable interpretation of my seeming contradictions. I’m not sure it makes up for his legion of other sins (entertainingly delivered though they are), but that bright spot is a rarity I can appreciate.
Speaking of contrarian mind-reading, if I could just get the Original Brandon to understand my amusement when he bashes me for volunteering that I don’t always act in good faith, my online life may be something I can consider meaningful.
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RICHARD DRAKE,
Pretty much. Asking unanswerable questions is right up there with holding CAGWers to impossible standards of proof.
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Odd. My memory is that I came to your blog to substantiate what I had said, and you deleted all my comments.
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Do you really want to discuss paleoblogontology, ATTP?
Or do you think (hint hint) it might be wiser to focus on your present situation? You have the floor. You’re holding the talking-conch.
Choose not to use it, and readers will draw their conclusions.
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Brandon, I enjoyed this…
“Far too many people don’t openly appreciate tactical ambiguity. I suppose that’s the point, eh?”
…on a number of levels. 🙂
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I’d ask how many, but that would be poor form.
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“Paleoblogontology”
Enjoyed that one Brad. Neologism alive and well, a definite sniglet
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Brandon
Not zero (in case you suspected I was being cheeky).
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Now look. There’s been too much debate in this thread.
I’m really starting to miss The Conversation. Now that was a cozy little climate-kafir echo chamber. Nary a contrary voice perturbed the contrarian circle-jerk. Oh, how we used to affirm each other’s denial!
Powerful, denial-affirming stuff.
Them were the days.
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Readers,
Draw your conclusions.
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Brad,
There’s good cheek and bad cheek, innit? Anywhere between positive and negative infinity except zero really nails it down for me. Thanks a ton. 🙂
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Metric?
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Sh!t!
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“There’s good cheek and bad cheek, innit?”
Nietzsche teaches us that there is no good cheek or evil cheek (such categories being mere figments of the slave-mind).
Only left and right.
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Now you’ve gone and got political on me. That only leaves religion. Christ taught there is only cheek and other cheek.
Quote Kant, and we’ll have words.
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Brad Keyes says: 02 Sep 16 at 8:07 am
“Very clearly, to anyone who speaks English, you were saying words to the effect that you’d rather not let the world find out “empirically” whether or not AGW was going to turn out to be catastrophic.”
Catastrophic. is supposed to be sudden! Wouldn’t that be better than this unending phoney Cacophony???
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brandonrgates says: 04 Sep 16 at 8:44 pm
“Now you’ve gone and got political on me. That only leaves religion. Christ taught there is only cheek and other cheek.”
You have four cheeks. Why is there not always ‘the other cheek’?
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Ok, the Brad, Mosher comments were surreal. Who ordered drugs and didn’t invite me to the party?
BrandonRGates “I’m not going to go off-grid and live in a cave while attempting to obtain carbon-neutrality by the unnecessary mechanism of not breathing.”
That wasn’t my suggestion and you know it. I asked you why you don’t do half of what you think is necessary. So by that measure, you must think that to cut CO2 we must get halfway to a non breathing, cave dwelling, off grid existence. That’s still a pretty miserable life. Do you think the science is good enough to persuade people of that necessity?
“it doesn’t solve the problem that the collective “you” don’t want to do it any more than I do,”
Well no, but half an action is better than no action.
“and almost certainly would not.”
You don’t know that I haven’t already done more than you. Certainly time will bring more evidence and more believers, one way or another. By reducing your CO2 now, there will be less reduction needed later from all of us.
You seem to admit that the only difference between us is that you believe the science and I have doubts, but neither of us wants to do anything strenuous about CO2. So what are you trying to argue for? For us to go first?
“nebulously handwave at what “science” isn’t doing as a justification for *choosing* to reject its findings.”
Tough. Not my problem. Watch me not cut my CO2 in defiance of your opinion… oh hang on, make that both of us not cut our CO2 in defiance of your opinion. There are tried and tested way to improve the credibility of uncertain information, almost all of which climate science has ignored. Instead we get mouth frothing from people like Mosher. Nuff said.
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TINYCO2,
Nope, try again.
And yet, this “conversation” got started by you suggesting I do more to reduce my carbon footprint.
Indeed. How *very* convenient for you. These are the kinds of privileged perquisites that membership in The Club brings. However, I must say it *is* rather gentlemanly of you so graciously allowing others the opportunity to go first.
lol. There is more to the world than just black and white, Tiny. There are shades of gray. Why, there are even these things called “colours”.
Been watching that for decades now. That attitude is *exactly* why this “plan” of yours …
<Lets imagine that 50% of people are worried about CO2 and 50% aren’t. Which is the smartest plan – for the 50% to get on with whatever they think is needed (even if it’s their half of what’s needed) and hope the other side will eventually follow suit. Or do nothing but whine until the other half agree?
… smells to me like the bullcrap I think it is.
Again, I’m certainly not going to go live in a cave and practise shallow breathing exercises for the rest of my life. If you actually gave an iota of thought to it, you might well realise that you *really* don’t want the productivity and/or consumption of 50% of the population to dramatically decline.
More handwaving. Blaming the messenger with vague and sweeping assertions does not absolve you from choosing to ignore the message.
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“does not absolve you from choosing to ignore the message.”
But that’s the whole point, I don’t want or need absolution. It’s you that has a problem. Sure, in 30 years time maybe we will all have a problem but I’m prepared to wait and see. Apparently you’re prepared to do that too, since you won’t take step ahead of sceptics.
“And yet, this “conversation” got started by you suggesting I do more to reduce my carbon footprint.”
That’s not inconsistent with me already having a small CO2 footprint.
“If you actually gave an iota of thought to it, you might well realise that you *really* don’t want the productivity and/or consumption of 50% of the population to dramatically decline.”
And if I’d written that would have been proof I was a filthy denier. Do I care if those things happened? Not really. I just don’t think it will happen for all the reasons we’ve both come up with – the evidence is good enough to make people whine on the internet but not good enough to put their beliefs before their comfort. Ergo – CO2 will not fall until we are properly convinced. So what’s the point defending the science? The only explanation is that it makes you feel and appear virtuous all the while being just as flawed as the rest of us. With that level of hypocrisy you should be the chair of a government select committee.
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WILL JANOSCHKA,
In typical usage, yes. Climate typically changes on scales longer than human lifetimes, however, so “sudden” is highly relative in this context.
Relative to climate, economies can change on a dime. Still, a tanking economy can be catastrophic and yet take some time for the full disaster to unfold. I watched the 2008 world financial crisis build like a slow-motion trainwreck. The 1999 dot-com bust was more dramatic, but a gut-wrenching and seemingly bottomless free-fall nonetheless.
I see them as cautionary tales, if not harbingers. I ask how coastal real estate markets might react to the first trickle of property owners trying to unload holdings on buyers who don’t yet see the writing on the wall. That proverbial Dutch kid with his finger in the dike might well have seen the US subprime mortgage meltdown very much the same way I look at sea level rise threatening cities like Miami, Manhattan, London … and obviously Amsterdam. Bubbles. They like to pop.
A globalised economy can, and has, made one country’s stumble all countries’ misfortune, and amplify it. Imagine what a global misstep might bring when the “smart money” belatedly faces the music.
Hey now, I draw the line at spanking. Tall blonde Swedish models excepted. Otherwise, no thanks.
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TINYCO2,
I’d be more inclined to believe that if you weren’t so tirelessly pinning the blame on science for your lack of being convinced. This really is an amusing charade you’re putting on you know. Decades of research and thousands of articles in refereed literature detailing what’s happening, and what the consequences *might* be if CO2 continues to rise unchecked, and you dismiss it all by saying: There are tried and tested way to improve the credibility of uncertain information, almost all of which climate science has ignored. Instead we get mouth frothing from people like Mosher.
… as if Steven did the bulk of that research himself.
And in that eventuality, you will have squandered three decades of time that could have been used to avoid the problem. Now you’ve got to do a crash program, not only to try to slow down what’s happening, but adapt to the unavoided (and previously avoidable) problems.
Brilliant.
I’m not willing to go live in a cave and stop breathing, Tiny.
Nameless people on the Internet can say anything they like about themselves to suit an argument. That’s one of the beauties of the medium.
That’s just the thing. You do not know what other people are already doing.
Appeals to hypocrisy they cannot possibly verify is a main recourse of people who are arguing against a position which is strongly evidenced and backed by well-established theory.
I can’t think of a much clearer sign that you’re holding nuthin’ but vacuous assertions and empty rhetoric.
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“You do not know what other people are already doing.”
err I think I do. Or is the rising CO2 record wrong? Certainly 50% aren’t making much of an impression on the figures. Nearly all of the reductions come from the power industry changing to gas and heavy industry buggering off to China. The household and transport CO2 records have barely budged.
“Nameless people on the Internet can say anything they like about themselves to suit an argument.”
But it doesn’t mean it’s not true. I could tell you about my underlay with a tog rating, how I got my car to get 57.8 mpg, what the fluorescent bulbs from IKEA were like when they first came out, how my furniture was second hand but now worth more than I paid because everyone else has discovered the value of refurbished Ercol, why I haven’t flown in over ten years… etc. You see, I believe in saving energy when it’s reasonable to do so. I don’t need you or anyone else to agree with my ideals in order for me to follow them.
You can bang on about the wonders of climate science all you like but the crowd has wandered away. The evidence is in the level of apathy shown towards you rock solid science. Yawn.
“I can’t think of a much clearer sign that you’re holding nuthin’ but vacuous assertions and empty rhetoric.”
But that’s the wonder of the 21st century. I don’t need to believe you and vice versa. Ain’t it great?
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“Appeals to hypocrisy they cannot possibly verify is a main recourse of people who are arguing against a position which is strongly evidenced and backed by well-established theory.”
I went to that link expecting to see strong evidence and all I happened upon was IPCC waffle about when the next huge CO2 emitting international jolly (er, meeting) would be, plus news of the preparation of yet another blockbuster IPCC report which no doubt will still not be able to tell us how sensitive the climate is to a doubling of CO2, with the usual huge range of 1.5-4.5C, but will also no doubt express extreme certainty about our past, present and future ‘significant’ impact upon the climate. Not impressed.
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Brandon,
please dial down the snarkasm. It gets in the way of the mutual interfaith comprehension we’ve been idly hoping for since the mid 90s.
I know you’ve been on the receiving end of no end of unfriendliness, but taking it out on TinyCO2 serves no end.
Think about it this way: is it more likely to hurt TinyCO2’s credibility or yours when you say things like….
“I can’t think of a much clearer sign that you’re holding nuthin’ but vacuous assertions and empty rhetoric.”
…in a room full of people who not only know TinyCO2, but know TinyCO2 is capable of much more than you give TinyCO2 credit for?
Also, bear in mind (understatement alert) that we’re not exactly accustomed to receiving intelligent, reasonable visitors from “your” “side” of the “debate”—which means you’re inevitably and automatically doomed to be the maleficiary of unflattering preconceptions before you even type a word.
It’s not just, it just is.
A bit of buccal alternation may therefore be necessary if you want to get the optimum experience here. I hope you can manage it, because I’m finding your comments so far, and the responses to them, more edifying than the jejune median fare.
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I’m not lilly white in the snarky department 🙂 and can understand frustration.
Personally I blame religion. It introduced the idea that believing in the right things was more important than doing them.
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Almost off topic but fitting with the concept of new voices getting heard by a wider audience.
