Innovative communication strategies and tactics are equally available to science and non-science. Indeed one may assume Dr Suter himself is a communication 'media relations' tactic for the issue of climate change, through the simple act of writing about climate change.

The idea that there are four layers of engagement for individuals is a simplistic one. It may be worth considering that the climate change issue itself is the problem, not the communication of the issue.

Interesting article, at least it's a change from the usual hysterics and exaggeration that we've all become hardened to by warmists.

I do take issue though with the current politically inspired fashionable "mea cupla" stance though, that suddenly "Your average scientist is not a good PR person because he wants to get on with his science.”

What rubbish, your average successful scientist is very good at audio/visual presentation skills and media management, that's how the good ones get grants and funding, its how they get ahead.

Now after all the articles from scientists, all the media interviews and exposure we find that a couple of skeptics here and there have brought all that undone, with the huge Climate Change funding available, with almost total media sympathy?

Why is that?

I'd suggest, the author is correct, wrong message - the ramped up disaster scenarios and "scare the children" messages, turn people off and turn them to skepticism, rightly so too.

As one warmist suggested earlier this week, the skeptics have a good purpose, they have at least limited the level of hysteria and exaggeration by scientists and the sympathetic media to at least a reasonable level, by questioning the outrageous statement e.g. mass extinction, 100m sea level rises etc

The current approach by CSIRO is reflective of their realisation that cheerleading for a particular solution rather than being "scientific - just the facts ma'am) that they have been in the Environmentalist camp.

Their defense appeared to have been, well regardless of proof of CO2 being guilty, it's a good idea to pollute less - fine, be an activist, but not from the CSIRO scientific pedestal instead of the usual soapbox.

Talking of messages, calling anyone who disagrees names, like "DENIERS!" is not going to make you friends, but it is fun to be in a group with all like thinkers calling the other mob names isn't it? Clearly you don't want to convince anyone, rather to batter them out of the way - that's going to be more difficult when the whole country is starting to become skeptical, isn't it?

Well done! I think that any contribution to the debate about science communication is welcome. Amicus (comment 2) is wrong in suggesting that someone who can work powerpoint and survive an interview is good at PR - there is a lot more to effective communications than that - and frankly your suggestion is akin to 'I fly in airplanes every week therefore I can pilot a 737' or 'I read newspapers therefore I understand how the media works'.

To my understanding, all national papers in Australia have ditched their full time science reporter(s) and now rely on syndicated stories from wire services.

I think there are some outstanding examples of science communication in Australia including Questacon and its travelling show (which I think is sponsored by Shell) but these communications tactics have a very small public or target audience reach and very little repeatability. Science communications in schools is also heavily dependent on contributions from the private sector through sponsorships and financing of books/films etc.

While entire TV channels are devoted to science communication through Pay TV, again I think that their audience reach is small and in the main, the people who watch are already involved or interested in science. A solution I think will have to involve mainstream media and government funding in order to reach the bulk of the Australian population who are disengaged and not inquisitive. A worthwhile article and a useful contribution to the debate.

I agree with the first post. The problem here is not in communicating science, but in the past exaggeration and scary stuff put out by some scientists, scientific academies, science writers and journalists, and politicians, about human-induced global warming (now rebadged as 'climate change'). In my opinion this process, now twenty years old, has undermined the high status that 'science' used to have. It is not the only cause. Another is the constant repetition on television of 'breakthroughs' in this or that aspect of medical science. A third is the tendency of some scientists (Sir Mark Oliphant was an early example) to speak as though a science background enables the possessor to pontificate on the state of society and its future. I would agree that in many cases scientists do not understand the ways in which news media need and use talking heads. They may see a breakthrough grab on TV as more power to their elbow, but very few of these apparent discoveries seem to result in anything, so they increase scepticism within the community.

In the case of AGW, to use that example, there is an additional problem. Scary stories are news, but stories that say that things are much as they always are rarely news. The current CSIRO/BoM statement is not news in any real sense, since there is no new information, but it says that things are really bad, which is news.

I am afraid that science is going to be out of favour until the AGW bubble bursts. And when will that be, you ask.

I would think that science is now an inverted V.

From a relatively few fields of science, science has now dramatically expanded, and I have seen a list of over 500 fields of science, (and that list is also being continuously added to).

Each field of science would require a lifetime to study and fully appreciate.

However, if someone understands the basics of chemistry, physics and biology, then they should be able to gain at least some understanding of what is occurring in many of the specialised fields of science.

The language of science needs to be taught from a very early age.

Unfortunately, in many schools and universities, science is now considered to be “too male”, and I have heard from someone who teachers the teachers in a teacher’s training college, that most of the teachers had a knowledge of science that would not allow them to pass a grade 10 science exam.

To get science as a part of everyday language, the education system has to have a major transformation (or metamorphisis).

Too late now for communication. Science has been dealt a serious and probably irrevocable blow by the IPCC and many-made climate tricksters. It will be a long time before science will recover; this is a sad thing for both the discipline and the many good scientists whom the warmist goons silenced.

Nigel I think you are oversimplifying what I said so as to make it sound absurd and I wonder at your motives .. in the game are you?

"your suggestion is akin to 'I fly in airplanes every week therefore I can pilot a 737' or 'I read newspapers therefore I understand how the media works'.

Rather, I fly on airplanes, so I know you sit in a seat, I know how the safety briefing goes, I know where the heads are and I know some basic information and could probably tell someone who had never seen a plane some idea (That's me, I don't know if you could though)

To suggest that scientists who willingly deal with the press, write papers and books on climate and give press conferences as well as write blogs are mere communication innocents is fantasy.

Your attempt to trivialize what I said is reflective of our scientists communications, and the way they resort to distorting what others say when it suits them.

Thanks for the fine example of "spin" there ..

I agree with Amicus and others in decrying the tendency of scientists to complain that they are not good at PR.
As someone who has been harranged by scientists about climate change - and forcibly reminded of my occasional contacts with used car salesmen - I have no time at all for this excuse.
The reason they are losing debate now is because they wildly over exaggerated the danger and their powers of forecasting and, finally, a substantial part of their audience have realised this.
Forced onto the back foot through their own sillyness, instead of sheepisly admitting it (or perhaps just shutting up) the hardliners have the extraordinary cheek to pretend to be ivory tower dwellers who really don't know about PR. Global warming hardliners truely know no shame of any kind.

"The current CSIRO/BoM statement is not news in any real sense, since there is no new information, but it says that things are really bad, which is news."

Doesn't that just beg the question against your thesis? Surely the most obvious explanation for those statements from CSIRO and BoM, despite the lack of any significant new developments, is precisely because of a perception that the science was being unfairly maligned by The Australian, the IPA and CIS which have spearheaded the attack in Oz? Why else issue of release that does little but vindicate the science within an Australian context? Clearly they feel whatever implausible conspiracy theories are held here, that press about ClimateGate, Phil Jones, and Monckton has contained a poor signal to noise ratio that has managing to affect voters?

for BBoy:

On the evidence, the CSIRO/BoM statement is not an example of good science, but of advocacy of a point of view (I almost put that in when I wrote before).

The models on which CSIRO relies are not evidence of anything (models are exercises, and don't present facts), and there is growing doubt about the validity of the data that are used to establish 'average global temperature', not the raw data collected by the BoM, but the 'adjusted' versions of those data that are reported by GISS and HadleyCRU.

I do not think that either the CSIRO or the Bureau ought to be putting forward, authoritatively, statements that lack scientific validity. That is the problem. What we are observing here has been well described as 'noble cause corruption'.

>>Surely the most obvious explanation for those statements from CSIRO and BoM, despite the lack of any significant new developments, is precisely because of a perception that the science was being unfairly maligned by The Australian, the IPA and CIS which have spearheaded the attack in Oz?<<

BBoy,

It could be precisely for another reason too. That is, the scientist bureaucrats could have got a signal from somewhere that it is in their best career interests to push a particular line. While it's not Public Service policy to do so, it's not exactly unknown for the PS to get politicised on issues that are of electoral importance to the Government of the day. As they say, the first casualty in war is the truth.

Whilst that's possible, it's so implausible that you'd have to be pretty deluded to think it. Fact is, it's far easier to smear some remote UN bureaucrat or some gaggle of foreign scientists as part of the IPPC than it is to smear the CSIRO and BoM which are some of the most trusted public institutions in Australia. But when CSIRO and BoM agree with the science, and all other major elite scientific institutions, universities around the world also concur, it seems obvious that the perception of controversy outweighs the reality of controversy. This is effective like treating the noise from some loonies about intelligent design, or young earth creationism as equivilent to real disputation about evolution.

If the best account of this conspiracy theory you can manage is some vague unspecified, uncited, political pressure, or the allure of grant funding, I'm afraid your rhetoric will collapse under its own weight of nonsense.

>>Whilst that's possible, it's so implausible that you'd have to be pretty deluded to think it.<<

Have you lived in the real world? When you do, then explain to me how it's implausible. It's actually very plausible. And the more you go on with your Alice-in-Wonderland stuff, the easier you make it for them to continue to get away with it.

These days, it's more a case of can you spot a trusted public institution at all. Anywhere. Everyone's got their limits, including bureaucrats. Put enough pressure on and they will tow the line and do what is required.

Yes, I live in the real world. I live in the world where what counts as science is the work conducted by dedicated specialists in highly-regarded peer reviewed journals, such as Nature. You know, as opposed to the world where what counts is what is said by conservative political pundits and industry astroturfs, who hide behind misleading and disingenuous attacks, general concern trolling and teach the controversy fallacies. I live in the world where if we must, as laypeople, draw conclusions based on appeal to authority, that such authority ought to be connected to the real authorities on science, such as scientific institutions. I live in the world where the almost 100% error rate in regard to denialists claims, most assurdedly does counts against their credibility as a group. I live in a world where science is a self-correcting process, and where errors and problems with the IPCC process are exactly part of the process.

for BBoy:

There are so many adjectives, adverbs and highly-coloured nouns and verb in your last post that it is hard to know quite what you want to say. But what I could pick up worries me. Nature is peer-reviewed, but it serves as a rapid-news journal, where people can get stuff published quickly, without all the usual apparatus, if it is thought to be newsworthy. As the Climategate emails make very clear, those connected to the IPCC were determined to keep conflicting views out of the general peer-reviewed journals, even if, as Phil Jones wrote, they had to redefine what peer review meant. What is more, they seemed to be able to act as referees of papers at odds with their own, which is terrible practice on the part of the editorial staff of the journals.