The V&A director is rumoured to be quitting and going to cite Brexit as one of his reasons.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/va-director-martin-roth-set-to-resign-because-he-feels-disillusioned-by-brexit-a7226851.html
They’re about to run The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, celebrating the band’s long career and the 50th anniversary of their first single, “Arnold Layne”. You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels.
Calls for rebellion and grass roots uprisings have been a popular meme for some time and are very popular right now. What these lefties and luvvies don’t understand is that we’re in a revolution right now. Brexit was one of the turning points. It was a largely silent group having their say, even though it went in the face of those who told them they shouldn’t want what they wanted. All those firebrands and trouble makers are left nonplussed to discover the people rose up to vote the other way.
All those people like Brandon, telling us we can’t believe what we believe about CAGW… OH YES WE CAN.
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Very off topic – since I knew that the BBC and comedians would be unbearable after Brexit, I haven’t listened to anything topical since. I wonder if I’m alone or was I the only Brexity type still listening to them anyway?
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Brandon, I don’t want you to think that I am piling in but it seems to me that “strong evidence” and “well-established theory” is a very emotive way of talking about the very weak and unimpressive track record of this discipline. However, even if we accept the heavily caveated assertions from the IPCC, then we are in this sort of territory:
So we can afford to wait for more reliable climate data to come in from the very recent data gathering programmes (eg the last IPCC report was the first one where the measurements of ice mass were not outweighed by the uncertainties of the measurements, so they could tell whether it was positive or negative) and the inevitable course of technological change will mean that we are on track to meet emission targets. So no need to sit in a cave and stop breathing.
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Brad,
One does not simply throw the hypocrisy card and not expect to be called for arguing with fallacies and other retaliatory fighting words. However … your space, your rules. I’ll endeavour to dial back a bit.
MiB,
At the risk of being snarkastic again, how would you rate climate science against astrology or homeopathy? Quoting Worstall:
We’ve already put in place the things which mean that A1FI, or RCP 8.5, are not going to happen. We’ve already started the processes which mean that the outcome is going to be better than A1T.
And thus there is no problem.
My head hurts.
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“One does not simply throw the hypocrisy card and not expect to be called for arguing with fallacies”
So what would you call believing in something such that you would seek to persuade others but have no intention of taking a lead on behaving in a way compatible with that belief? Being in denial?
Incidentally, what are you prepared to do for your cause?
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brandonrgates says: 05 Sep 16 at 5:05 pm
“Brad, One does not simply throw the hypocrisy card and not expect to be called for arguing with fallacies and other retaliatory fighting words. However … your space, your rules. I’ll endeavour to dial back a bit.”
Brandon,
You appear to be the most vocal DENIER anywhere!! You clearly ‘deny’ that you are being monumentally scammed by the experts in scamming! The scammers simply have no evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels above 200 ppmv have any effect at all on surface temperature or sea level.
MiB, (” Brandon, I don’t want you to think that I am piling in but it seems to me that “strong evidence” and “well-established theory” is a very emotive way of talking about the very weak and unimpressive track record of this discipline”).
“At the risk of being snarkastic again, how would you rate climate science against astrology or homeopathy?”
No opinion on homopathy; Astrology, that careful record keeping of even the locations of solar system bodies and how they deterministically influence life on Earth? This is what Meteorology is supposed to be, not some psudo-religious nonsense about EMR effects that they have never bothered to try and learn.
BTW The four cheeks was never about spanking, it is about pfarting in their pface!!
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It’s not really relevant but climate science is not much different from astrology, homeopathy etc. It is probably about where physics and chemistry were in 1800. The point is that, even if you accept the conclusions of the IPCC, cerrtain countries (such as the UK) are already well progressed on the way to minimise the impact of their CO2 emissions without incurring any of the pain that the Green movement and alarmists in general want to inflict on us. The coal mines are shut down. Coal power stations are being phased out. Fuel duties are well-above the Stern recommendations. Why does your head hurt? Do you want us to do more? Why?
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man in a barrel, you have to understand – we are the Devil. The Devil tempted me and I did sin!
If sceptics are the problem when it comes to reducing CO2, it can’t be the quality of the science. If sceptics are the problem, it can’t be the uselessness of renewables. If sceptics are the problem, it can’t be warmists’ own lack of desire to cut CO2.
Why is Brandon here? Why do any of the warmists turn up at sceptic blogs? If it was all about cutting CO2, their time would be better spent persuading disinterested groups to cut their CO2 and accept expensive renewables. Read warmist blogs and you’ll find almost nothing about what they’ve done to reduce their own emissions. Far more fun for evangelists to argue with atheists than the disinterested.
We have to be the Devil or else they have to responsible for their own failings.
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JAIME JESSOP,
I might begin by apologizing on behalf of the entire planet (the planet, not the people) for being fiendishly difficult to figure out with lab-bench precision. As for ECS estimates perpetually ranging between 1.5-4.5C (except for AR4’s 2-4.5 C range), I could point out that not all values in that range are considered equally likely, and that the estimated probabilities aren’t normally distributed. It’s worth pointing out that it’s not even the full range of possibilities, just the likely range (with high confidence).
Of course, AR5 didn’t even give us a best estimate this time, which is annoying, but by which I’m impressed.
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WILL JANOSCHKA,
I think you mean no evidence that hasn’t been manipulated to suit. What I’ve never been able to figure out is why those falsifications don’t bring the so-called ‘observations’ into closer agreement with Teh Modulz. I mean, not even Karlized SSTs closed much of the cavernous gap between the CMIP5 ensemble mean and GISTemp over most of the Paws.
I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be laughing, but I do know that I am.
Combined with flatus flaring, that could almost be environmentally responsible.
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MAN IN A BARREL,
I’d say that’s not only relevant, but central. You don’t see Lambert, Beer, Boltzmann, Stefan, Planck and Einstein as improvements over Fourier and Tyndall? Where did it begin to go off the rails? Neighbourhood of Manabe and Wetherald (1961) perhaps?
I feel like I’m forgetting something. Lorenz (1963) is it?
Too many conclusions following from dubious premises. As in Worstall concluding there’s “no problem” because actual emissions are presently tracking below the worst-case published scenario.
It might help if I could do a better job remembering that the UK != the US.
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So the fact that emissions are less than the prescribed level is still a problem?
You need psychiatric help. Don’t tell me that I have a problem. You are quite simply deranged. You quote scientists’ names in a random group without specifying what they bring to the case that you imagine in your own mind. How do they bring “climate science” forward beyond 1800? It is not clear to me. Tell me who has described exactly how a pulse of CO2 acts to increase planetary temperatures, in all the detail that can be used to explain how light is reflected from a mirror in corpuscular form.
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Brandon,
“However … your space, your rules.”
No, let me clarify. It wasn’t a rule (sorry for the ambiguity). It was advice, which you’d have every right to ignore. I hope you don’t, because it’s based on rules I didn’t invent—the cruel, or at least morally indifferent, logic of group psychology.
In short: I’m afraid you need to be nicer to us than we are to you.
Deny the Realpolitik and it’ll be to the detriment of the case you’re making.
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MAN IN A BARREL,
Nope.
Now that’s what I call a tightly qualified question. The short answer is: no single one of them. They developed the main first principles (now the stuff of undergraduate textbooks) …
Stefan-Boltzmann Law
Planck’s Law
Photoelectric effect (Einstein)
Beer-Lambert (and Bouguer in 1729) Law
… by which Manabe and MÖLLER (not Wetherald, my bad, that’s a later paper published in 1967) were able to build their radiative transfer model of the atmosphere in 1961.
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Brad,
I was loving the crystal clarity and brutal candour of your note …
… then you had to go and end it on a turd.
I should qualify: on what smells like a turd to my nose, which does come with some baggage.
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What the hell, Brandon?
I go out of my way to offer you sympathetic, detailed advice, confirmed—for what it’s worth—by my own long and tedious experience of standing in your shoes, mutatis mutandis, on other blogs, and you—
no. Whatever.
Did you innocently misread one of the words in my comment, perhaps? Or have you just experienced a fucking stroke?
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Brad,
I don’t have the benefit of your life’s experiences, I only have mine … and I don’t know you from Adam.
Right or wrong, my experience tells me that when the owner of a blog hostile to my beliefs tells me that not acting a certain way will “be to the detriment of the case [I’m] making” that I probably should not believe it. What I meant by my nose comes with baggage is, as you put it, “because it’s based on rules I didn’t invent—the cruel, or at least morally indifferent, logic of group psychology”.
IOW, I’m making allowances for my own known prejudices … but I wanted to go on record with what they were telling me nonetheless. Think of it as returning candour with candour.
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Brad Keyes says: 06 Sep 16 at 1:28 am
“What the hell, Brandon?I go out of my way to offer you sympathetic, detailed advice, confirmed—for what it’s worth—by my own long and tedious experience of standing in your shoes, mutatis mutandis, on other blogs, and you—no. Whatever.”
“Did you innocently misread one of the words in my comment, perhaps? Or have you just experienced a fucking stroke?”
Pleese be nice! just experienced a ‘sucking ftroke’? Or kitten ‘Shadow’ will ‘eat your face off’!
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No, Brandon.
You repaid frankness with rudeness. Different.
If I wanted to undermine your credibility—leading others to dismiss the merits of your POV out of hand, which would be rather a shame—I’d have prodded you to dial the hostility up to 11 (or at least 5).
But I don’t, so I didn’t.
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PS unless you believe in what Ben calls Consensus Enforcement, or the inferiority of dark-skinned races, or suttee, or some other horrible shit, I’m not the “owner of a blog hostile to your beliefs.”
Not that I own this blog at all; but to the extent that I’m capable of being a spokesman for my cobloggers (pace Raff), I can confidently say we’re not hostile to people who happen to believe the earth’s fluid envelope will behave in such-and-such a way at some point in the future.
We might not share your beliefs, but we don’t dislike you for having them per se.
I have plenty of warmist friends. Some of my closest parents are warmists.
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Will
FYI sucking ftroke, or tension pneumothorax, is a totally different condition (requiring even more urgent intervention). Not to be confused with.
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Brad,
So I guess I know something more about your definitions of those terms. My choices are to do something different next time, do whatever I want, or argue definitions.
Right. Hostile to my *beliefs* is what I said. I typically choose my words carefully, even the rude ones.
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The idea of hostility to *beliefs,* if you chose those words as carefully as you claim, is an absurdity, I’m afraid. A category error.
I chose the charitable interpretation—i.e. that you meant hostility to the *holders* of said beliefs—because that accusation would at least have been meaningful.
Wrong, but meaningful.
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Brad,
Well now, that’s an intriguing concept. I’d be interested for you to walk me through the reasoning behind it.
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Brad Keyes says: 06 Sep 16 at 3:11 am
“Will, FYI sucking ftroke, or tension pneumothorax, is a totally different condition (requiring even more urgent intervention). Not to be confused with.”
Shadow is looking intently at your thorax, It is not pneumo, it is hungry! BEWARE!
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Brandon,
“I could point out that not all values in that range are considered equally likely, and that the estimated probabilities aren’t normally distributed. It’s worth pointing out that it’s not even the full range of possibilities, just the likely range (with high confidence).”
Which does make you wonder why AR5 WG1 did not feel that it was relevant to identify the ‘most likely’ value of climate sensitivity? Could it be perhaps that the normally distributed range of ECS values has less to do with actual science and more to do with probability statistics? (i.e. the IPCC finds it difficult to estimate the rather large structural uncertainty inherent in diagnosing values for climate sensitivity).