If you want to engage in discussions about climate, why do you simply appeal to authority? What work have you done yourself to determine what is really the case? Science is not about authority or consensus: it is about testing hypotheses against observations. Against that standard, a lot of what passes as 'climate science' is not good science at all.

Your final point would be stronger had not those supporting the IPCC gone on at length about 2500 scientists involved, rigorous processes and exemplary sourcing. In fact, none of that is true, as the recent fusses show. The IPCC reports are as much political as they are scientific.

Well, Bboy, I will quote what Don Aitken said that what the CSIRO and BoM came out with is not news at all. If not news, then what is it in aid of? It's obviously a booster for a particular view that both those organisations want to promulgate. Is what they said a substantial scientific statement? Hardly. It's more of a political statement, is it not? So, why would a public service institution make a political statement?

My issue has got nothing to do with having a crack at scientific specialists BTW, but wondering why the statement had to be made at all. You might, however, be right. I'd be happy if you were.

Don Aitkin -
You are not a scientist either, so why to you criticise BBoy:
"If you want to engage in discussions about climate, why do you simply appeal to authority? What work have you done yourself to determine what is really the case? Science is not about authority or consensus"?
You have not done any of your own work, and you quote from a very biased selection of people on climate science.

You say "they seemed to be able to act as referees of papers at odds with their own, which is terrible practice on the part of the editorial staff of the journals."
It is normal, if annoying, in science peer review, for papers to be sent to those who disagree. That is the point. If that isn't done (and it's not always done) you can get little bandwagons of people who review each others' papers even though they're demonstrably wrong. This is the very thing people like you accuse climate scientists of doing.

As I have noted in our several private exchanges, you focus on picking at the supply of unresolved questions in climate science, which climate scientists to not deny, and claim the current judgement of climate scientists to be unjustified.

In making this claim you confuse the scientific debate with the policy debate, as I have pointed out to you. The scientific debate is not over. Yet we require, for policy purposes, an assessment of the situation as can best be judged with incomplete knowledge. This the IPCC has supplied: we are "very likely" to be causing global warming. This is not a scientific conclusion, it is a professional judgement, and is openly presented as such.

Yes, it is a political document. The IPCC is an *Intergovenmental* panel, and some of the governments have large vested interests in global warming being hidden. Governments like the Bush's US, Saudi Arabia, Canada and good ole Oz. The 4th report was watered down by those governments.

BBoy - although I haven't gone over the CSIRO/BoM report carefully my impression is that it has added nothing to the debate in all senses. Obviously temperatures have gone up over the past 50 years. Climate has changed. The real question has always been why has it changed - has human activity had any influence? The report does not seem to present any evidence on that point, merely pointing to various changes with the implication that human activity is in some way responsible. In other words, it does not counter any of the mounting criticisms made of the basic climate change thesis but, for some reason, the scientists involved seem to think that it does. We should ask why..

for Geoff Davies:

What a lofty tone! One does not need to do scientific work oneself in order to be able to critically assess the work of those who have done so. All scientific papers are blends of argument, inference and data, and those who judge proposals for funding, for example, have to use their intellectual acumen to see what this or that proposal is about. This happens all round the world, all the time.

As I have suggested elsewhere (and probably also on OLO) what is at the heart of this issue is the capacity of those who uphold the AGW orthodoxy to show how the AGW argument must explain whatever current warming has occurred, when there is abundant evidence that the world has undergone periods of warming and cooling in the past, at times when human beings can hardly have been responsible. How much of the present warming, cooling or stasis is due to natural forces (ie those we can point to but can't wholly explain), and how much is due to the burning of fossil fuels? GCM models do not and cannot do this, because they involve far too many assumptions. These are central questions, and they are simply avoided.

And your claim that papers are routinely sent to those who disagree is breathtaking! Jones et al made it quite clear that they were prepared to denounce editors and editorial boards who dared either to send their papers to critics, or to not let them (Jones et al) rule on the worth of their critics. You will have to better than this. If what happened at CRU, and by inference, what happened in the design of the IPCC reports was not conspiratorial, then, in terms of good science, it was simply scandalous.

Someone please correct me if I've got it wrong:

* the CSIRO/BOM says that temperatures have gone up across Australia by an average of 0.7 degrees C in fifty years. In some parts, they have risen by as much as 2 degrees C, which suggests that in other parts, they have risen by something less than 0.7 degrees C;

* sea-levels have risen by 5 cm (2 inches) in the south-east, and by 10 cm (4 inches) in the north and west, in the last fifty years, half due to glacier/Antarctic/Greenland meltwater, half due to ocean-water thermal expansion.

Not exactly catastrophic.

Meanwhile, clear-felling in Queensland continues, as does felling of Indonesian, Brazilian etc. rain-forests, removing some of the means to take CO2 out of the atmosphere.

I'll be handing election material out for the Greens on Saturday here in Adelaide, but I'm more concerned about air pollution, water pollution and misuse, environmental degradation generally, the slowness/non-existence of any infrastructural programs to mass-plant plantations of non-firewood trees, especially in the north now that there is more rainfall up there, and to develop renewable alternative energy sources, including hot rocks and algal farms. So there is a hell of a lot that can be done instead of getting one's rocks off by proclaiming imminent doom and retreating to a high-ground cave, just yet. So I guess I'm a Green Sceptic :)

Oh yes, and Professor Jones has suggested that world temperatures have not risen for fifteen years. Yes ? No ?

By the way (and perhaps I've got this wrong too) the annual amount of melt-water from Greenland is about as much as the water coming down from Queensland to its rightful place in South Australia at the moment. Are there any data on how much Greenland melt-water would have run-off in a 'normal' year - because presumably there would always be some, otherwise Greenland would keep growing out to Iceland.

Did anyone watch Q&A this week?

Of those that did, do you have any comments about Waleed Aly’s explanation for ‘climate change’ pseudo-scepticism in terms of neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism?

Indeed, the debate “becomes an ideological contest for people who are of that persuasion, because the minute they accept the reality of (human induced) climate change, it destroys the idea that the market is our guiding philosophy ... so they are forced, essentially, to start from a position that says, well, we need to deny this ...”

Waleed Aly (Quarterly Essay 37: On the Future of Conservatism: Where the Right Went Wrong) suggests that neoconservative foreign policies and neoliberal economics have been discredited, and are split on climate change.

The “debate” is not about the science, despite rambunctious claims to the contrary. Rather, it is a bun-fight about political ideology - demonstrated at Copenhagen and being witnessed here between Tony Abbott's 'old school', Rudd's centrists, the Green hardliners, and Senator Fielding's faith.

In other words - no matter how well the science is communicated, there will always be intransigence to accept it.

Why do we still have articles like this, attempting to back long discredited views on this topic, and asserting that Kyoto was anything but a flawed, baseless protocol from its very inception?

While superficially the contest is about PR, the underlying basis, the corruption of scientists and the media, to sell the baseless AGW scam, is executed by the experts in corruption, the UN.

Corruption, as practised by that body, is a highly developed art.

The media has been almost totally corrupted. Until recently, the deniers of science, the IPCC, and Gore, were winning. The realists could not gain traction.

One public example of UN activity was the hot air fest at Bali in 2007. All realists were excluded, apart from Lord Monckton, who gained access with great difficulty, and 12,500 people were wined dined and lied to by the UN, to gain their unwitting support of AGW, the greatest attempted fraud in history.

Ban Ki-moon’s speech was based on predictions made in 2003, by the IPCC, already proven wrong in the real world.

The corruptees were given prepackaged press releases, full of nonsense which they could spread with no effort.

They did not know that they had been corrupted, and it has probably only recently dawned on the Climategate scientists, like Phil Jones.

Even the mendacious IPCC does not assert that global warming is the result of human emissions. Its pathetic, weasel, assertion is that it is “very likely”.

The truth is that there is no scientific backing for assertion of AGW, despite billions spent on research, in futile attempts to prove it.

Don Aitkin,

First you admit that you do not do scientific work yourself, then say "Nature is peer-reviewed, but....without all the usual apparatus". Have you any experience publishing in this journal or anywhere else? Please explain to us your understanding of 'usual apparatus' you speak of?

Second, Geoff Davies is correct in stating that "It is normal, if annoying, in science peer review, for papers to be sent to those who disagree". This is my experience with the review process. To state one example and suggest that this is common thought the peer-review process is inaccurate.

Good post Leon Lane.

Don -

Well, if my 40+ years' experience in world-class science makes me "lofty" then so be it.

*You* criticised BBoy for getting involved when he's not a scientist. It was you, not me, that started that line.

Don, you have little understanding of how Nature (the journal) works. Its papers are fully peer reviewed, just with a short time limit. Yes, they tend to choose newsworthy topics, which they can do because they get about 20 times as many papers as they publish. Their system does not compromise quality. You reveal your prejudice against science again.

Stezza backs my own experience that my papers are often sent to "rivals". My rivals do not necessarily have the last word (that's the editor's job), but I have to acknowledge and address their concerns. I have got 100+ papers through the scientific review process, and I think you have not had any, so I think you don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I know you were Chair of ARC. I agree people from outside a field may judge its work, but they had better be careful they really understand the depth of the issues and arguments.

There is more to the conclusion that humans are causing global warming than the big computer models. For example, they are confirming what was projected from back-of-the-envelope calculations decades ago. You (and most of the "sceptics") assume that the scientists haven't thought of the questions you raise. You claim those questions haven't been considered, but evidently you are not looking in the right places.

Regarding the CRU business, you evidently simply disbelieve information that doesn't fit your view. As I reported in my OLO article a little while ago, one of the climate scientists' key concerns was that papers had been published without being subjected to a proper review process (the very thing you allege). The editors involved have admitted as much. The scientists also had every right to be concerned that data would be cherry-picked by a hostile and unscientific political campaign, the existence of which you evidently choose to ignore.

I did post this afternoon, but it hasn't appeared. My comment in reponse to the issue raised - Communicting Science - was as follows:

Err..... What about telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Steady on Herbert, this is prophesizing, based on well known polished facts, polished by the prophets themselves in fact, those are personally owned facts in the case of CRU.(did they pay for the accumulation of their datasets themselves, out of their own pockets, or was it taxpayer money?)