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JAIME JESSOP,
No not really, since ECS is one of the most discussed single metrics in climate science, and e.g., a lot of downstream models used in the impacts studies use it as an input parameter. What they said, in footnote 16 at the bottom of page 16 in the SPM is: 16 No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.
As published by the IPCC, the ECS values are NOT normally distributed. And since probability and statistics are used in almost every science I can think of (even political ‘science’), I don’t have a problem with the IPCC using probability distributions to communicate their ECS estimates.
Oh. Well they definitely don’t shy from talking about structural uncertainty:
The simulation of large-scale patterns of precipitation has improved somewhat since the AR4, although models continue to perform less well for precipitation than for surface temperature. […] At regional scales, precipitation is not simulated as well, and the assessment remains difficult owing to observational uncertainties. {9.4.1, 9.6.1, Figure 9.6}
[…]
The simulation of clouds in climate models remains challenging. There is very high confidence that uncertainties in cloud processes explain much of the spread in modelled climate sensitivity. […] Nevertheless, biases in cloud simulation lead to regional errors on cloud radiative effect of several tens of watts per square meter. {9.2.1, 9.4.1, 9.7.2, Figures 9.5, 9.43}
[…]
However, uncertainties in sulphur cycle processes and natural sources and sinks remain and so, for example, the simulated aerosol optical depth over oceans ranges from 0.08 to 0.22 with roughly equal numbers of models over- and under-estimating the satellite-estimated value of 0.12. {9.1.2, 9.4.6, Table 9.1, Figure 9.29}
[…]
The direct approach to model evaluation is to compare model output with observations and analyze the resulting difference. This requires knowledge of the errors and uncertainties in the observations, which have been discussed in Chapters 2 through 6. Where possible, averages over the same time period in both models and observations are compared, although for many quantities the observational record is rather short, or only observationally based estimates of the climatological mean are available. In cases where observations are lacking, we resort to intercomparison of model results to provide at least some quantification of model uncertainty via inter-model spread.
[…]
Owing to uncertainties in the model formulation and the initial state, any individual simulation represents only one of the possible pathways the climate system might follow. To allow some evaluation of these uncertainties, it is necessary to carry out a number of simulations either with several models or by using an ensemble of simulations with a single model, both of which increase computational cost.
[…]
Oceanic uptake of CO2 is highly variable in space and time, and is determined by the interplay between the biogeochemical and physical processes in the ocean. […] Some efforts have been made to include more plankton groups or plankton functional types in the models (Le Quere et al., 2005) with as-yet uncertain implications for Earth system response.
[…]
The incorporation of more physically complete representations of aerosol often improves the simulated climate under historical and present-day conditions, including the mean pattern and interannual variability in continental rainfall (Rotstayn et al., 2010, 2011). However, despite the addition of aerosol–cloud interactions to many AOGCMs and ESMs since the AR4, the representation of aerosol particles and their interaction with clouds and radiative transfer remains an important source of uncertainty (see Sections 7.3.5 and 7.4).
That’s like the first 10 hits out of 140 total for “uncertain” in WGI Chapter 9 Evaluation of Climate Models.
As I said previously, I apologize on behalf of the entire planet that it is fiendishly difficult to figure out to lab-bench precision. Some corners of this rock are so dark they had to resort — their word, resort — to comparing models to models just to get some kind of uncertainty estimate out of the inter-model spread. Eeek.
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So we’re agreed that the issue is complicated, and bearing that in mind, what are you prepared to do about it? How much are you prepared to pay for electricity? How much for petroleum? What percentage of inflation would be a reasonable increase? Turn you vague fears about thermogeddon into a personal cost. What CO2 footprint are you prepared to shoulder in order to service your beliefs? Would you lead in any way at all? As the UK is ahead of the US, is it reasonable for us to wait for them to catch up?
Clinging onto the stop breathing thing is a defence mechanism. The arm waving claim is a deflection. Faffing about with Brad about what or might not be a rule here is time wasting. I know you want to stick to the science because it’s easy to get distracted by it.
But ultimately it doesn’t matter what you think about CO2, it only matters what you do about it. What people are not prepared to do is write a blank cheque. We won’t just say ‘ok, it might be a problem so we give you permission to do anything and everything to mitigate it’. Your sticking point seems to be an unwillingness to do more than sceptics. Not very impressive.
So please set out your stall and tell us what you are prepared to do.
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Brandon,
“I’d be interested for you to walk me through the reasoning behind it.”
What’s the point? You wouldn’t believe a word. Apparently you don’t trust me as far as Raff can throw me.
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The reason AR5 did not give a best estimate for ECS is of course that had they done so it would have been lower than the value given in AR4, as a result of the lower values in papers published between 2007 and 2013. This would have been bad for the political message these activists posing as scientists wanted to present.
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Brandon,
I’m “the owner of a blog that’s hostile to” large slabs of italics, for reasons of readability (though you can choose to believe my intent is more nefarious than that, if you insist). Just use blockquote tags next time.
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Er, yes Brandon, you just illustrated my point. I did not say that the IPCC does not acknowledge large areas of uncertainty – though, having said that, it does rather downplay uncertainty in certain natural forcings. This is why ‘progress’ in AR5 is measured as a failure to pinpoint a best estimate of climate sensitivity from a large range.
I don’t really think you need to apologise on behalf of the entire planet for our failure to understand the complexities of the ocean-atmosphere system, but I do think you need to apologize on behalf of those environments wrecked and wildlife killed by our ‘just in case’ approach to mitigation, plus those lives and livelihoods seriously compromised or destroyed by the very same.
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Will,
I’m more worried about my trachea when you talk like that!
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Paul, ha, spot on. Dr Lew thinks that the scientists watered down the IPCC report because sceptics put pressure on them but in reality they substituted vagueness because the blunt evidence had moved in the sceptic direction.
Climate sensitivity might be well discussed amongst scientists but they’ve carefully made sure the public and politicians haven’t a clue what it is, never mind that it is still unknown.
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Tiny,
I say seepage, you say the blunt evidence had moved in the sceptic direction, let’s call the whole thing off.
As long as we agree: physical reality has been gotten to somehow. By subterranean interests wearing vests.
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I’m not sure I wanty seepage moving in my direction.
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See, I was so disturbed an extraneous y crept in.
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PAUL MATTHEWS,
The lower bound of the “likely” range was 2 C/2xCO2 in AR4. They dropped it back down to 1.5 C/2xCO2 in AR5. Apparently some poseur didn’t get the memo.
[PM: I’m perfectly aware of that, it’s already been said at least once on this thread. The issue under discussion was the mysterious disappearance of the single best estimate figure, which would not have made good headlines for the climate alarmists.]
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JAIME JESSOP,
[sotto voce] Shhh, not so loud. I need this job.
Wow. While I’m at it, how about I apologise for being a member of the species that is the apex predator, and then go feed myself to some starving polar bears as their consolation prize.
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Still no comment on what you will do to ‘save’ the planet. I’m assuming the offer to feed the polar bears was another deflection.
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“We could always let the crap hit the fan and then retroactively attempt to prevent it.”
That was Brandon’s first comment on this thread. I’m beginning to realise it wasn’t a question but a statement of intent.
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“Wow. While I’m at it, how about I apologise for being a member of the species that is the apex predator, and then go feed myself to some starving polar bears as their consolation prize.”
Why? Did you and your taxonomically affiliated buddies eat all the seals?
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PAUL MATTHEWS,
When you find something resembling actual evidence, do please let me know. In the meantime, WGI Section 10.8.2, Constraints on Long-Term Climate Change and the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity might have a few breadcrumbs to follow.
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Tut, tut Brandon. One might almost think you’d no idea what the stuff you link to means if you can’t summarise the key points.
If you’re just going to point to the IPCC to answer your questions, how about pointing to the section that details what BrandonRGates is prepared to do about his own CO2. Peferable a section without enough qualifyers to allow for a range of anything to nothing.
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JAIME JESSOP,
No, I just can’t stand the idea of a world without polar bears. And since I care nothing at all for my own species, why should I care about myself?
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Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Are you having trouble listing all the things you are prepared to do or just having trouble thinking of anything you are prepared to do?
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Brandon,
“No, I just can’t stand the idea of a world without polar bears. And since I care nothing at all for my own species, why should I care about myself?”
I’m not too keen on the idea of living in a world without a variety of apex iconic carnivores/herbivores – many of which are staring down the twin barrels of population decline and extinction – but man-made climate change is not what is threatening their disappearance. In fact, I hear eagles in the States are having a hard time of it – because of climate change . . . . mitigation. So whilst polar-bear loving misanthropic anti-industrialists like yourself are campaigning hard to prevent hypothetical climate change melting all the ice at the top of the world, resulting in inevitable mass famine amongst the resident Ursus Maritimus population, campaigns to save numerous other iconic species which would benefit from even 0.1% of the cash currently poured into climate research and misguided mitigation efforts are left struggling.
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Brandon writes “As I said previously, I apologize on behalf of the entire planet that it is fiendishly difficult to figure out to lab-bench precision.”
And yet he disagrees that climate science is roughly where physics/chemistry were in 1800. Perhaps it might have to do with the fact that we don’t really know very much with any certainty about how the climate systems work? If you look back at where chemistry and physics were in 1800 – oxygen discovered and phlogiston theory abandoned, ideas about specific heat of substances, gravity, optics,Boyle’s Charles’s and Hookes’s law. They knew quite a lot but so much was unknown.
And then, in little more than a century, all those advances in thermodynamics, the periodic table, isolation of more and more elements, atomic theory, radioactivity, Faraday’s work on electricity, Maxwell showing how light, electricity and magnetism were all related, quantum theory, relativity. So, from a position of great uncertainty to lab-bench precision in just about 100 years. Where is climate science on that trajectory?
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MiB,
Still working on shrinking the planet down to the size of a lab bench. Could be a while.
Gravity waves: Found.
Higgs Boson: Found.
Neutrino mass? Nope, still massless.
Magnetic monopoles? Only on paper.
Dark matter? Not found, but has to be there because our observations are correct. No seriously guys, why don’t you believe us? Yes, we accounted for the dark energy. What do you mean how did we measure it? Look, it’s in the math, are you retarded?
Grand Unification? Still tied up in string theory. We’re working on inventing more dimensions, and will get back to you shortly.
Earth shrunk to the size of a beach ball so the engineers can finally wrap their minds around it? Should have happened by now. Definitely. Failing that, a handheld device which measures ECS to six decimal precision and computes a realistic damage estimate. ZOMG, where’s the progress????
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Brad Keyes says: 06 Sep 16 at 9:11 am
“Will, I’m more worried about my trachea when you talk like that!”
My kitten, “shadow”, has only viewed that small bug like picture of the head. She imagines the thorax.
I’m not much into critter thought, but some things stand out. Please take it as the imperative, when she presents you with that, “It is now permissible to pet upon us”, look!
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JAIME JESSOP,
Now see, this is where someone on the outside looking in can be helpful. I never could figure out why clear cutting old growth forest was absolutely necessary for the betterment of the common good, but windmills are the work of the Devil. You’ve just put your finger on it: Spotted owls aren’t the friggin’ national bird!
Jeesh, this whole mess might have been avoided if we’d just taken Ben Franklin’s advice and made the turkey our national bird instead. Of course then we might be eating eagles for dinner on the fourth Thursday of November every year. Ewww.
Besides, do you really think a turkey …
… could pull off that stare and be taken seriously? Gobble gobble gobble! I don’t know, man, maybe the terrorists would laugh themselves to death.