What's this about truth?

Why didn't CRU just comply with FOI requests, because they might be criticized, that sounds reasonable, if there's something to hide.

Australia's taxpayers smell a rat, and the climate scientists here now realise that and want to appear "reasonable and honest", good luck with that, the ship has sailed.

Science does not have an image problem, climate science and weather prediction does, trying this huge media campaign just makes it look worse.

If the Climate Scientists would come out and instantly knock down extreme alarmism every time it appears, it would help their credibility, but they don't as they seem to believe all support of the AGW view is good.

The CSIRO's latest messages still contain government biased spin, do you think everyone is too stupid to realise that? I guess you do.

It seems to me that the whole climate change discussion issue is best summarised as a form of "Pascal's Wager", which is a form of the precautionary principle.

If AGW is a fact and we do nothing, the potential consequence is hugely negative, possibly including a massive loss of life and habitat for humanity. If, on the other hand, whether we have specific evidence or not that it is true, we have little to lose as a species by acting as though it is true. The worst consequences of acting to reduce greenhouse emissions are solely economic AFAIK. Does anyone suggest otherwise?

The precautionary principle is used a great deal in law to offer protection to the potentially vulnerable when the facts of a case have not been fully explored and even sometimes when no offence can be shown to have occurred.

Domestic violence law, summary traffic offences, many forms of local bylaw, fair trading laws, surveillance cameras - all rely on the precautionary principle to justify their existence. There are many other examples.

At its worst, it can lead to nanny-state oppression, but it is still an important consideration when thinking about issues that have potentially grave negative consequences.

Geoff Davis - your post - Posted by Geoff Davies, Wednesday, 17 March 2010 4:06:05 PM.

Is very reasonable and I accept your point of view and wish that was better communicated, but all we seem to get by the media and by any climate scientists quoted, is exagerated fluff and bother.

I see today we have some climate scientists educating the ALP in Canberra being touted as a science love fest, it's just more spin by the government to sell their tax as being reasonable and endorsed by scientists.

This will further bias people against scientists in this field as the things of politicians.

You are digging that hole deeper and it will be harder and harder to get out of.

antiseptic, it's gambling with our future thta's the problem with Pascal's Wager .. it encourages you to make stupid decisions based on a supposed risk - there is no proof thst CO2 is causing additional climate change

The IPCC is not saying it is for sure, it's only 90% sure - so the risk is doing something now that in a few years as the science develops as it is by no means on top of weather or climat emodelling, we may find something else, unknown currently is enhancing natural climate change, we may find it's all natural and part of the scheme of things.

The problem with the precautionary principle is that it is used when someone wants to overcome reluctance and then discarded when it is the other way around and you don't want to be the receiver of it.

Thus "If IRAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPON PROGRAM is a fact and we do nothing, the potential consequence is hugely negative, possibly including a massive loss of life and habitat for humanity (ISRAEL). If, on the other hand, whether we have specific evidence or not that it is true, we have little to lose as MANKIND by acting as though it is true. The worst consequences of acting to reduce IRAN'S CAPABILITY are solely IRAN'S PROBLEM AND A FEW LOST LIVES AND FACILITIES RATHER THAN ALL OUT NUCLEAR WAR IN THE REGION, POSSIBLY THE WORLD.

Does anyone suggest otherwise?" No, we totally agree - let's go bomb the crap out of Iran, just in case eh?

You see, the precautionay principle can be used to justify war, invasion as well as changing or damaging our economy.

It's not reasonable to bomb Iran (yet) nor is it for a few activists and die hards to demand our civilisation be brought down by dumb decisions based on current immature science.

Tricky words, people didn't trust Pascal's Wager back then, nor do they now.

Like climate sceience, Pascal suffered an image problem, his wager was rejected, no surprise.

odo, the reason Pascal's wager was a failure logically was that he was predicating it on the hypothetical possibility of a vindictive god existing when there was absolutely no way of testing the hypothesis and no alternative hypothesis available to explain what was observable. While he did not endorse the religious model because he felt it had flaws, he was hedging his bet.

It served him well and arguably did no harm.

In the case of climate science, there is much evidence and just as in Pascal's case, the existing models support taking some action to hedge our bets.

Even if the models are not perfect, they are the best we have at present. The disparity in the consequences is so great between acting and not as to mean that we really have no choice. I don't think any serious decision-maker disputes that; where the conflict occurs is in the detail of how to achieve the best outcome, rather than how to achieve some outcome.

I seem to recall Bush & Co bombed the crap out of Iraq with just 1% probability about WMD.

We are 90% sure about another WMD (weather, not weapons) - there is a difference.

But like some die-hards, they want 100%

_____

Btw, my previous post about Waheed Aly's proposition - it's telling that no OLO conservatives (or 'political scientists') want to pick it up - there must be some truth in what he says.

You recall wrongly "I seem to recall Bush & Co bombed the crap out of Iraq with just 1% probability about WMD.

On November 8, 2002, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous 15-0 vote. 100% mate!

Iraq filed its 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN in order to meet requirements for this resolution. Iraq continued to fail to account for substantial chemical and biological stockpiles which UNMOVIC inspectors had confirmed as existing as late as 1998.

But fiddling with the figures and changing the data after the event is to be expected in your field isn't it. Isn't that why this whole murky debacle has avalanched on Climate Scientists?

Here's an article about Climate Scientists not being able to manage the press and not being up to the task to sell their story, and we have qanda, who tells us he is a climate scientist, bullshytting about why "we" went to war in Iraq and baiting conservatives.

What precious innocent little petals are these climate scientists!

Yes, I do want 100%, otherwise, we may find in years to come, when your science is more advanced, that there may be OTHER REASONS why climate changes the way it does - or is your science "known", that is, nothing else to learn? So we can stop pouring money in now?

So when do we believe their stories?

You might ask in view of the above little spectacle by qanda, why people are skeptical? (that's rhetorical, i.e. it requires no answer as it is obvious)

>>Btw, my previous post about Waheed Aly's proposition - it's telling that no OLO conservatives (or 'political scientists') want to pick it up - there must be some truth in what he says.<<

There is, of course. But that doesn't mean that the diehard skeptic does not have a valid role in keeping everyone else thinking and on their toes. I agree with Antiseptic that the real issue is how the change is best made, moreso than whether any old change should be made.

The vital and legitimate role of the skeptic is in slowing down the pace of reform so that more scrutiny is had of climate-change policy. This, in turn, will reduce the chance that ordinary, passive individuals in society and the economy are smashed by the pace of change. If not for this resistance - and indeed intransigence in some cases - ambitious politicians could easily go on a reform romp that had little regard for the consequences.

RobP, agreed, well made point.

We still don't know enough abut climate to be able to say for sure if anything we do will have any effect even if we "think" we know some of the causes to what might or might not be a problem caused by us.

So I do not want to see change (or wagering) for the sake of it - because some people feel doing something is better than doing nothing, my point is - no, not if it's something stupid it isn't better than doing nothing.

BTW .. I dislike the eco bullies and fascists, as do many people, the green halo is just an excuse for poor moral behaviour.

odo:"if it's something stupid it isn't better than doing nothing"

If there is nothing more stupid than doing nothing, then anything is worth trying.

Robp:"The vital and legitimate role of the skeptic is in slowing down the pace of reform so that more scrutiny is had of climate-change policy"

What is the worst possible outcome of climate change policy failure? What is the worst possible outcome of doing nothing?

What are the probabilities of the worst case happening in either scenario? IOW, what is the chance that doing something will make things worse vs the chance that doing nothing will do so?

All of the discussion around this subject is polarised around stupid catch phrases and inane versions of libertarianism versus an imagined authoritarianism. It won't be much fun being free if the climate models are even close to the truth and we do nothing, it seems to me.

What's wrong with hedging our bets? When George Soros does it everyone applauds.

Certainly, be sceptical - I strive for a sceptical approach to all things, but don't mistake conservative ostrichism for inquisitve scepticism. The two concepts are diametrically opposed.

antiseptic .. let me try to get you through this one ..

odo:"if it's something stupid it isn't better than doing nothing"

This means .. If the decision is to do something stupid, than it is better to do nothing, that is, doing nothing is better than doing something stupid. Do you understand?

Here, try quoting in context, like this "some people feel doing something is better than doing nothing, my point is - no, not if it's something stupid it isn't better than doing nothing."

Does that help, or do you still see it the way you want to: "If there is nothing more stupid than doing nothing, then anything is worth trying."

So, who said there was nothing more stupid than doing nothing? You did!

So in any situation, you advocate doing something rather than nothing? amazing ..

>>What is the worst possible outcome of climate change policy failure?<<

The Australian economy gets smashed.

>>What is the worst possible outcome of doing nothing?<<

The planet does. But, these are both imagined extreme positions at this stage.

>>What are the probabilities of the worst case happening in either scenario? IOW, what is the chance that doing something will make things worse vs the chance that doing nothing will do so?<<

That really depends on the abilities of those with their hands on the economic levers. It's highly variable, I'd suggest.

To another point you made, the discussion is highly polarised, probably because if you sit in the middle and take a moderate position, it takes about a nanosecond to realise you are uncomfortably caught in the crossfire. So people either bug out or join one extreme end or the other.

>>What's wrong with hedging our bets? When George Soros does it everyone applauds.<<

Nothing - it's probably a good idea. But the real issue is how you go about it. If change could be made in a sustainable way - probably pretty slowly to start with - that would be best in my view. As long as the decision makers did their job soberly and got the experts in to look at the issue with the seriousness it deserves, I think that would lead to the best outcome.

>>Certainly, be sceptical - I strive for a sceptical approach to all things, but don't mistake conservative ostrichism for inquisitve scepticism. The two concepts are diametrically opposed.<<

I know, but conservative ostrichism has its place when evangelists are on the rampage. By the time they disappear off the scene and the polity has been imbued with a sense that something needs to be done, I think the more open-minded - skeptics and not - will appear on the stage. Hopefully a more moderate and sustainable approach will be taken at that time.

What basis is there for the actions advocated by the alarmists?