Whew. Sorry about that, my fellow colonials crack me up sometimes. Anyway, bald eagles …
… are US windmill sceptics’ polar bears:
See? No problem. Don’t be fooled by all the hype.
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Curses, I missed a closing bold tag there. [Fixed.]
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Brandon,
I’m bemused. No, I really am. The clear inference from my comment was that ‘eagles’ (there are a number of species resident in the contigious US) are being adversely affected (killed, mainly) by wind turbines.
Your response: a semi-sarcastic diatribe about spotted owls not being the national bird, bald eagles (which are the national bird), Turkeys (which perhaps should have been the national bird) . . . and terrorists. Yeah, right, each to their own as they say.
What grates though is you then insult the unwritten law of scientific evidence by presenting a graph which shows a clear rise in the population of bald eagle pairs from 1963-2000, presumably with the intention of refuting my statement that ‘eagles’ in the US are suffering because of wind turbines. OK, aside from the fact that these are bald eagles (which I didn’t specifically mention), the glaringly obvious inferences from this graph which you fail to point out are as follows:
1. It stops at 2000, when the wind energy ‘revolution’ in the States was only just taking off.
2. The sharp rise in the number of breeding pairs is extremely likely the result of the sharp decrease in persecution of this species.
After 2000, bald eagles and other species of eagles have been killed in increasing numbers by wind turbine installations (not to mention millions of other birds and bats).
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/10/03/biologist-eagle-deaths-at-wind-turbines-widespread-undercounted/
Note that the relatively modest numbers of eagles positively identified as being killed by turbines is very likely a large underestimate because of under-reporting (wind operators are not rushing to report deaths of protected species by their turbines – now that’s a surprise), plus a host of other factors which may mask actual fatalities. And it will only get worse as more and bigger turbines start going up. So, evidence seems to strongly suggest that eagles in the US are indeed “having a hard time of it” because of “climate mitigation”. Thanks for pointing out that one particular species wasn’t having a hard time of it (the opposite in fact) up until 2000, but sadly, that’s completely irrelevant.
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JAIME JESSOP,
Try making the same argument about polar bears and AGW sometime and see what happens. Ten to one you’ll be shown some version of those recovery figures. Heck, you don’t even need make the argument …
… it’s been made into a billboard.
My larger point is, and has been, that I care more about my own species’ welfare than I do … what did you call them, I liked it … iconic species that aren’t us. I care more about biodiversity in general, as that is a gauge by which we measure the health of the biosphere which supports *human* lives. You might say I’m more interested in the welfare of species upon which we more directly depend for food — which I don’t normally think of as eagles and polar bears.
That’s not to say that I have it out for eagles, polar bears or other iconic or otherwise majestic species, just that I have priorities. And basically, if we’re going to be the cause of bald eagles’ extinction, it ain’t gonna be from wind power so far as I can tell. Even if so, well jeez, that sucks, but there are other species which I think are more important for us to protect than bald friggin’ eagles, and those other species are not threatened by windmills. Capice?
There are TONNES of issues with me using those statistics as I did, *that was the point*.
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You don’t seem to have expounded on what you would do to protect all those creatures you love, other than let useless wind turbines chop some of them up. I’m sure that the animal kingdom appreciate your sacrifices but I think that cutting CO2 requires a bit more than turning a blind eye to some dead birds.
It’s not a difficult question unless the answer is embarassing.
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“You might say I’m more interested in the welfare of species upon which we more directly depend for food — which I don’t normally think of as eagles and polar bears.”
Like cows, pigs, lambs, chickens . . . . turkeys? I don’t think they’re endangered. But of course, food production is reliant upon a healthy biosphere and the wildlife which it supports.
“There are TONNES of issues with me using those statistics as I did, *that was the point*”.
You’re talking outside the box in relation to arguments which are happening within the box. Wind turbines kill eagles, bats and other bird species. FACT. Wind turbines kill eagles in sufficient numbers such as to present a threat to viable populations – likely now, even more likely in the future. As far as polar bears are concerned, the relevant time period would be from 1978 when satellite measurements began. Is there demonstrable evidence that populations have declined in concert with the decline of sea-ice extent over that entire period? Is there demonstrable evidence that the majority of this sea-ice decline is anthropogenic in origin? Questions, questions . . . . . .
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“There are TONNES of issues with me using those statistics as I did, *that was the point*.”
Is anyone else thinking that Brandon is a sceptic pretending to be a climate enforcer? He seems to have more in common with our multivariate views, we differ in so many ways, than he does with Raff and ATTP. Why do you stay in their playground?
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JAIME JESSOP,
In areas that *might* experience prolonged drought, sure. But I was thinking more about non-domesticated marine life. Corals are the poster-child example of warmist (and acidifist) hand-wringing, and I believe for good reason: they’re a keystone species. Messing with the temperature and pH of reef habitats seems a double-plus ungood idea to me, especially in addition to the other ways in which human activity is already damaging them.
About 15% of the animal protein humans eat come from fish, about 80% of from the oceans and 20% from inland freshwaters. This is all still rather anecdotal (and thinly sourced) of course, but my thinking is that windmills don’t threaten fish, but they do mitigate the CO2 stressors on the entire marine biosphere … which is on the order of 99% of the space inhabited by all life.
Those are more the terms in which I think about it.
I’m not disputing those facts, or rather the quantified estimates of those facts — I’m challenging the narrowness of their interpretation. Read me closely, and you’ll see that I’m skewering both sides for using the threats against iconic species anecdotally. A less charitable way of putting it is as propaganda designed to provoke an emotional response to support an agenda. I’m arguing that these factoids need to be put into broader perspective and prioritized according to what is most beneficial to *our* species. So far as I know, we’re the only apex predator that is aware of the need to have stewardship over the other species further down the foodchain, upon which we depend for not just sustenance, but thrivability.
Gaining that perspective, even as a collective, can be difficult because of the massive amount of information there is relative to our ability to extract it. As individuals it’s much more difficult because even the “known knowns” are voluminous enough to exceed one person’s ability to learn and process them. You see me struggling with it already by plucking corals out of the water as an example. They’re my proxy for discussing the threats marine scientists the world over are fretting about. I wish I knew what every one of them knew so that I could do my own checkdown of priorities, and be able to more cogently explain in detail what I think the main problems are. It’s frustrating.
I can put this bird/bat windmill issue into broader context. With apologies to Will Janoschka’s kitten called ‘Shadow’ …
… feral cats are the bird killers by a huge margin. We might have a spirited argument about whether they’re an anthropogenic cause of bird mortality or not, if so, they kill more birds than all the other anthro causes combined, 1,000 times more than windmills. Of course, Felis catus probably don’t take too many Haliaeetus, or any species in the raptor families for that matter. I also doubt many eagles run into windows, so it’s entirely plausible that windmills kill more eagles per annum than any other anthropogenic factor at present, which we would of course expect to increase as more windmills are installed in their range. On that note:
MiB quips I might be an AGW sceptic disguised as a climate consensus enforcer, I quip you might be a tree-hugging environmentalist masquerading as a fossil fuel industry shill. 🙂
IUCN 2012 has bald and golden eagles classified as LC (least concern). However, as you point out, under-counting and lax voluntary mortality reporting by wind farm operators are certainly plausible, if not probable.
My argument is that if push comes to shove, I’m going to choose windmills over eagles. They’re magnificent animals and I would be sad to see them extirpated, but I believe there are more important issues at stake than my sense of aesthetics. If that weren’t my position, I’d have gone through the effort of finding bald eagle population growth past the year 2000. Again, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I have other, much higher, priorities.
As I allude above, if I’m to worry about a single order of species, it would be Scleractinia. Corals would be first pick for the canary in my coalmine, not polar bears and birds.
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Brandon,
“MiB quips I might be an AGW sceptic disguised as a climate consensus enforcer, I quip you might be a tree-hugging environmentalist masquerading as a fossil fuel industry shill.”
I think you will find that most, if not all of us here are concerned for the environment and the host of species it supports. In that sense, we are “traditional environmentalists”. But the environmental movement has morphed into Big Green with an almost universal obsession with climate change being the major No.1 global threat to the environment and wildlife everywhere. We simply don’t adhere to that viewpoint and maintain that there is insufficient hard evidence to be able to make that case convincingly. For myself, I’m certainly no tree hugging environmentalist but I do care deeply about Man’s impact upon the environment in terms of exploitation, habitat destruction, hunting etc. I was also unaware that I was giving the impression of being a fossil fuel industry shill! LOL.
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JAIME JESSOP,
Given that the environmental concerns for AGW (or CAGW if you insist) largely rest on projections of future events, hard evidence is impossible to obtain by definition.
The planet doesn’t ‘care’ what you think Big Green’s obsessions are. It doesn’t ‘care’ that I think Big Oil has actively downplayed the *potential* compounding future damages of unabated CO2 emissions much in the same way that Big Windmill almost surely isn’t exactly falling over itself to be the leading provider of high-quality bird mortality data tied directly to its own operations.
The collective ‘we’ do care about that stuff, and to the extent they’re not red herrings thrown into the rhetorical mix and actually matter, if this argument is going to come down with obsessions and following the money, I’d be sure to not overlook what humanity’s biggest addiction is and which industries have most profited by it.
The smiley face at the end of that jibe was meant to indicate that it was a friendly one. This isn’t a value judgement, just an observation: you do use arguments known to have been promoted by fossil fuel industry PR agents to protect their interests. So in that sense, you do sound like an industry *advocate* to my eyes. I don’t mean to single you out on that point either; if I were to single you out for anything thus far it’s that you handle my caustic snark and sarcasm well.
Anyway, I might improve your awareness of those PR sources if you’d like to entertain a discussion of them.
Personally, I think the physics and biology are more relevant (and interesting), and it’s from those sciences which I typically prefer to make my case for transitioning into carbon-neutral sources of energy.
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@Brandon The IUCN, you say?! This particular well-funded and ever-expanding body, long joined at the hip to the UN** (and quite influential in the formulations of Agenda 21), aka the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, likes to change its name from time to time and to spawn organizations, such as the considerably less than reputable WWF.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, “The World Conservation Congress (Members’ Assembly) is IUCN’s highest decision-making body”. And let’s not make the mistake of confusing the IUCN with the ICSU, an organization (currently at least) figure-headed by a Canadian contribution and longtime UNFCCC-nik, geographer and self-proclaimed “climate scientist”, Gordon McBean.
Interestingly, the ICSU (International Council for Science) will be holding a special meeting next month to consider a merger with the International Social Science Council (ISSC). If it goes through, who knows what the new, improved acronym and “mandate” might be! The ICSU, btw, spawned Bob Watson’s baby, the ever-expanding futureearth – dedicated to the “creation of scientific knowledge”.
Your mileage, I suspect, would vary. But … considering the IUCN’s history – and the reports emanating from the (no doubt “historic”) current 10-day gathering of the “World Conservation Congress” in Hawaii [see http://www.iisd.ca/iucn/congress/2016/%5D, which are absolutely rife with word-salads and sound-bites of the utterly inane kind … I see no reason whatsoever that its “research” and/or proclamations are worth more than a passing glance, if that!
**As an aside … Back in 2011 there were 4,000+ NGO’s with varying degrees of “consultative status” – and speaking privilege – to the UN’s stable [See: https://hro001.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/introducing-the-uns-jolly-green-sustainable-hockey-stick/%5D
Today, this little army of UN blessed NGO’s numbers over 6,000. Amazing, eh?!