One of the impeccable, and competent climate scientists, Robert Carter, in relation to a study mentioned below, says:
“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”
Peer reviewed article in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml

qanda says we are 90% sure. This is not so, the discredited IPCC made this unscientific and unsubstantiated guess, and it is 99% certain that it is wrong. There is no scientific basis for asserting any significant effect of human emissions on Climate Change.

Any action to solve a non problem is unjustified. The action will be ineffective, whatever it is. The nonsense about hedging our bets has no basis.

There is no precautionary principle in science. It is asserted by people who have no basis except misleading statements about science by the IPCC, and outright lies by Gore and the UN.

Anyone wishing to support this attempted fraud should produce the evidence upon which they rely, and stop putting forward irrelevant details based on false assumptions, like the IPCC's pathetic 90% certainty, based on nothing.

For Stezza:

The great editor of Nature, John Maddox, was a friend, and I shared many of his views on science, which are and were sceptical. I've certainly read a lot in Nature over the years, and had considerable respect for it when he was in charge, rather more than I have now. The main journals in the basic sciences insist that data, experimental design and methodology be made available when the paper is published. Nature was prepared to accept a promise that this would happen in the future, since its purpose was to get important discoveries out as quickly as possible. John Maddox said publicly that the IPCC was likely to have exaggerated the degree and speed of global warming. He was right.

For Geoff Davies and Stezza:

I've sat on three editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals and of course have had years of work in finding assessors for proposals as papers, as well as reviewing peer-review systems in other countries. Let me be as clear as I can: the correct practice, especially in contentious areas, is to find competent and neutral experts who can see both the positives and the negatives. It is usually pointless (and plainly bad practice) to send them to known friends or foes of the author. I have written about this (in a peer-reviewed journal). If you are at all interested go to Prometheus (1996).

(to be continued in a second post)

And Geoff, you duck and weave, avoiding the question I posed above, and have been asking for three years now. When you or any of your colleagues can show me how much of whatever warming has occurred is due to the burning of fossil fuels, and how much to natural forces, and how the Mediaeval Warm Period was due solely to natural forces, and how you are able to show the difference, then you'll have my undivided attention. I don't care who scribbled what on the back of an envelope decades ago, and what 'confirming' results have occurred. 'Confirmation' is irrelevant. Where are the observations and the data that support the AGW position? No one much wants to argue as to whether or not the world has warmed. The key questions are: Is the warming unusual? Is it significant? To what extent have humans caused it? And it is, all things considered, a problem for humanity? As far as observations and data are concerned, the apparent answers are: No, No, Not much, and No.

These are plain matter-of-fact, commonsense questions, and while you might need to be a well-trained and experienced experimental scientist to answer them, any reasonably educated person can ask them, and explore the answers that he or she gets. Had they been properly asked and properly answered twenty years ago, we would not be in the intellectual and political mess we are now in.

>> the tendency of some scientists (Sir Mark Oliphant was an early example) to speak as though a science background
>> enables the possessor to pontificate on the state of society and its future.

of course, it's completely unheard of for a social scientist to pontificate upon scientific matters of which he knows bugger all.

for bushbasher:

Two things. First, remember that the original point of this thread was the diminished status of 'science' and scientists', and I was offering some possible explanations. I don't think that 'social scientists' ever had much status anyway.

But, second, and since you presumably have directed your shaft against me, why do you think I know 'bugger all' about science? One likely answer is that you think that unless one is a working scientist one cannot know anything about the natural sciences. A moment's reflection should tell you that this can't right, because working (=experimental) scientists work in tiny areas of tiny areas of their discipline. How could they possibly know much about anything else? The answer, of course, is that the basic approach is common, they can read, and do. And so can the rest of us. Until the early 20th century, science students at university 'read' science, they didn't do laboratory work at all.

And remember also that the 'scientific method' is not peculiar to scientists. It is the standard approach in Western society of anyone working anywhere, including garage mechanics, plumbers, teachers, doctors, all of us. There is a problem. What do you think has caused it? You develop an idea. How would you determine whether your proposed solution is correct. You test it, and it doesn't work. So you develop another possible solution. And so on.

With sufficient maths and a preparedness to read widely, any educated person can nut out what is the point of most articles in scientific journals other than those in the highly mathematical parts of physics and chemistry, and of course in maths itself. Climate science', which is very new, is quite accessible.

Leo Lane, you are full of it!
There is *overwhelming* evidence from peer reviewed processes from multiple published sources. The BOM website is a good start, and the US equivalent is also a good source. The fact that you cannot be bothered, and are not qualified in any case is no excuse for this sort of outright untruth!
BBoy. Good stuff, these buggers play the man rather then the ball but I suspect there are a few lurkers out there. We can only hope to guide those who are not convinced by the Conservative hype to keep an open mind...mind you not so open that our brains fall out!
If it is alarmist to point out that tipping points have been passed that will make our kid's lives *much* more uncomfortable than ours, let alone causing a mass extinction event then call me alarmist.
Remember who this crowd supports: Corrupt bankers, corrupt warmongers and a corrupt press. The fact that they are trying to undermine science is just another shameless part of the information warfare they have thrust upon us.
The scientists I work with are *very* sceptical indeed, but the theory says what should happen, the data has shown it is happening, and the recent data shows it is happening close to the worst case scenario. Science would be negligent if they did not convey this to the public.

Don –
I won’t attempt my own version of the IPCC reports here, but I’ll pick up some key points.

The evidence you seek is of several kinds, and this list is not at all meant to be exhaustive.

First models without human emissions do not reproduce the recent warming, whereas models that include it do.

Second, the basic plausibility of the models is supported by the fact that their results are similar to earlier, simpler calculations whose behaviour can be easily followed. Indeed, the basic conclusion was made decades ago, that the warming signal would emerge from the noise early in the new century. This is a primary and successful prediction of climate science.

Third, the case is supported by geological evidence that the relation between temperature and CO2 concentrations is at least as strong as the models indicate – in fact stronger in the longer term. This is expressed as “sensitivity” to a doubling of CO2 content being in the range of 2-4 degrees (models) or 3-6 degrees (geology) – (I’m quoting from memory).

Fourth, the world is indeed warming, even faster than predictions of a few years ago. There is abundant evidence of this – the retreat of glaciers, the dramatic thinning and shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, accelerating land ice melting, shifting climate indicators and ecological phenomena, warming ocean, acidifying ocean, etc. And, estimates of global mean temperature versus time using instrumenal records. The fuss about alleged manipulation of these data is hugely out of proportion with the fact that the disputed data would hardly affect the estimates at all, and all the other evidence cited is consistent and overwhelming.

Don, you say ‘confirmation’ is irrelevant, but that is the essence of science – to provide an explanation that fits what we observe. It doesn’t prove the explanation (science never does that), it supports the viability of the explanation. Your dismissal of ‘confirmation’, and of comparison with simpler models, suggests you fundamentally misunderstand the scientific process, or are too hot under the collar.

Continued –

Don, continuing –

Of course there are natural fluctuations. These ensure there is not a one-to-one relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature. This point is overlooked (conveniently) by many people, including Bob Carter with his disingenuous plot, paraded by Steve Fielding, showing the two not directly correlating over the past decade. Of course they don’t directly correlate over a few years, there are also influences from the El Nino cycle etc. See http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/global-cooling-since-1998/

The Mediaeval Warm Period is only an issue if you think it was as warm as the present. Recent estimates continue to indicate that it was well short of the present warming. Many choose to disbelieve this conclusion, and many impugn the motives of the scientists doing the work, but the work needs to be done and it is not easy. Of course the instant experts always think they know better.

Another simplistic criticism concerns the ice age records showing temperature leading CO2. The explanation is well established. The large fluctuations of the ice age were triggered by changes in solar heating. The role of CO2 was to be an amplifier – as some warming occurred, some CO2 was released to the atmosphere. This increase warming, which increase CO2 release, etc. The same physics that explains this also explains how a sudden increase in CO2 can produce the present warming. There is still a question about what terminated the ice-age warmings, but the basic pattern is well explained. See
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/co2-lag-during-ice-ages/

I don’t propose to continue this exposition. “Sceptics” like you can always find loose ends to pick at, and completely distract everyone from the overall picture that it is the IPCC’s job to portray. Indeed this is the deliberate strategy of the denialist web sites funded by ExxonMobil and others. I don’t accuse you of being part of that effort, but I do think your attitude is superficial and biased.

And Don, one doesn't have to be an experimentalist to be a “working” scientist. Do you imagine there is an experiment where someone can directly and incontrovertibly measure the relationship between temperature and CO2?

So to sum up, Geoff, you have no scientific evidence that human emissions have any measureable effect on global climate.

You have nothing to offer, so you might as well dish out a baseless slime to a real scientist, Professor Robert Carter, who has shown that all the warming is accountable from natural sources, much to your chagrin.

There is no room for the baseless, pathetic, "very likely" of the discredited IPCC.

You have endless words, Geoff, and no substance. Why do you not seek an occupation which you can handle? Science does not seem to be it.

Odo

No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

Ever since Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld’s US led debacle in Iraq, they have been trying to ‘white-wash’ it.

There was big money to be made by “you’re either with us or against us”.

It is no different now with the neo-conservative/neo-liberal climate change strategies.

There is big money in the ‘deny and delay’ camp – evidenced by vast sums of money spent in lobbying against effective climate change action - deliberately distorting and misinforming the public about the science (see Nick Lanelaw’s diatribes).

Leo Lane (Nick Lanelaw)

This is the latest piece about your pseudosceptic hero, Bob Carter;

http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=4911

It really is a show of faith that you leap on to the one and only piece Carter (stratigrapher and public speaker extraordinaire ) has lent his name to a paper published in a so called journal of (dis)repute, yet fail to acknowledge the 1000's of other robust papers by real climate scientists working in their field of expertise.

qanda - "no WMDs were found", so what?

I responded to your incorrect statement "I seem to recall Bush & Co bombed the crap out of Iraq with just 1% probability about WMD."

you were wrong .. so now you try another tack, give it up and just admit you were wrong. Your left wing liberal hatred leads you into the same BS as most of your type, making unsubstantiated statements.

When you are shown to be wrong, you change to something else, without an apology or admission, typical!

So now your tack, defending innocent scientists who know nothing about PR in a world of terrible skeptics is to try to wind up skeptical funding? (/sarcasm)

So you as a scientist are now publicly stating that you know where skeptical funding is coming from and that it is real and large?