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Damn! I forgot WP’s longstanding inexplicable conversion of a closing “]” when citing URLs. The two links above should read:
http://www.iisd.ca/iucn/congress/2016/
and
https://hro001.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/introducing-the-uns-jolly-green-sustainable-hockey-stick/
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HILARY OSTROV,
You’re welcome to provide an assessment from a poorly-funded and ever-shrinking body with no ties to any governmental agency with zero history of word-salad ranting that would put eagles higher than “least concern”. Or you could provide, I don’t know, actual evidence that shows compensation from Big Wind to the IUCN specifically to have them hold eagles at the “least concern” level.
Either way, it wouldn’t do much to change my priorities: given the choice between eagles and windmills, I choose windmills. I do however thank you for your concerns on the behalf of our feathered friends — after all having priorities need not excuse utter carelessness with respect to our lowest priorities.
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“The planet doesn’t ‘care’ what you think Big Green’s obsessions are.” Brandon.
No and it doesn’t care whether you believe in climate science or not. If CO2 is a problem, it only cares about your emissions. What are YOU prepared to do? Why do you resent the label of hypocrite so much if you are prepared to behave like one?
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Hugo First isn’t a ‘plan’ I’m willing to accept, Tiny. If need be, forcing everyone to go at the same time is. You’ve known this since my first reply to you. Why do you repeat questions which have already been answered?
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No Brandon, you arm waved about being asked to stop breathing. There’s a lot you can do before that. But from your reply it seems you’re not prepared to even be one step ahead of anyone else. Gee it’s a good job the planet doesn’t need people of strong convictions to save it. Or does it?
“If need be, forcing everyone to go at the same time is.” And how are you going to do that? I’m afraid this little thing we call democracy might get in the way. The people might vote for someone who offers to not force them to cut CO2. Which brings you back to the need to convince people. You can argue till you’re blue in the face that the science is convincing but the numbers of people who refuse to either agree with the science or act on it give lie to your opinion.
Basically you’ve ticked the box marked ‘I’m prepared to let the crap hit the fan and then retroactively attempt to prevent it.’
Welcome to deniersville 🙂
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TinyCO2,
From the sum total of your replies, you have *demonstrated*:
1) That you ask for information that you cannot verify independently.
2) That you are willing to make up stories about what *seems* to be true about others on the basis of limited information.
By all means, please do continue demonstrating your commitment to evidence-based discourse on matters of global policy.
Ask Exxon, they express ideas which are compatible with mine, but have actual ability to set them in motion.
Yes, thank-you for stating the painfully obvious.
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You link to an Exxon PR fluff piece? Are you some kind of oil shill? I’m sorry that democracy is painful to you, but some of us like it. I haven’t demonstrated anything, you have, but it’s not what you intended.
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TinyCO2,
There’s more where that came from, but their internal documents have far more meat. If I didn’t know they were from an oil company, I’d almost swear that I was reading an IPCC report.
That depends. Are you still beating your wife?
Yet again, you presume too much.
Thank-you for knowing my intentions better than I do and continuing to confirm that which you have already demonstrated: That you are willing to make up stories about what *seems* to be true about others on the basis of limited information.
What payment arrangements can be made for this expert level of mind-reading and insightful analysis?
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Yes it’s an Exxon PR piece, just as BP conducted similar fluff campaigns in recent years. It will neither stop them drilling for oil nor us buying their products. The power to change that is not in their hands. And I don’t think either of us think they want such an eventuality.
I can’t read your mind but I can interpret your actions. You seem to refuse to act on CO2 unilaterally (with the other 50% of the population). What other interpretations are there?
“What payment arrangements can be made for this expert level of mind-reading and insightful analysis?”
Snigger. Did you suggest that I’m paid for this? No, that would be silly.
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Simple question – if it was any other moral issue (theft, child abuse, public nose picking), would you continue to do that activity if there were others still doing it? Would you need a law to prevent you doing it? If cutting CO2 is the right thing, then you should be doing it irrespective of what others think. You should be proud of living by your own moral code. I can talk about the advantages of good insulation and the pitfalls for bad, I can brag about buying second hand bargains and discuss refurbishing techniques. Where is your engagement with your cause? Other than a bit of bad mouthing sceptics.
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Tiny,
It’s not really a moral issue, nor a cause.
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So what is it ATTP?
Of course it’s a moral issue. Your side has painted it in those colours from the start. WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN! If, as you say, the science says something must be done about CO2 then acting or not acting is a moral issue.
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Tiny,
I don’t really have a side, however much you might want to try to put me in one.
Science doesn’t tell us anything about what we must do; it simply provides information. In this case, it is telling us that there are risks associated with continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Whether we choose to do something about that, what we choose to do, how fast, etc, are decisions that science can inform, but science cannot tell us what decision we should actually make.
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By your measure then murder is a similar issue. Science merely tells us what happens when someone dies, it doesn’t tell us what we must do about it. Therefore what we do about it is a moral issue.
You have a side ATTP, own it or drop it, don’t pretend you are some kind of middle ground.
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Tiny,
Of course we can use ethical and moral arguments in order to promote some position if we wish. However, this doesn’t mean that the scientific evidence tells us whether or not it is a moral/ethical issue. A scientist can provide information without making a moral argument. How you choose to interpret the significance of that information is up to you. If you decide that you’re going to interpret the significance on the basis of the actions of the people providing the information, that’s your choice. However, it’s not going to be their fault if the decision you then choose to make turns out not to be optimal.
I’m not trying to pretend I’m some kind of middle ground. I’m telling you that you don’t get to decide what “side” I’m supposedly on.
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ATTP:
” It’s not really a moral issue, nor a cause…. I don’t really have a side…”
ROFL. Who are you kidding? If you wanted to play the innocent “who, me? activist?” card of the pure scientist, maybe you should’ve thought about that before admitting, on this very blog, that climate-consensus studies were “strategy, not science” and that you “see nothing wrong with that.”
Of course they are, and of course you don’t.
Because you’re a strategist, not a scientist.
PS How’s that refund to the Scottish taxpayer coming, Professor And Then There’s Pseudoscience? Will that be cash or bank transfer?
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I think that you’re arm waving as Brandon would say.
Since the science doesn’t tell us what we do about stuff then we won’t do it. End off. And apparently you and Brandon feel the same, so we are in fact on the same non existent side.
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No piece of information can tell us what we must do. It can, however, indicate the consequences of various possible decisions that we might make.
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And it appears that none of us case, so that’s that solved.
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And it appears that none of us cares, so that’s that solved.
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Hurrah! Climate wars end.
Mark the time. We’ll all remember where we were at this moment, what we were doing when this happened.
“Where were you at the end of the war, Grandad?”
I was typing smart-ass comments on my computer, Timmy.
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It’s always people who claim to have overcome petty things like politics and ‘ideology’ who are its most obvious victims. The old and ‘new’ environmentalists fight with each other about nuclear power and GM about who is ‘blinded by ideology and corporate propaganda’ and who most owns the ‘science’.
This is what ‘science’ is doing in today’s world, isn’t it. It flatters the most ideologically-blinkered individuals into believing that they are the vessels of uncontaminated objectivity.
I believe Ken believes himself to be sideless. Another victim of the same conceit is that Adam corner bloke from the ‘academic’ cog-sci climate-comms ‘community’, who told an audience that he’s ‘not an activist’, but merely an academic. Later, photos of him at protests emerged. I say ’emerged’, but they were on Twitter, so it was hardly an investigation. The fact that his own understanding of himself was so at odds with what was transparently the case, however is interesting… especially interesting for a cog-sci making the apparent false-consciousness of others the subject of his studies. The blurring of the lines between politics and academia, and activism and ‘studying’ must be what makes this possible.
Perhaps the belief is that its not ‘ideological’ if it’s seemingly grounded in an appeal to objective truth. What’s at issue though, is not assent to or dissent to material facts — as much as our sideless, erm, counterparts, would protest otherwise. The issue is the dearth of reflection on the political character of green claims.
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— “No piece of information can tell us what we must do. It can, however, indicate the consequences of various possible decisions that we might make.”—
It’s like claiming that saying ‘give me all your money or the puppy gets it’ is merely to ‘give information’, rather than to issue an imperative.
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I wish Brad, I wish.
Spot on Ben. LOL. Is there a special club where you go to learn uncontaminated objectivity or does an [insert mystical person of knowledge] come down and say ‘you possess the real truth’?
The problem for the puppy threateners is the puppy has grown up had puppies and died of old age.
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No, it’s not.
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— “No, it’s not” —
Denier!
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ATTP, whatever. It seems that we’re all prepared to let the imaginary puppy die. We won’t save the puppy because we don’t believe it or the person threatening it are real and you because you won’t save the puppy if we won’t save the puppy. Poor fictional puppy.
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Ben for a moment I thought you were going to write OH YES IT IS! And the similarity to a massive pantomime would be complete.
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You might. I’d really rather we didn’t.
I’m more than comfortable doing things even if you won’t. I, however, don’t need to do things just so that you will.
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So what is it that you and Brandon will do to save the puppy? Come on, the puppy will have grown up, had puppies and died of old age at this rate. Be loud and proud about your CO2 credentials.
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ATTP – the point is that quite a lot of people who you might term “deniers”, though you would probably deny that that meant that you thought they were “deniers” who are taking steps to mitigating their carbon footprint – Anthony Watts among them. It seems that it is the enforcers who are reluctant to move unless everyone else moves in lockstep with them.
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TINYCO2,
In an absurd imaginary world where theft, child abuse, public nose picking are the only ways to make a living and have creature comforts, yes, I would do those activities. The interesting question would then be, are those acts immoral in such a world?
You shouldn’t believe this answer, but no I don’t need those laws to not do those things in this, the absurd real world. Yet we do have laws against theft and child abuse. That should tell you something about how the real world works.
I’m not going to go off grid, live in a cave, and hold my breath, Tiny. Not only do I not want to do that, if you *thought* about it, you don’t want me to do that either. Go back to your 50% scenario and tell me what that would plausibly do to global economic growth.
Or don’t, and simply repeat the same argument over and over again. My answers to same are not going to change either.
And I am — again, not that you should believe me.
It’s quite beyond my individual personal control that you insist that I live by yours. This conflict is as old as society, and why one reason why laws, police forces, courts, jails — all ultimately forms of political coercion — are necessary to advance and preserve it. Without that structure, physical violence is the usual result. And even with that structure, physical violence still happens.
Indeed. I recall you making mention of things you’ve done to reduce your emissions. I’d have better reason to both believe and commend you for it if you weren’t making those statements as part of a line of fallacious rhetoric.
Not in giving unverifiable personal testimonies about my carbon footprint.
You have your perquisites, I have mine.
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“I’m not going to go off grid, live in a cave, and hold my breath” you keep bringing those things up but I never asked you to do those things. I gave you examples of CO2 reduction that hurts nobody. I’ve asked and asked what you would do but it seems you have no answer. People can draw their own conclusions from that.
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TINYCO2,
Have you not? Need I remind the court of public opinion here that my position is that I believe it prudent, if not necessary, for all of mankind’s CO2 emissions come to net-zero in quicklike fashion? Have you not said that you are unconvinced of the necessity of doing so?
In your 50% voluntary reduction scenario, the best outcome is for 50% of people to live in caves and hold their breath. And that only gets us to half of what I believe is in *everyone’s* best interests.