This sounds a lot like a press release ... is it?

"There is big money in the ‘deny and delay’ camp – evidenced by vast sums of money spent in lobbying against effective climate change action - deliberately distorting and misinforming the public about the science (see Nick Lanelaw’s diatribes)."

Any proof of that big money?

Is it bigger than government spending?

Nick who?

That's it? In the face of governments spending billions on climate research. I can understand why the scientific community is vexed, you all didn't realise being political and all becoming activists was going to cost you something?

If you want to take sides, outside of science, there is a cost, and clearly you guys and gals don't like that and have woken up late that supporting a particular line was taking sides.

Time to pay mate, and you are, your scientific area is in disarray because you and your coleagues became political.

You did nothing about it and continue to ply the political line.

What was that about Bush and Cheney?

I also just saw your support post for Obama .. you dabble in politics at your own risk when you do it from your sceintific pedestal.

Vexatious remarks odo

Others might want to learn a bit more in “Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming”;

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Cover-Up-Crusade-Global-Warming/product-reviews/1553654854/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Real sceptics would read it.

just can't admit it can you qanda

Had a look at your book, I expected breathless propaganda dressed up .. and go it

"A good journalist practices professional skepticism, and does not fall for a PR man's line - or take a "freelance" job for a climate warming advocacy group.

Page three, author James Hoggan - a veteran PR man, in business to convince people of a given point of view - introduces readers to Richard Littlemore, a "veteran newspaper guy" who like "ink-stained skeptic" Ross Gelbspan, steers "a wide berth around anyone . passionately committed to a cause." Oh really.

Since 1996, the purported Skeptic, Littlemore, hasn't been a journalist at all. That year, he took a "freelance contract to write a public education package" on global warming for Canada's environmentalist David Suzuki Foundation - studied its material. Co-author Littlemore for 13 years has unashamedly conducted PR for an environmental organization working with Al Gore - committed to proving the global warming theory, irregardless of scientific evidence. Hardly objective.

That would be fine - if the authors stated at the outset that they're neither newsmen nor skeptics, but well-paid advocates and converts to a cause. But they pose as objective --- motivated solely by truth, light and science. These guys claim that only the big bad coal and oil industries are peddling a "giant lie" (their words)

and "The authors present as evidence popular news clips, U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and abstracts of climate change gurus.

finally and you MUST read this as it is exactly what this article is about, media management and scientists "Authors Hoggan and Littlemore probably still deny the manipulation of evidence that previously so convinced them. Since at least 1999, however, the CRU literally discarded and destroyed core raw climate data that raised serious questions and may have even disproved the global warming thesis.

Professional PR men know they must never lie, kid themselves --- nor join client causes as total believers. Otherwise when they do place stories, the news usually comes back to bite them in the end. "

qanda thanks for that, I had a great laugh, so that's the kind of reading the climate science community in Australia is promoting is it.

So as soon as you see something negative towards skeptics, it must be good huh?

Well done, you've just put your political cause back even further.

The AGW side of this rejoices in "debate" that poor innocent scientists just can't come to grips with - that's the kind of debate you like eh, slander and BS done up as "evidence" that skeptics are wrong or organised and there is evil about - but in reality it is more dodgy disinformation and BS from the usual suspects.

Moire tainted information from people pretending to be objective - like climate scientists isn't it, you all are trying now to look objective .. just the facts, oh my sides ache this is so funny.

Have a read of the reviews, obvously you didn't read them all - just the breathless cheering team you all stand with as believers - get past the obvious plants mate, do some "research" into who you're dealing with as reputable authors.

I can see why the peer review process has broken down in clmaite science.

You just leaped in full of confidance and "belief" hahaha You have made my day!

What a transparent purveyor of tainted nonsense you are, qanda.

Climate Shift is a site I have not encountered before, but a glance at it shows it to be in the mould of the scurrilous Realclimate site.

There is a page of slurring of Professor Robert Carter, a competent and honest scientist, who of course must be constantly slimed by the warmeciles, since they have no science to support their nonsense.

The “science” which “refutes” Robert Carter, has been produced by the usual miscreants in this sorry display of anti science, Phil Jones, Michael Mann, and K E Trenberth. A few other names are thrown into the mix, obviously as a ploy to stem the stench of the usual suspects.

Phil Jones, during his participation in the Climategate Enquiry, constantly repeats the mantra of “human caused global warming”, while having no science to back it up, and while admitting to his devious actions, in attempts to back the assertions of the mendacious IPCC.

qanda then has the effrontery to cast baseless aspersions on the reputable journal which published the study in which Robert Carter participated, showing that the warming relied upon by the IPCC in their pathetic “very likely” assertion of AGW, is all accounted for from natural causes.

There is no scientific basis for the assertion of human caused global warming.

A sorry display, qanda, but you are consistent, and always typical of your underhanded, insolent self.

Leo, Leo, Leo ...

You, again, are demonstrating your ignorance (if not stupidity) - this time misconstruing Professor Ian (Ove) Hoegh-Guldberg's site with some other.

http://www.climateshifts.org/?page_id=3913

Perhaps instead you should look at Annan's paper, the one that slam-dunked your hero.

But, perhaps not. You haven't got a clue about the science, you certainly couldn't counter Annan's expose of your hero's junk-science. If you could have, you would have.

No, all you can do is repeat ad nauseum the mantra of the deny & delay brigade.

Delude yourself all you want Nick/Leo, it aint goin to change the fact that your beloved Carter tagged himself to junk-science.

qanda, I appreciate that although you are able to read, your comprehension is poor. When I say a site is in “the mould of the scurrilous Realclimate site”, I am not confusing it with anything. I mean that it is run by someone attempting to mislead.

You have informed me that it is run by the notorious misleader, Ove, whose nonsense predictions about the Reef are monotonously proven wrong, so you have merely informed me that I was correct.

Your assertion is that Robert Carter is wrong, and you refer me to a site run by a shonk like Ove, who comes up with a study by four meritless, untrustworthy scientists, said to disprove a study by meritorious scientists, Robert Carter et al, published in a reputable Journal, and peer reviewed.

If, as I strongly doubt, the study by the miscreants stands up to scrutiny by Carter, and Carter’s study turns out to be wrong, we are only back to the situation where there is no scientific proof of AGW, despite billions spent to come up with proof. The situation would be that Carter would have failed to disprove the baseless, unscientific assertion of “very likely” by the IPCC.

You never face the truth, do you, qanda, and your shifty tactics never change. Slime competent people and produce nonsense from proven miscreants, which proves nothing, and even if it did, does not address the difficulty you have, which is that no one has been able to scientifically demonstrate AGW.

Your pathetic efforts make you look foolish. Your fraud is uncovered.

I take Don Aitkin's silence to indicate that he agrees with odo, Leo Lane et al., that the science I summarised is worthless, and presumably for the same reasons - grand conspiracy piled on the incompetence of the entire, extremely diverse, climate science cadre.

Regarding Nature and John Maddox, I certainly didn't regard him as "great", but I can see how his very conservative political views might have appealed to you Don. Among other things he abused his position by using Nature to conduct a vendetta against homeopathy. Not that homeopathy doesn't deserve debunking, but an Editor should not have abused his influential and notionally impartial position by getting down and dirty like that.

Regarding reviewing policy, there is nothing in principle wrong with an editor getting the views of an opponent, as well, hopefully as a more "neutral" reviewer (though, in the real world, "neutral' is often hard to find). The key is that the editor should require authors to acknowledge the contrary views and to address any point of substance raised, but not necessarily to bow to the judgements of the hostile reviewer. It is not the editor's job to settle continuing scientific debates, but to see the debate is carried forward constructively. It is not "plainly bad practice" to proceed in this manner. As Stezza and I (and many colleagues of my acquaintance) testify, that is our experience in the messy real world. To reiterate, there is certainly nothing prima facie improper about climate sceptic's papers going to non-sceptics for review.

Leo Lane and odo - my criticism of Bob Carter does not depend on complicated technicalities, nor on faith in any opposing person, and is not simply abuse of the kind you are so fond of flinging. It is that he has quite misrepresented the recent temperature and CO2 records in an elementary way, a way that any sensible undergraduate or intelligent layperson can understand. I have explained the problem at
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/global-cooling-since-1998/
Scroll down to the Addendum on Senator Fielding.

Geoff I have never mentioned Carter, ever anytime, you may be mistaking where you read something relating to him, it was not from me.

Please check your data, this lack of accuracy and checking seems to be a common thread running through climate science posts and indeed the CS itself.

How dramatic, you should be in theatre, or are you? "grand conspiracy piled on the incompetence of the entire, extremely diverse, climate science cadre"

no not a conspiracy, just a common direction of interest you all have. Like skeptics, we have no organisation as such, but share concerns, as I can see climate scientists, to get ahead, share a POV. That is, to get funding and grants and to be in the 'right club", you have to adopt a common behaviour and direction.

Accepting AGW is central now to climate science, is it not?

I saw some data recently from the 1970s, backed up with station results, (National Geographic) and ever since, those results have been modified, and further modified over the years to get the results shown now. There are some sites ont he web discussing this, I'm sure you've noticed.

As a skeptic, I have always been suspicious of the "data sets" since they are created, with all manner of acceptable (to other climate scientists) tweaks and tricks. (CRU emails, and Jones says that he will not share since they are HIS datasets, you should make your own)

Sorry, not good enough, that's not science when you do that, it may be climate science, but I know of no other region of science that has a predisposed objective, to prove AGW, then quietly all the datasets start to match up.

If you are trying to show that delicate CS scientists have no idea how to present to the public, you are doing a fine job, drop the drama, check your facts, and please don't do a qanda and recommend books by obvious insiders masquerading as objective observers.

geoff, your patience is remarkable.

don, i can respond to your post, but see no need nor reason to if you don't respond to geoff's.

Geoff: I look at it this way (I’m sure you understand) – the ‘Leos’ of this world are stuck between a rock and a hard place – business-as-usual the former, their understanding of ‘climate science’ the latter. They parade their ignorance (innocent though it may be) as a badge of honour, unwittingly digging their holes evermore deeper. Carter tagged himself (and dug his own hole) to the paper of McLean (OLO’s ‘snowman’) and de Freitas ostensibly to counter the fact that he had not written or even contributed to any scientific paper on ‘climate science’, at all.

Carter may be a doyen in geology, but his climatology credentials are sparse, if not lacking altogether. Nevertheless, he seems more intent on doing the rounds of the public speaking circuit these days – his next big event with the Heartland Institute’s annual gabfest in New York (I surmise) with the likes of the inimitable Anthony Watts. Further, it is well known that Carter and McLean (and Plimer for that matter) are stalwarts of the Lavoisier Group – that mendacious Australian right-wing think-tank with direct links to the mining lobby and the ‘Greenhouse mafia’. Of course, this group (like Heartland, CATO, Marshall, etc) spread their tentacles far and wide – the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and other nefarious groups like the Climate Change Coalition also come to mind – the latter of which is a favourite haunt of de Freitas (and Vincent Grey) in New Zealand.

As far as Don goes, silence maybe golden. However, I like reading his opinions, particularly on the political science of the so called ‘climate debate’. I would have liked he comment on http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10186#165173 but then, he may not have even heard of Waleed Aly, watched Q&A, or had the opportunity to read his ‘On the Future of Conservatism: Where the Right Went Wrong’. Nevertheless, I think it worth restating: The “debate” is not about the science ... it is a bun-fight about political ideology - demonstrated at Copenhagen and being witnessed here between Tony Abbott's 'old school', Rudd's centrists, the Green hardliners, and Senator Fielding's faith.

odo, I stand corrected. You didn't mention Bob Carter. You only sprayed colourful epithets.

qanda, I agree the debate seems to be mostly about ideology. It certainly isn't about science. My puzzle has been what people find emotionally threatening in the prospect of changing our lives a bit so as to be kinder to the planet, and ourselves. It sounds like good news to me, but not to many people. Nor is it just about change, because we have had lots of change in the past thirty years, including the deliberate destruction or debilitation of many industries. It's OK to dump textiles, footwear, sugar, many primary products, family farms, etc. etc., but not coal. Ideology is the common thread. Free market, libertarian (big money) world view. Cooperate? Communist! It would be interesting to know how many "sceptics" have right wing political views. I'll have a look at Aly.

I wouldn't characterise Greens as 'hardliners' though. That just invites people to do less than is necessary, and to continue to treat the problem as political. Our petty little political fashions don't dictate reality, the Earth does.

You mention an Anthony Watts. Got a link? I used to know one in my line of business and I'd be reassured to know it's not him.

It is pleasant to be asked to keep the thread going! I simply have other things to do much of the time, so my return is sporadic. I'll get to Geoff Davies in a moment. I am also trying to finish the QE by Waleed Aly, who writes beautifully. I can see that he is going to launch into climate change soon, and I'll comment on that (if I do at all) in QE itself.

Qanda: Who do you think does have 'climatology credentials'?. If there is an undergraduate major in 'climate science' anywhere in Australia, it is very new. There are new centres in the field, and no doubt postgraduate degrees, but on what body of the natural sciences are they based? As I have written before, all those whose work I have read have come to climate from a basic scientific discipline: geology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, statistics. One reason that the science is not (and can't be) 'settled' is that those who write about tend to put their own field first, and use that as their vantage point. As someone who has studied the history and evolution of the planet, Bob Carter's credentials are as valid as anyone else's. So are Geoff Davies' credentials (he is also a geologist). But no one can claim to know it all, and to be omnicompetent.

Geoff Davies: I asked what I thought were central questions, and you have responded. I'll use your identifiers.

'First' — the models can't account for recent warming without human emissions. But that won't do. (i) How do the models account for the MWP? (ii) How do the models deal with the lack of warming over the last decade or so? (iii) In any case, as I have argued before, the models have to make large numbers of assumptions, whose validity is not clear. (iv) And models are never evidence of anything — they are exercises in playing with hypotheses and data.

'Second' — 'the warming signal would emerge from the noise early in the new century' Really? That is not what Hansen, Gore et all, let alone Jones et al, or any of the four IPCC reports, were saying. They said it was here now, and disastrous. Is 'noise' a way of describing natural forces or variation? And I'm not aware of any work that distinguishes human emissions form natural forces (whatever they are). This is really very vague.

'Third' — 'geological evidence' Here, as elsewhere, it seems to me that you like the evidence that fits your case and brush away the evidence that doesn't. I'm aware of the danger of doing this myself, which is why I remain agnostic rather than sceptical. But the geological evidence offers a number of possibilities, doesn't it? A huge (in human terms) lag time, and periods of high CO2 and low temperatures, make one wonder at the relationship, at least I do.

(more to come)

Geoff "My puzzle has been what people find emotionally threatening in the prospect of changing our lives a bit so as to be kinder to the planet, yada yada yada including the deliberate destruction or debilitation of many industries. It's OK to dump textiles, footwear, sugar, yada yada, but not coal. Ideology is the common thread. Free market, It would be interesting to know how many "sceptics" have right wing political views"

This is not climate science - it is environmental activism.

Confronted by skeptics of CO2 caused AGW, you flip into this realm of "Our petty little political fashions don't dictate reality, the Earth does."

It has nothing to do with this particular subject, you are off message and it appears you are a confused communicator.

My beef with the whole AGW debate is that AGW is used as a lever by environmentalists like yourself.

I have no problem with reduction in pollution, in all manner of 'kind to the earth" programs, we do these in our household constantly.

But I have real problem with being bullied with the CO2 AGW debate to get a result in socialized redistribution of wealth and socialized environmentalism. Copenhagen failed on this point.

Your motives and your arguments about being an activist and nothing really to do with science, just as qanda is more about politics and throwaway lines interspersed with insults.

I have a range of political views, depending on the subject at hand, not everyone is hard in one camp or the other, as you seem to think. I have some socialistic sympathies and also some hardline conservative tendencies when it comes to say, taxation.

If you want to get out a message on activism, fine, but now can you see why the communty is confused by climate scientists? You don't know the difference in your own pitch when it comes to AGW or envirnmental activism.

So get off the environmentalism from the AGW Climate Science Pulpit - you are bringing your personal beliefs and predjudices into a scientific debate, and self justifying doing that.

(final post)

Manipulation does worry me. I don't like the suppression of outliers in data. They are telling you something, perhaps that your instrument is not working, or that there is a chance blip, but the smoothing and averaging and adjustments that have gone on with 'av.glob.temp' always seem to point in one direction, and that doesn't fill me with confidence.

Natural fluctuations were not much talked about until now, where they have to be taken seriously, because, as Jones and Trenberth separately pointed out, the observations simply don't stack up well against the models. So, how much of current warming (if real) do you attribute to natural variations and how much to human emissions?

Mediaeval Warm Period. More equivocal data, all of them relying on proxies, and different proxies. But I've been to Fountains Abbey, not far below the Scottish border, and there you can see stone evidence of the vineyards and wine-making that went on there in the 14th and 15th centuries. There are a few vineyards in Kent today. That's about it. I haven't been to Greenland, but if there is a graveyard there that lies in permafrost, that would also tell us about the difference between MWP and today.

It seems to me, at least, that the evidence you point to is not compelling, and much of it is simply hypothesis. I've looked at all the papers about tipping points, and they are arguments for there being tipping points, not evidence, data, or observations that make such a hypothesis more than possible. You seem determined to see it your way, and you may be right. But not because of the current evidence.

Don -

I think our disagreements are clear. Much of it is your distrust of scientists.

Btw I am a geophysicist, much more at home with physics, systems, dynamics and models than, for example, Bob Carter, geologist. You are right there are no “specialist” climate scientists, because it is too broad a field for that. Not all scientists remain narrowly specialised. Some (me, James Hansen) broaden a great deal through their career. Just like you, Don.

However the following comment reveals, I think, a fundamental misunderstanding of science:
"And models are never evidence of anything — they are exercises in playing with hypotheses and data."

Models are a formalised expression of hypotheses, so that implications of the hypothesis can be deduced, and compared with observations. Models in that sense can be qualitative or quantitative, and back-of-envelope or supercomputer. Science actually does nothing more than 'play with hypotheses'. Science compares the implications of hypotheses with observations. If the hypothesis compares well with what we observe, we may call it a theory.

You ask for "evidence, data, or observations that make such a hypothesis more than possible", but what do you mean? If you want "proof", science is not about proof, like mathematics and logic are about proof. Science is only ever about a theory that is a useful guide to how the world behaves. Newton's theory was improved on by Einstein, but Newton's theory is still very useful in its appropriate domain. It is not sensible to call Newton's theory "disproven", nor Einstein’s “proven”, those terms do not apply. Einstein also may be improved upon.

The situation regarding climate is (in my evaluation) that some of the key observations are accounted for reasonably by existing hypotheses and models. In other words those hypotheses and models are useful guides to the world as we observe it. Science can meet no qualitatively higher standard. It can only, we hope, provide quantitatively more accurate and more comprehensive correspondence with observations. But it will still be "just" hypotheses and models.

So it seems you are requiring climate science to satisfy an impossible standard.

odo,

I can discuss the science, and often do, and I can also discuss the nature of the debate about the science, and sometimes do that too. A straightforward distinction. No need for your self-righteous misinterpretations, incorrect extrapolations, and condemnations.

I won't wear your label "environmental activist" because I don't fit all the connotations you attribute with that label, but what is the point of having views about how the world might be run if one is not prepared to advocate change? You do, I think. And if my view is that we are destroying our life support system, then I will certainly argue we should change our habits and stop destroying it. Common sense and sanity, I'd call it.

Geoff you zig and zag backwards and forwards when it suits you, you're confused so others you communicate to become confused as to your direction.

If you cannot seperate the AGW science from your desire to save the world, you can't ever send a clear message or defend the science because it is obvious you are using the science to forward your personal agenda .. just like Hansen et al.

"what is the point of having views about how the world might be run if one is not prepared to advocate change"

Exactly my point, and you use Climate Science to do it, as it appears to others with such a stated intention that you would be suspect of manipulating or be tempted to manipulate science to achieve your personal goals.

In fact now that you have stated the above, you should remove yourself from all future AGW/CC posts and discussion as you have a compromised viewpoint and a conflict of interests.

Its taken a while to drag it out of you but I am horrified to discover this in a scientist.