Being unwilling to give answers about my private affairs is not the same as having no answer, Tiny. At the same time, I have been quite candid about what I’m *not* willing to do: dwelling in a cave holding my breath.
Yes, the People can Your Honour. The People can draw the conclusion that your prosecution has no verifiable evidence against me on the charge of hypocrisy, and that me exercising silence about my own personal affairs constitutes an admission of guilt in this Court.
The Defence would rest, save for the observation that the Prosecution is apparently running a pre-taped recording on an endless loop.
Hooray for democracy.
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Guilty. Your actions speak louder than words. Fan meet crap, crap meet fan and bye bye puppy.
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And proof of my actions (or lack thereof as the case may be) is where again? Oh right. In words that I, an unknown private citizen, didn’t say over the Internet.
It would be an insult to Banana Republics everywhere to call this Kangaroo Court a show trial. Braaaaavo.
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You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.
Guilty.
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The Prosecution speaks in vaguaries again. No specific charge. No evidence. It’s not even a question of guilt or innocence. It is smaller than Tiny. It is Nothing.
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Hey, guys, the puppy is not imaginary. Climate change really will kill your dog (and your cat, and your bunnies).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/03/climate-craziness-of-the-week-naomi-oreskes-says-climate-change-will-kill-your-pets/
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And who can forget the drowning pets and the crying bunny in the Act on CO2 advert?
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TinyCO2,
Again, with apologies to the kitten called ‘Shadow’, if AGW kills all the feral cats which have run amok, it might be a boon to all the birds being killed by cats …
… at a rate that is 1,000 times what the windmills designed to avert a CO2 catastrophe are doing.
Decisions, decisions.
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You won’t see me arguing with that view, but don’t you know that global warming kills all the nice things and makes all the nasty things thrive? That’s like science and all that.
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Oh no! Domestic moggies are driving wild birds to the brink of extinction! Probably not.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/makeahomeforwildlife/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx
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brandonrgates says: 09 Sep 16 at 7:08 pm
“And proof of my actions (or lack thereof as the case may be) is where again? Oh right. In words that I, an unknown private citizen, didn’t say over the Internet.”
http://climateconsensarian.blogspot.com/
Just like with Ken, No one demonstrated to Brandon which end of the telescope, or microscope, to look into!
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They certainly aren’t having any impact at all on collared doves and wood pigeons. My summers would be a lot more peaceful if these two species were not multiplying exponentially! Anyway, here’s reference to one cat who may not get to kill too many more birds!
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Love it. But then I was always a fan of Animal Magic with Johnny Morris.
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Thanks for the free plug for my humble and neglected blog, Will. I assure you that it ain’t making me famous. If you do happen to find any tangible evidence of my carbon footprint there, do please let everyone know.
I’m quite sure you’ll find errors. Sometimes I even have the decency to correct them as they’re pointed out to me, or I find them myself after the fact.
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TinyCO2,
No, I don’t know that. How would I?
I’d call it “what sells newspapers”.
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It is what sells newspapers but it’s also what sells journal papers and gets research grants.
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Folks gotta eat, Tiny. Even professional scientists.
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So they publish trashy papers that tag ‘global warming’ in because it guarantees they get the cash, yes I can believe that. Alternatively they could do something else if their chosen obscure bit of science doesn’t pay unless they jump on the global warming band wagon. But integrity is soooo hard.
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TINYCO2,
So you charge. As ever, you fail to demonstrate.
Hey, they could have gone into geology and made megabux working for oil companies. Or they could have skipped science altogether and gotten a law degree instead. There are plenty of ways to make as much or more money which avoid the tuition and opportunity costs of an advanced degree and low probability of academic success facing researchers seeking tenure due to their ability to haul down big time grant money.
So many possibilities. Only one objective reality.
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Some say that people stay in institutions because they can’t cope with the real world. Just because you’re smart enough to pass exams doesn’t guarantee you a high paying job. Geology in the field and law require more skills than brains. And in banking? I believe Bernie Madoff tried something similar to a hockey stick graph by splicing new investment money to dividend returns. It went down very well for a while. So maybe there’s a career opportunity.
For those producing rubbish research, there’s probably not some shining career waiting elsewhere, unless they want to brush up on ‘do you want fries with that?’. And most jobs aren’t that highly paid, even for those jobs that need an advanced degree. Education is actually more secure than most as there’s no such thing as tenure outside.
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Some people say that some people say a lot of rubbish. In fact, some people can say whatever some people want some people to say.
Guilt by analogy. Cute.
Some rubbish researcher has probably studied that and published it.
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Brandon,
“Some rubbish researcher has probably studied that and published it.”
They’re called garbologists, Brandon Gates. After spending 5 years on a PhD thesis, surely they’ve earned the proper term.
You’ve already been warned once about disrespectful language. Next time you won’t be. Next time your comment will simply be published in full without reprimand.
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Jaime,
exponentially or fibonaccially?
I know emotions can run high, but we already have enough disadvantages in this Great War to End All Wars without giving our opponents ammunition by exaggerating.
Please leave such heinous hyperbole to The Worst Scientists Since Mengele.
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Brad,
Tut. Let’s not have any more of your British vulgarisms. Here in the States, we call rubbish collectors ‘sanitation workers’. Therefore, those who study rubbish are sanitologists.
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Hey, you don’t need to lecture me about Transatlantic lexical uplift. I laid flowers at Samuel Webster’s tomb. I visited the log cabin he was born in, and did his best to forget once he’d outgrown his squalid origins. It’s one of the most effortlessly moving monuments you’ll ever see to the power of the word.
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PS don’t let Raff Baker catch you be referring to ‘sanitation workers.’ He liable to get all up in your shit about why you identifying people by their Italian heritage. You a racis or sumpin?
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If it was your bowels what moved, I take you meaning, Brad. More fertiliser for the flowers? Worry not, I’m used to this sort of ribbing from you lot.
Speaking of, I recall one thread which had gone full Godwin and some Limey wag asked rhetorically, ‘What *did* people use for hyperbole prior to 1939 anyways?’
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I’m no hyperbologist—being much more interested in the quintessentially British art of understatement—but I believe interbellum exaggerators had to make do with a long-forgotten anecdote about a couple of million Armoricans exercised to death by the Ataturks. But as I said, nobody remembers who or what they’re alluding to.
That’s the problem with using historical analogies, like Bush père’s timeless “He’s a hitler!” They quickly become dated. What kind of pub-trivia tragic even knows what a hitler or a Bush is any more?
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“More fertiliser for the flowers?”
It’s always poo with you, isn’t it, Brandon Gates? You might want to sample the virtues of retention sometime. It can only improve the quality of your, er, output.
Oh, sure, the Freudians will pooh-pooh the idea but I’ve found it works wonders for some patients when conventional writing classes fail.
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Brad,
Exaggerate? Moi?
“Good news for food lovers. The wood pigeon, that handsome and tasty bird, has increased in number more than tenfold since 1979, according to the Big Garden Birdwatch survey, a vast piece of citizen science conducted by the RSPB since it began that year as a television experiment on the BBC’s Blue Peter.
What’s not to celebrate? Well, some ornithologists will insist on seeing the rise of the wood pigeon as a symptom of an ecological problem. For what has favoured the wood pigeon and made it plump is the trend towards growing autumn-sown oilseed rape that began in the 1970s.”
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/charlesclover/article1684112.ece
The noisy fat bastards are everywhere. Blame modern farm practices. Our traditional garden birds are struggling.
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Brad,
I’m more into crap myself. The word, not the thing itself. Tastes better rolling off the tongue than the alternatives, or (I imagine, the real thing).
Bush? Yeah, trying to forget that one. Thanks.
You may have heard we have this … thing … called Trump running for president who wants to keep all the undesirables off our sacred soil. Talks of rounding them up, shipping them out of the country and building a nouveau Maginot Line along our southern border to keep ‘them’ there. He even thinks he can get ‘them’ to pay for it! [I am informed by my housemate who is reading over my shoulder that the ‘politically correct’ term for ‘them’ is ‘brown people’, and I am asked to try and keep up.]
Comparisons were inevitable, and the the reactive accusations of hyperbole were swift and predictably strident. The darnedest thing about proto-fascists is that it’s like one actually has to let them go murder millions of people before anyone will believe it.
What really fries me is that *Mao* holds the record, not Hitler — who’s in *third* place after Stalin.
Quality not quantity I guess. Screwed up place, this planet of ours.
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“I’m more into crap myself.”
Well each to his own, I suppose.
You still haven’t indicated that you’d do anything more to protect the planet than talk err… crap.
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Really? Trump actually used the word undesirables?
That’s chilling stuff. A timely reminder that evil is alive and well. It didn’t come to an end in that Berlin bunker 71 years ago—that’s just a lie we to tell our children to help them sleep.
First Trump came for the undesirables and I said nothing, because I was not an undesirable.
Then Hillary came for the deplorables and I said nothing, because I voted for her.
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“Tastes better rolling off the tongue than the alternatives, or (I imagine, the real thing).”
You’d have to ask our caecotrophic friend about that, next time he bounces this way to drop some rabbinic wisdom on us.
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Of course now that Old Monica has pneumonia, the undesirable vote is up for grabs again.
Will a third, less-genocidal candidate toss his hat in the ring?
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Unless there is a massive change in opinion, a third party candidate would probably just take votes from the other loser. Of course, pneumonia can be fatal. I blame the Russians.
Trump didn’t actually use the word ‘undesirables’, I believe he invoked some common bogeymen of the right: thieves and rapists. (We on the left love thieves and rapists because we’re tolerant, of course. Besides, self love is important.) For the longest time, mass deportation (of upward of 11 million people) was a campaign plank. Then he got some semi-sane campaign management and they walked it back. The Wall is still in the mix so far as I know, and Mexico is still paying for it. Allegedly.
I realize there’s a qualitative difference between sending unwashed masses back to whence they sprang and to concentration camps for ‘special treatment’, but I find it hard to argue that the xenophobia isn’t strong with that one. Could be a ruse. Either way, a candidate who panders to that class of emotions is a step backward I’d rather not take, especially considering the logistics of how to remove non-citizens who are quite well integrated into our society despite not being here legally.
I’m not going to defend Hillary for ‘deplorables’. It’s stupid to insult the other sides’ voters. One is supposed to attack one’s opponent, not who is looking to vote for him.
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“One is supposed to attack one’s opponent”
Or ideally his policies.
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But I did, Tiny, in my very first response to you in this thread: I’m willing to exercise political force to make everyone reduce emissions at the same time. I also said that I’m not willing to go live in a cave and hold my breath. I’ve also said that my answers to this question will not change.
Do you have a reading problem?
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Brad,
Trump has policies? Not possible. Policies wouldn’t fit into his small, but beautiful, hands.
Hyperbole of course.
Yes, ideally, politics would be a dispassionate rational process which sought optimal solutions based on the best available evidence. Instead, it’s a whore’s business full of venal, vainglorious, power-hungry charlatans who manipulate the electorate’s emotions to suit their own agendas.
The alternative is everyone for themselves. The von Mises / Rothbard camp make some interesting arguments along those lines, but I find them uncompelling.
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“I’m willing to exercise political force to make everyone reduce emissions at the same time.”
if everyone agreed today to cut CO2, how much pain would they or you, accept? You’re enough of a believer to play the activist but not enough to be inconvenienced. Gee, wars are won with that kind of determination /sarc. What about those who haven’t really thought about it or those that are against? How much CO2 reduction can be bought with that lack of enthusiasm?