This is exactly what skeptics are concerned abuot, that it is not about the science, as qanda states, but about politics and ideology being the goal with AGW just the tool to achieve it.

For Geoff Davies:

Your use of 'confirmation' bothers me, too. I don't think that hypotheses are 'confirmed'. Rather, observations are consistent with them or not consistent. If they are not consistent then the hypotheses need some revision. One argumentative slide which I have read elsewhere (and you use a version of it above) is that the increased warming (if that has in fact occurred) confirms the AGW hypothesis. But it doesn't, because such warming is also consistent with the older view that the planet is recovering from the Little Ice Age. Even if there be faster warming (which the observations don't support), that wouldn't confirm AGW either, because there have been periods of apparently faster warming in the past too, when AGW isn't said to have applied.

You seem to suggest that I ask for impossibly high standards. If that is so, which I don't accept, then you would have to admit that what some 'upholders' have been asking for are extraordinary measures, at least in terms of human history in the last 200 years. But in fact I only ask that you do better than stating that 'some of the key observations are accounted for reasonably by existing hypotheses and models'. That is a weak version of the IPCC's claims about certainty, and it is not clear what you mean by 'accounted for'. I have already argued, I think correctly, that the models used are built on assumptions whose validity has not been tested, are coarse-grained spatially, and did not predict the present period of stasis. If you can show that there was indeed a model that did that, one could only say that if you have a model that can predict anything, then it predicts nothing.

I think that this passage of ours here sets out reasonably well why there are agnostics and sceptics, who love the planet as much as you do, have no ties to big oil or any other interest, and try to get to the truth in all this.

Geoff Davies, you tell us that science compares the implications of hypotheses with observations. Right with you so far.

But where does it say they should be compared with the results of "averaged", "smoothed", "corrected", & in fact concocted observations? What's more all this done to some secret formula, the secret formula, like scriptures in the past, not for the eyse of mere mortals

Where does it say science should be propergated by half truth & outright lie, as by CSIRO, & the BOM recently?

Mate, it's all over, even if you lot are right, you've blown it with too many lies, & by being far too cute with it.

Start again, keep it simple, & keep it totally open. Do that & you should be rehabilitated by about, say, 2100AD.

Geoff, you should read what you said about science, then ask yourself why you fail to apply it.

Models only assist understanding, and should never be used for conclusions or predictions.

When there is no scientific basis for the assertion of human induced global warming, you consider that too high a standard is required, of science, to produce such proof.

You are, in effect, advocating that the weazel worded “very likely”, of the IPCC should be accepted.

Lower the standard so that nonsense from liars and swindlers like Gore and the UN be accepted?

What about accepting the word of sensible, objective people, that this attempted fraud should not be tolerated?

Forget the science, if it cannot supply the answers, but do not seek to lower the standards of science. Even the strictures, which presently apply in science, are ineffective to prevent fraud, as the East Anglia gang have demonstrated, in peer reviewing each other’s pseudo science, and dishonestly manipulating data.

The fact is that the answers have been supplied, but the swindlers do not like them. Human emissions have no significance in global warming.

Legislation to enforce purchase of spurious carbon credits (there is no other kind), is a license to parasites to swindle the Western world.

I read down to here in Geoff’s post at Betternature.

“The claim that the world has cooled since 1998 can only persist because either the data have not been properly examined and understood”

What data, Geoff? Is there some that has not been contaminated?

Should we waste our time looking at temperatures where 60% of the Russian data has been omitted because it showed cooling, and only the 40% which showed warming was included?

Should we look at the “homogenised” data from Darwin, which showed .7 degree cooling before and 1.2 degrees of warming after homogenisation.

We need to have some honest data before we consider it.

We will not obtain it from NASA where Hansen has spent years, constantly revising data, which somehow always comes out warmer.

We will not obtain it from the IPCC, which has its data contaminated, to order, by the Hadley gang, to “hide the decline”, before it receives it.

It does not say much for you, Geoff, that you consider the fraud evidenced by the Hadley emails to be normal procedure for scientists.

qanda still refers to the paper by the Hadley miscreants, as negating the study by Carter et al which showed the warming relied on by the IPCC for its ridiculous “very likely” assertion, to be from nature, and therefore not allocateable to human causes.

If they happen to be right, and it is confirmed by honest scientists, then we are back to the situation of no proof either way.

No proof of AGW. As Al Gore and Geoff both say, we should not have to rely on facts. After all, it is a fraud which is proposed, and it is just a matter of having corrupt governments pass legislation to force Carbon trading, and the swindlers are in business.

Apart from the Czech Republic, Western governments world wide, are seeking to enable this fraud. Vaclav Klaus, the President of this one honest government has approached world leaders to join him in acknowledging that AGW is a fraud, and he has been uniformly rebuffed.

The bottom line for me is this. In climate science, as Geoff essentially says, there is more that we do not know. That's the fundamental reason why hypotheses keep on being updated - something new is being observed or understood that is forcing a readjustment of the theory.

However, we are using modelling as a guide to predict what will happen some time down the track. The problem is that modelling software is based only on *what we know now*. Therefore, if the hypothesis is not fully correct, then neither is the modelling.

Another way I'd characterise the situation is that the climate projections based on today's models and understandings is a tangent to the curve. The real trajectory that we need to understand and follow is the curve, not the tangent. What we need to do is predict where the curve is going in order to do the best for society and mankind whether that be through good policy or good understanding of science and nature.

Don - I had to search to find where I had used "confirm" - it was about a simpler model 'confirming' a more complicated model, part of the process of checking the complicated model. Plain English, not technical language. 'Supporting' if you prefer.

Regarding standards of acceptability, you mistake my transparency of statement for weakness: 'some of the key observations are accounted for reasonably by existing hypotheses and models'. I was highlighting the nature of the process of establishing a hypothesis. I think the current case is reasonably strong, and the current state of your alternative (emerging from an ice age) is quantitatively weak.

We've debated in private how 'extraordinary' the measures would have to be to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. My point, which you disbelieve despite evidence, is that, properly done, it would not be very expensive and it would simultaneously reduce our many other assaults on our life support system, which we must do, regardless of global warming.
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/cut-emissions-and-boost-economy/

Your latest statement of your standard of acceptance of the AGW hypothesis is so vague as to convey little beyond "I don't like it". I think it comes back to the fact that you are mistrustful of scientists, and you are also apparently willing to give credence to obviously inflated allegations from unscientific, politically motivated, often hysterical web sites.

A piece by Richard Glover puts it nicely in the perspective of common sense:
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-lara-bingle-of-climate-change-20100319-qlzz.html

Don, Hasbeen, Leo Lane - the allegations of fraud and manipulation of data are not yet tested by investigations in progress, concern only minor parts of the evidence, and are promulgated by politically/ideologically motivated sources. If you are sceptics, why do you accept these allegations at face value?

odo -
I think perhaps you need to take a cold shower, you're getting in a bit of a lather. Are you going to claim that your scientific 'sceptic' heroes never indulge in discussion of policy? Such as suggesting that we should do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

And it has not been a secret needing to be 'dragged out' that I have views on policy, and the nature of the debate, they're all over my blog site http://betternature.wordpress.com/ . I'm careful to separate discussion of science from discussion of policy, for example by stressing to this community that the IPCC is not stating 'scientific' conclusions but rather the collective professional judgement of the field at a point in time. But perhaps you can't conceive of people less a captive of adrenalin than yourself.

Geoff - I don't have any skeptic heros, you're applying your belief system as if it relates to everyone. I read many things, both sides of this "debate", or as I see it, big orgainsed well funded green versus unorganised skeptics with no funding and little or no access to outlets - thank goodness for the internet, or AGW would be a lay down mezzaire.

Bit of a lather, no, that's just you reacting to an unexpected prod.

I'm not interested in your blog site, nor would you be in mine, it is unrelated to this field. It's interesting that you have an environmentalist/evangelist website - good luck, I'm sure you have a nice green halo - and I mean that without sarcasm I'm sure you believe in what you are about and try to put it in practice.

I'm not anti-environment, nor am I pro-environment, more about balancing needs of everything.

You're trying to justify why you can be objective about science when you have a clear environmental activist belief structure.

You can't seperate the two, you cannot possibly see how AGW could be caused by natural causes since you "want" it to be man made, as that justifies your environmentalist stance that "something must be done"

It may turn out that AGW is enhanced by mankind, but I see no reason that it is CO2, nor that taxation is the way to "reverse" AGW - you on the other hand see the taxation or "doing something" asd good because "we all have to look after the world"

I can seperate the issues, you appear to be unable to. I have to wish to attempt to control the weather or climate, I admit it is beyond mankind's current ability - some people think we are capable of fiddling with the controls, what balls they have! What arrogance!

Simple as that, let's agree to disagree, but please don't tell me that you are objective, you are clearly not.

Geoff, are you hoping for another corrupt UN inspired whitewash of the frauds who back global warming?

Remember that your allegations of human caused global warming have been well and truly investigated, and no basis has been established for the assertion of AGW.

So would you like to withdraw the flimsy allegation of “very likely” until there is some evidence of it?

The evidence of fraud of those alleging warming is spread all over the internet, fortunately, so the nonsense of the UN, Gore, the IPCC, our clown Flannery, and so on is there for anyone to see for themselves. We are not dependent on the corrupt MSM for information.

You should ask, Geoff, how did you become corrupt? Your attitude can only come from ignorance or corruption, and I do not believe that you are ignorant. If there is another possibilty, you might inform me.

As for the “collective professional judgement” you say that the IPCC is exercising in its unscientific, and unsupported “very likely”, you failed to mention that 5 unconflicted scientists stand behind the “very likely” guess.

The other fifty who put their names to it, are in conflict situations and should leave it to objective scientists. like the other 3,945 scientists,(“in white coats”, according to the lying warmist, Rudd) who abstained from backing this desperate ploy to mislead people.

Would you be honest enough to at least correct your website, so that it is clear that most scientists do not consider it likely, let alone “very likely” that human emissions cause global warming.

Thanks, Geoff.

Geoff

I should have been more specific. When I say “green hardliners”, I mean the ‘dark greens’ as described by Alex Steffen here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_green_environmentalism#Dark_greens.2C_light_greens_and_bright_greens

Anthony Watts, the once-upon-a-time US television weatherman who morphed into an expert ‘climate scientist’ through his popular denialosphere blog

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

has no credentials in any of the ‘climate sciences’.