And what if the pesky people vote for the other guy or gal? In this or the next electon. The one that says ‘that climate science is rubbish and the solutions are worse. Lets get some new fossil fuel stations built and pretend we never heard about AGW’?
Will you shrug and carry on as if you believed nothing at all?
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— “I’m willing to exercise political force to make everyone reduce emissions at the same time.” —
Gee, what a hero.
Never let it be said that environmentalists are ideological nut jobs.
That would be unfair to nut jobs.
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Ben I don’t think they realise that near 100% political support has been achieved in European countries like Germany and the UK but despite that action is failing. I turns out that political will isn’t enough. Now I could understand dismissing green initiatives in some lesser economy but if Germany and the UK are failing, then the US won’t do much better. All a bigger network will do is hide the failure for longer. As that video proves, the German convined are becomming the German wiser but poorer. Those who are benefitting from subsidies will be the last to admit that green energy is the ultimate money pit.
So Brad and Raff can comfort themselves that if only they could get support, the CO2 would start to tumble. As if each tonne wasn’t harder than the one before. They foget that they already had the green President. He wasted a lot of money on dead end companies but he hardly spareked a green revolution. But it’s the Senate and the oil companies and the sceptics… and… and… anybody but them.
How many initiatives have to fail before these people grow up?
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It’s intriguing that, if you look at the latest spat being fomented by Brandon Shollenberger, the critique of the Gergis paper made by McIntyre on Climate Audit is greatly weakened, depending on which version of Hadcrut3 you use. I was polite to say that Climate Science is stuck at 1800: this is more like Paracelsus and the alchemists.
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How much force would you be prepared to use, Brandon? Remember how the Vietnam draft went or are you too young?
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Tiny,
Hate to be a Grammar Goerring, but Raff and I “comfort” each other is what you meant, surely. Hey, it was lonely on the farm…
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I can’t speak for others, Tiny. I’m also not in the habit of pulling random numbers out of my arse. My qualitative answer is as much as is feasible to bring CO2 emissions to net-zero as fast as possible. If I thought the social cost of carbon was knowable, then I’d quote you the figure.
It isn’t a matter of inconvenience, it’s a matter of game theory.
My energy prices would go up at the same time, so I am in effect lobbying to raise my own taxes. That really should dispense with your ridiculous hypocrisy argument, but somehow I doubt you’ll stop trying to play it.
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MiB,
I’m old enough to be wondering if you’re old enough to remember how the Iraq war went.
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Point of order Tiny, I did mention upthread that my US-centrism skews my view of European political support. I certainly never promised that reworking the entire energy economy would be easy.
We’re going to run out of fossil fuels eventually. How many ‘failed initiatives’ before you wake up and realize the implications of your pessimism?
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Tiny,
The Germans aren’t known for doing things by half, or even by 97%, are they? I think it’s to do with their scores on standard Milgram Quotient (MQ) tests, which are IIRC among the best in the world.
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You illustrate my point nicely Brandon, you have a US centric view. With its big comfy carbon footprint that could afford to lose a few tonnes and hardly notice the difference, but CAGW doesn’t require a light CO2 diet, it requires near CO2 starvation. Germany’s CO2 is no longer falling. The UK has achieved a lot by closing almost all its high energy industry – but here’s a newsflash, we still use the energy, just in China. They calculate that when imports and exports are accounted for, our CO2 footprint has barely budged from the 1990s. France probably has the most sustainably lowish footprint but that’s because they have masses of hydro and nuclear. We can’t flood massive areas to provide power, not least because it requires specific geology. Nuclear is a no brainer but it’s scary and with terrorism on the up it’s potentially dangerous. But most of all it’s very costly, particularly when ministers are panicked by fears of CAGW into buying the most expensive options. France bought and paid for its nuclear decades ago but is now thinking of REDUCING its stations by half. So that’s their footprint through the roof.
UK petroleum prices are twice that of the US, even without heavy green taxes. But then our places are much closer together. Our garages are half the size as are our streets and parking places, so smaller cars are more logical. Our homes are tiny by comparison, so not only do we need less energy (give or take insulation) but we can have less stuff. That’s how we have a smaller footprint than you. All that and our footprint is still about 5 times what it needs to be (if we include imports). All the windmills, all the solar panels have barely scratched the total. Only swapping coal for gas has had any recent effect but we’ve no more coal CO2 left to effect more painless reduction. Now it really starts to hurt.
Those who haven’t really given CO2 reduction much thought, assume that industry will make the big cuts. Really? Are businesses that inefficient? Making stuff, even at peak efficiency, requires some energy and our most essential items require the most power. Steel, cement, ceramics, food, plastics, etc, etc. And oddly, those industries can’t run off a few dozen li-ion batteries charged last week when the wind was blowing. They can’t turn on and off when the renewables are working. You can’t put off the harvest until next week because that’s when the battery on the electric tractor will be full. The solar powered version won’t work into the evening, never mind the night.
Anyone with any brains is saying that current EU policy on renewables won’t work for electricity production, never mind replacing all the areas that use natural gas and petroleum. Solar and wind are just vanity additions to an already working fossil fuelled grid. Sure, sure geothermal, CCS, tidal, all those new low CO2 options will be THE answer. Rubbish. They’ll be dodgy ideas that cost a lot of money but turn out to be as flawed as the things we’ve already got. Even if they work, they’d be decades in the design, build and roll out. Apart from nuclear (and fusion if they ever get it working), there is no magic bullet. What country is yet in the right frame of mind to start mass building of nuclear?
So, to get your carbon footprint down to 2 tonnes or below, what level of pain are you ready to endure? People are already feeling the sting in Europe. Not theoretical future people, but real ones, right now. What are you brave, socially responsible, not greedy at all Americans prepared to suffer compared to their lazy, stupid, energy guzzling European neighbours?
And you thought that your campaigning efforts were best spent telling us that the science doesn’t need to be improved?
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Why 2 tonnes?
2 tonnes is roughly the personal allowance for every man, woman and child on the planet if we stuck at our current level of emissions. CO2 would still rise but the rate at which they rise would stop increasing. Keen ears will spot China using that trick. They don’t promise to stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, they vaguely promise to stop increasing the amount they emit each year. So just to stick at the situation of 2 or 3 ppm being added to the atmosphere each year we all have 2 tonnes each. As the undeveloped moved above 2 tonnes to have their ‘share’ those above would have to decrease to counter balance. That means you Brandon. To peg or lower CO2 in the atmosphere we would all have to emit less than 2 tonnes and every extra person would make that allowance smaller.
That’s the bottom line.
Another thing to remember is that the lab effect of CO2 is logarithmic. So it actually matters quite a lot how much CO2 we can emit before there would be problems and how big those problems would be. It matters what we do to reduce CO2 and blowing all our cash and good will on things that barely work, is a very poor strategy. Gaia doesn’t award points for your view on CO2. The path to CO2 hell (if such a thing exists) is paved with good intentions.
The argument for reducing fossil fuel use because they are finite is fallacious. Partly because with coal and gas, there is a lot of it, but mainly because it’s like letting go of a rope halfway down a cliff because you know it doesn’t reach the bottom. You should use all the rope and work out what you’re going to do next when you need to.
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Brad Keyes says: 14 Sep 16 at 2:49 am
“The Germans aren’t known for doing things by half, or even by 97%, are they? I think it’s to do with their scores on standard Milgram Quotient (MQ) tests, which are IIRC among the best in the world.”
Da Krouts are a pushover! Da Japs are mean! Da Turks are shudder! Don ever tink bout da Kurds!
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TinyCO2 says:
14 Sep 16 at 10:46 am
“Another thing to remember is that the lab effect of CO2 is logarithmic.”
The lab attenuation of CO2 when it attenuates is logarithmic That is never how this Earth’s atmosphere can possibly operate. That is the biggest part of the scam Please admit that you have been scammed by professionals, not at atmospheric anything, only at professional scamming of folk, banksters, politicians, all. Our only hope is that they scammed themselves even better! Go with the reloading, pitchfork honing, torch re-oiling. Sell these at profit to those you dislike. When da shit hits da fan be elsewhere/when!
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Tiny — “You illustrate my point nicely Brandon, you have a US centric view. With its big comfy carbon footprint that could afford to lose a few tonnes and hardly notice the difference, but CAGW doesn’t require a light CO2 diet, it requires near CO2 starvation.” —
I think you’re part right here, but I don’t think we can rule the US out as a major player in all this. After all, where would supranational ecological bureaucracies be without Apollo Programs and remote sensing projects? We also must not forget Enron, negawatts, and the pioneers of green fluff: mega wealthy individuals like Strong, who used their influence. And also spectacular debacles, such as solar PV, and that billionaire who made his money out of energy drinks is thinking up to sink vast public subsidies into. There is no European Elon Musk.
The obvious differences for the outcomes of US vs European experiments are the US’s long-standing preference (at face value) for free markets in contrast to European dirigisme; the tensions of federal-vs-state domains of competences vs the willingness of European political and business elites to cede sovereignty; and the US’s expansive geography compared to the EU’s relatively high population density.
And of course, the US has maintained its emphasis on industrial production. There are also some interesting observations from Joel Kotkin, who notices that rather than left/right, US politics divides on old/new, brown/green and heavy/tech lines — it being easy for tech billionaire philanthropists to imagine a low carbon world, it being merely a world of programmers and baristas on their view — and the class faultlines of politics follow. Ehrlich’s neomalthusian cronies are all but resident at the Whitehouse, for instance.
I think it’s harder to know which is more ‘advanced’ down the road to green Utopia, the US or EU.
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Will, I’ll remember.
Ben 😀 tee hee.
The green utopia is just an Ikea cupboard with a bycle connected to a charger port. If you pedal hard enough, you can use your latest iJunk and keep warm at the same time. If you stick your packet of Soylent Green and Vegisludge on the seat for the three hour session, you can have your dinner hot. Today’s pic of the day is of billionaires enjoying stuff so you can live vicariously. Power to the People.
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Brandon
I have to say that I find your style of commenting very gnomic, to the extent that I often do not know what point you are trying to make.
So when you said that you would resort to force to get people to reduce CO2 emissions, I asked you a question, based on my limited knowledge of US history, about the last time I was aware that the US government had tried to exercise coercion over its citizens – the Vietnam draft. And I recall, that resulted in riots, and a mass of counter-war demos,plus people using legal means to evade the draft. You replied:
I really do not know what you mean by this. As far as I know, no coercion was applied for either of the Iraq wars. The US military went ahead without needing to conscript additional troops.
So I applied some thought and amd I concluded that perhaps you meant that there was an equivalence between the force you would apply to get people to reduce CO2 emissions and the result of the Iraq war – namely that you would be prepared to bomb the USA into the Stone Age.
Now that seems almost bizarre enough to feature in the fantasies of the deranged high-priests of consensus enforcement – such as Eli Rabett and Michael Tobis and probably ATTP, except that he would clam he was probably being musquoted or misunderstood or something.
Is that what you meant to imply? Was it something else? Please explain.
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brandonrgates: “At the risk of being snarkastic again, how would you rate climate science against astrology or homeopathy?”
In its present form?
As a predictive science, well below of course.
Hell, I’d believe tea leaf readers before I’d believe the current crop of climate ‘scientists”.
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I’m sorry, your creative reading problems are happening again, Tiny. It’s my opinion that the science isn’t rubbish, NOT that there isn’t room for improvement. There’s *always* room for improvement. That’s like, sort of a feature of doing science, getting better by increments.
Gibberish. “But logarithmic” doesn’t say anything about when or how big problems could be any more than anyone can rationally say, ‘the wheels fall off at 2 C above pre-industrial’. We don’t know when the wheels fall off. *That’s my point.*
lol, ok sure. We have an infinite supply of the stuff. No, that’s not what you’re saying of course, what you’re actually saying is not … nonsensical … so much as it’s short-sighted and reckless:
Please for the love of all that is logical and rational, go back and read the last five or six paragraphs you wrote about the very real and pertinent challenges we’re facing when it comes to deploying energy technologies that don’t rely on burning fossil fuels. It might bloody well take 50 years to figure out how to do it, which is about how much oil and gas we have left in proven reserves at current production rates.
What that means is: we might very well be at or near the end of the rope.
Additionally, we use crude oil for more than just fuel … it would be nice to not burn it all.
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MiB,
There was a lot more wrong with the Vietnam War than the conscription issue, IMO. But you’re right, I was too young to really remember it, I was something like six when we evacuated the embassy in Hanoi. So I only really know it from hindsight, coloured by the fact that I spent many hours as a lad playing in a place the local war protesters called ‘Ho Chi Minh Park’. I still call it that, and get strange looks. Kids these days.
Anyway. That the draft wasn’t brought back for the Iraq War doesn’t diminish from what a phenomenal cockup it was; an ideological war based on deeply flawed — if not outright falsified premises — with our Congress asleep at the switch. I don’t spare the Democrats from my wrath on this point. I consider them derelict in their duty, and it rather sucks for me that Hillary is one of the Dem. Senators who signed off on Bush & Co.’s bill authorising the use of force.
Whether or not it was really about the oil is debatable. Securing the oil supply was tucked into the list of reasons for going, and that’s the reason I invoked that war as a response to your query: we’ve already been to war over energy. I think it’s far more arguable that every action in the Middle East on the part of all western powers since the dawn of OPEC (and even before that) has been about securing that strategic resource.
As a beneficiary of the energy obtained, it’s difficult for me to mount a moral argument against it. That doesn’t mean I have to feel good about it, and — times like these — I don’t.
So. The true answer to your question is, yes, I can conceive of a scenario where decarbonizing the global energy economy requires at least some sabre-rattling. I would prefer sanctions and other forms of diplomatic pressure. As Tiny rightfully points out above, the big problems are China and India, but China especially. My assessment is that they both understand the necessity of decarbonizing, but they’re going to negotiate hard for being committed to it so as to get every concession they can. I would if I were them too.
What the whole world knows, and *will* continue to remember is that the US has more *cumulative* emissions than anyone, so we’re the biggest part of the problem:
That’s only through 2005, China may have surpassed Germany by now as they are by far the largest absolute emitter at present. Regardless, it’s just ridiculous how lopsided our consumption has been. We should be leading the world in reductions, and we’re not. Not only do I think that’s quite shameful, I think it’s also against our own best interests in the long run to be doing our level best to delay the inevitable as long as possible.
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MiB,
Erratum: I was something like six when we evacuated the embassy in Hanoi
Durrrrrrrrpppp. Saigon of course. And I was five.
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“Regardless, it’s just ridiculous how lopsided our consumption has been.”
No it isn’t. It reflects freedom and development. China and Russia would match or exceed you if it were not for Communism. Was that a noble gesture of international self sacrifice or a self damaging fad? How do you compare a high population growth with a lower one? Are we at fault if we didn’t design clean, efficient coal powered stations in 1930 or is China at fault for not learning from our mistakes and putting in clean, efficient stations in 1990? Is France better than the UK because it has more land suitable for hydro or was less freaked by nuclear? Is Canada better because it has more wood to burn? Is the UK worse because it started early? Is the US greedy because it favoured big homes and big cars or is it just lucky to have more space than the Brits?
And are Mr and Mrs Bloggs from the UK, Mr and Mrs Doe from the US or Mr and Mrs Chin from China prepared to do worse, so that everyone else can catch up? Heck, you won’t even contemplate doing worse than sceptics. You want ‘us’ to act.
OK, I’ll make it simple for you – the answer’s ‘no’. No to cutting CO2. No to financing new, expensive energy forms. No to the whole warmist band wagon, especially the science. It doesn’t matter how hot it gets, I’ll still vote for the party that says let the good times roll, it’s all a hoax. What are you going to do about it? In your world view there are only two options – get on with it yourself or do nothing but sit there whining. You clearly favour option 2.
I on the other hand think that there are other things that could be done that would make people more amenable to saying ‘yes’. You can disagree with me but that leaves you with options 1 and 2. You decide.
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“Heck, you won’t even contemplate doing worse than sceptics. You want ‘us’ to act.”
I won’t speak to Raff Baker or Brandon Gates’ motives.
But according to one school of believalist thought, it is wrong for the concerned half of the population to act unilaterally because there’s no point saving the world if the denialist half is just going to get a ‘free ride,’ i.e. enjoy the benefits of a saved world with none of the sacrifices.
That would be like punishing the just while rewarding the wicked—and surely it’s better to let the world burn than accept such an unfair deal.
How many space-cult members would sell their houses for the cause if someone told them that, for every seat set aside for them on the UFO, another seat would be reserved to rescue an unbeliever who’d spent his life laughing at their faith and trolling their blogs?
Very few, I suspect. Better to die with the rest of us than allow oneself to be treated like a schmuck.
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Yes Brad, I was thinking along the same lines. In this case the cult members will reserve places for other nationalities, even ones with terrible human rights, so long as a fellow countryman or woman doesn’t benefit. Even ones less well off than themselves. If I believed in god, there would be a special level of hell reserved for such people where they are endlessly frustrated by their most derisive enemies…. perhaps this is it? 😉
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Brad,
Which is silly of course, as bespoke strawmen tend to be.
Even sillier. Your fault lies in entertaining Tiny’s notion that 50% of the population going first ‘saves’ the world.
Not long after 9-11 as the economy was suffering, W. Bush informed us it was our patriotic duty to go shopping. He was roundly mocked for it, but it was based on the sound principle that aggregate demand is good for economies.
You may certainly dispute the notion that a carbon-based economy entails long-term damages which have not been internalized. But let’s not pretend that it’s not part of *most* schools of believalist thought.
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TinyCO2,
My first instinct was to balk at you rebutting my value judgement with a statement of fact, but then I remembered that unfettered market freedom *is* a value.
People are greedy. I don’t think we need to appeal to outcomes to accept that axiom even though outcomes can be — and often are — influenced by the dumb luck of circumstance.
I told you already: drag you kicking and screaming out of the Carbon Age by political force if need be. I’m seriously beginning to wonder about your ability to correctly parse plain English.
I have already decided. You don’t get to limit me to two options of your own manufacture, and I choose my own. See above for the ever unchanging answer.
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http://notrickszone.com/2016/09/15/alarmism-not-working-world-citizens-rank-climate-change-dead-last-as-concern/
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/09/14/how-much-will-americans-pay-to-battle-climate-change-not-much/?
Good luck with that political force.
I understand you perfectly well. I’m trying to get you to think how likely it is you’ll get your own way with current tactics.
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Brad Keys, gets it, Pointman gets it, Wm Briggs gets it. Most all at JoNova site get it, Can anyone please explain just what is the “it” that these sharp folk “get”? PLEASE, please, please.
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Will,
I don’t get it. Can you be more specific?
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Dammit Brad,
All you folk get ‘it’ ‘cept me. Just what the hell is ‘it’, pretty please.
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I had it, but I put it down somewhere and now I can’t find it.
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“I don’t get it. Can you be more specific?’
Try this Brad. What is (…) That you don’t get? Can we sell lotsa (…) for much profit?
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“What is (…) That you don’t get?”
Would that I knew. It’s not that I don’t get it, I just don’t know what it is I get.
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TinyCO2,
Thanks. *We* may need it.
Given your history of framing the argument in terms which support your position, I’m not at all convinced you do understand me at all, much less perfectly. In this particular case, you presume that I don’t think about how likely current ‘tactics’ will work. Witness the history of efforts to impose CO2 mitigation policy, not just in the US but globally, since Dr. Hansen went to Washington in 1988 — it’s been virtually nil. Or go back to my previous comments about the boiling frog.
I’m also a junkie for public opinion polls. One of the most comprehensive recent (2016) studies I know of comes out of Yale. It’s US-centric, and I’m fine with that because I believe the onus is on the US to lead given that we’re the largest absolute emitter in cumulative terms. There’s a lot of material in this report, but these plots tell an interesting story relevant to our current discussion:
Not an overwhelming advantage, but an advantage nonetheless. If you drill into the details (not shown here), conservative Republicans are the only class out of the five categories of voters that tend to favour candidates who oppose AGW mitigation and disfavour candidates who support AGW mitigation.
Even so, and this is old news, when asked to rank the importance of issues when it comes to choosing between presidential candidates …
… Global warming ranks near the bottom, below even generally protecting the environment. “It’s the economy, stupid”, as Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville inserted into our lexicon oh so many years ago to capitalize on foundering economic growth under the Elder Bush’s administration. Number two is terrorism because that’s a visceral, tangible, clear and *present* threat despite the fact that Americans are orders of magnitude more likely to die driving to work every day.
You blame ‘tactics’, I blame basic human psychology. That said, the FUD tactics of anti-mitigation lobbyists and activists over the years are certainly a factor.
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As I wrote – good luck with that.
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> I can’t ban you.
Not that Mr. Pile does not try from time to time to exert some power upon this blog’s contributors:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/another-97/#comment-86848
Speaking of whom, SCEPTICUS doesn’t appear in your About page, and yet seems to be a regular contributor. One of your editors might need to clarify that.
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Scepticus is used usually when a guest author writes a post – in which case a byline appears in the post itself – or is sometimes used when there are several authors, a joint effort.
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> Scepticus is used usually when a guest author writes a post – in which case a byline appears in the post itself – or is sometimes used when there are several authors, a joint effort.
I suspected something like that, IanW. Your “sometimes” conflicts with the information I had. I do hope it’s an understatement, for single-authored posts under that nom de plume could very well be considered sock puppetry.
In any case, you should clarify that matter About page. Other readers may not have the same information I have.
If you could also add that you also have occasional contributors, i.e. Mr. Pile has access to your admin board, that would be great.
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— single-authored posts under that nom de plume could very well be considered sock puppetry. —
Damn, we’ve been rumbled. Who gave Putin admin rights?… Erm, I mean, we thank Willard for his concerns. Between yawns.
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Nothing whatsoever to contribute as usual Willard, you little waste of bandwidth?
Has Judith kicked you off her blog for trolling?
If not, it’s a miracle!
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Willard, the explanation for the use of Scepticus is about as uninteresting as it’s possible to be. I can’t really add more than that. I’m sorry if you find it interesting.
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Willard’s request (for clarification on the meaning of Scepticus) is reasonable—I was confused by it initially too—though I don’t know the most elegant way to supply said clarification.
Willard, the only reason we use it (for non-guest posts) is that WP doesn’t allow anonymous posts. If we could, we’d put no name at all on the Scepticus posts, much like a non-bylined editorial in print media. Scepticus posts typically reflect a group effort where it would be unfair for a single contributor to claim credit. (I’m sure the rationale for non-bylined pieces in a newspaper is somewhat different, but I don’t know what it happens to be.) I don’t really see the potential for nefariousness there, though maybe you could elaborate on your concern.
Also, several of us have access to the Admin functions of the blog—what’s the significance of that?
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