Don

Re: “climatology credentials” – I should have been clearer; I am referring to those that study ‘contemporary’ climate (what we have been measuring and observing since say the industrial revolution) utilising data sets from traditional instruments, satellite, radiosonde, Argo buoy records, etc. I am not including geologists or marine stratigraphers (for example) who infer climate going back thousands or millions of years. I do include atmospheric physicists/chemists, oceanographers, etc. The problem with inferring climate from the geologic record is that of scale – a one percent error could mean 100,000 years or more. Knowing what the planet’s climate was like even 1000 years ago is open to interpretation, you know this. That is why I put more stock in what we can measure and observe in the anthropocene.

This is a Wiki list of ‘climatologists’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Climatologists

Another for ‘climate scientists’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_climate_scientists

This is a list of those who contributed to AR4: The Physical Science Basis (WG1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_from_Climate_Change_2007:_The_Physical_Science_Basis

Bob Carter is nowhere to be seen.

I think both you and Geoff are getting bogged down in models. It must be understood by the most ardent of sceptics that when conducting time series analysis of a complex, dynamic system, the ‘signal’ must be distinguished from the ‘noise’ (with a high degree of confidence) before you can say a trend is occurring – indeed, this is what has been happening. And yes, natural variations can ‘mask’ the signal. Don, of course outliers must be explained – and time often allows this to be done.

At the end of the day, we have the technology to measure the radiative balance of the planet very accurately – if you take out the human induced climate forcings, no other natural forcing can explain the warming trend that we have been experiencing. Further, it is no use blaming the global warming we have been experiencing on an unknown natural forcing – that does not mean we should stop looking for one.
Aside: Perhaps Leo, Odo & Co can join Roy Spencer as his research assistants - they might learn something useful.

quandar - "Further, it is no use blaming the global warming we have been experiencing on an unknown natural forcing – that does not mean we should stop looking for one."

Don't worry, when our climate science matures further, we may understand how things work a little better, well better than we obviously do now.

Has so much money ever been spent before on a single area of science? Without a result which I know you would all love to see(CO2 causes temperature rise)

Without being able to say for sure, what is causing additional warming, if indeed there is any, (it may just be an artifact of all the "grooming" of data.)

I'm surprised you haven't heard of Anthony Watts, he started a campaign to look at all the weather reporting sites in the USA, and what condition they are in and whether they actually meet the standards they are meant to - makes for an interesting read - then if you think about how various groups then "groom" data from these sites which are clearly dodgy, you end up being quite skeptical ..

I don't think Anthony pretends to be a scientist, please don't slander the man for doing research, that is, checking the source of data that others use without questioning and then adjust or remove from their work completely if it doesn't fit.

All of climate science should thank this man for the fine job he is doing, not castigating him.

This is oh so tedious, but ...

rpg, what makes you think I haven't heard of WUWT?
FYI, I've been following his blog from its inception.

For WATT's it worth, I keep a breast of things, even from opposing streams - THAT'S WHAT REAL SCEPTICS DO, get it?

Given your comments, I doubt very much you do the same.

Btw, here's an expose of 'Dr Watts' - oops, strike that - Mr Watts,

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/message-to-anthony-watts/

Of course, D'Aleo and the SPPI is the 'home' of that other respected peer, the 'Lord' Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley, recently doing a road trip around Oz with his local cohort, the author of Heaven and Earth, mining geologist Ian Plimer - hoodagest?

What really gets up my nostrils is that a supposedly 'real' scientist like Roy Spencer publishes a paper on Watt's site BEFORE he even submits it to a real peer reviewed journal! Watt's he afraid of?

It seems to me, any rational arm-chair scientist should question the veracity of the 'paper' ... but they don't - why is that?

Then they have the audacity to suggest that the IPCC don't communicate science very well ... simply astounding!

Oh yeah, it's qanda (as in Q&A) ... not quandar.

Leo Lane - well you can try to lay "corruption" on me, I wish you luck. I have never had a climate research grant, never had any money or other benefit from writing about climate, don't owe the field anything and it owes nothing to me. I didn't even get much grant money for my day job, the deep interior of the Earth, though my work is very well regarded overseas. In fact my career wasn't done any good by my pushing minority views my bosses didn't like, though I was ultimately vindicated. So don't whine to me about a great corrupt conspiracy to keep sceptics' views from being published. Let them get in there and do the hard work of persuasion.

odo- OK, whether they're your heroes or not, do you claim they don't advocate policy? And according to your standard, if a person examined a lot of science and concluded humans are degrading the Earth's environment, to our detriment, and should stop doing so, then they automatically become disqualified from commenting on anything because that makes them an evangelist and incapable of rationality.

And if you think humans can't affect the planet, have a look at the April Scientific American. Hardly a wicked climate scientist among them, but they still reckon we're dangerously stuffing up biodiversity, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the climate, the land, ocean acidity, fresh water and the ozone layer. Yes, humans are arrogant to think they can affect the planet, and indeed it's our arrogance that's getting us into these messes. They are also arrogant who reckon they know better than all the world's natural scientists.

odo and Leo Lane - you spend most of your time attacking the person, not addressing the issue, don't you have any case to put? Leo's stuff is quite defamatory. Don't you have something better to do, and where's our illustrious 'MODERATOR'? Don't worry, I don't spend time being abused by this nest of mutually self-pleasuring vipers expecting sense, or courtesy, I do it for those who might be following with more open minds. And yes, sometimes my patience runs short, and I've had enough of this endless torrent of BS. Well, whadaya know, the computer woke up when I wrote a bit of abuse. Where has it been all this time?

qanda, rpg got mixed up. It was me who didn't know about Anthony Watts. And fortunately it's not the other Anthony Watts I know, marine geophysicist.

Definitely my last for this thread: I am now reading and writing about the latest QE by Waleed Aly.

Geoff: I am puzzled by your reaction that I am hostile to scientists. I have scores of friends in the natural sciences, all over the world. I am thought to be direct, to ask the right questions,and to be sympathetic to the enterprise, which is presumably why I keep being asked to do things (see today's news release from CFI in Canada). I am hostile to bad research wherever I encounter it, and I do think that some of what I have read in the AGW field is sloppy, in that it doesn't first seek to find alternatives to its own conclusions. We were all trained to do that when I was young. 'How else could you explain it?' If you don't ask that question, someone else will. You'd better have good answer. The reason 'the science isn't settled' is that those early searching questions have not been asked. You don't like 'return from the ice age' as an explanation of whatever warming we are experiencing. Fine. But you need to show that your explanation is better, and that it can account for earlier periods of warming too. You can't, or at least the IPCC can't. We've been through all this before.

qanda: Like you, apparently, I see the 'contemporary world' as beginning in the 18th century, but alas we can't assume that the data we have over that 260-year period are of equal validity or reliability. If we are talking about the world since AGW became an issue, then the best measures we have, and they are at least consistent, are from satellites. They don't show much warming in the last thirty years. And Wikipedia is not reliable on anything to do with AGW. Climate science is very new, and all those who talk about it have come from other disciplines. I'm getting repetitious too. Enough.

>>Without being able to say for sure, what is causing additional warming, if indeed there is any, (it may just be an artifact of all the "grooming" of data.)<<

This quote reminds me of something quite interesting I learned at university. I'm a geophysicist too, like Geoff. When I was doing a seismic interpretation and processing course, we were taught about the limits of accurately interpreting a seismic dataset that had been put through a standard processing sequence. (For those that don't know, seismic data are return echoes that are radiated into the ground and used to discover the layering of the earth and are mainly used to explore for oil, coal and gas reserves. When the data come back they are rendered as a time-series, normally at a 2 millisecond sample interval.)

Some guys in a lab thought it would be interesting to see what happened when you put totally random noise seismic shot records through a standard processing sequence. It turned out that there were a few small seismic events (horizontal line-ups of data that would normally signify subsurface bedding planes) that showed up when there was absolutely no basis for it. In other words, the line-ups were a total fluke/artefact.

I'm sure that such a phenomenon can contaminate any study where signal analysis is a part of it. However, I have no idea in climate science where this might be the case. It might be worth keeping in mind though.

Geoff, while not as bad as your peabrained mate, kwonder, you have been rather unrestrained in your own defamatory remarks on this thread:

19 March “Bob Carter with his disingenuous plot”

22 March “Bob Carter .. .. has quite misrepresented the recent temperature and CO2 records in an elementary way, a way that any sensible undergraduate or intelligent layperson can understand”

24 March “this nest of mutually self-pleasuring vipers,”

It is hardly appropriate for you to complain about descriptions, appropriately applied, to you.

You only had the window of opportunity to denigrate Carter, while the Journal of Geophysical Research which published the McLean et al study, stalled the publication of the refutation of the Foster et al study, upon which you relied as a dismissal of Carter’s study (Mclean et al).

There was a change of editor, at the Journal, which took place since Carter’s study was published (said to be nothing to do with the Hadley miscreants, as the editor is appointed on a system of rotation). However, he just happened to be an editor who expedited Foster et al, and blocked the response by McLean et al.

Amusingly, some of the Hadleygate emails disclose the concern of the miscreants.

“Mike is President of AGU. Basically this is an acceptance with a couple of suggestions for extras, and some suggestions for toning down the rhetoric. I had already tried that a bit. My reaction is that the main thing is to expedite this.”
Kevin Trenberth to Grant Foster, September 28

McLean et al study available here:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/McLeanetalSPPIpaper2Z-March24.pdf

It is Appendix B to the document, and disposes of the criticism of the original paper. The main document sets out the disgraceful behaviour of the opposition to Carter publishing the truth about AGW, or the lack of truth in its proponents.

I will get to kwonder, later.

qanda (quander, Ponder, Ponder Gibbons! Hey, that fits) Work it out, you'll enjoy the link.

Sorry old boy, I did get you mixed up with Geoff.

Thanks for your comments RobP, I'm an engineer and have seen so many many times when people who have a predisposed, often unconscious, disposition (like Geoff) they have a tendency to bias data without realizing.

Now that we know the peer review method is flawed (Let's face it, it has almost no credibility left outside the science) in climate science and the possible corruption of datasets exists - where do we go from here?

Just reviewing existing data is pointless.

We need to start again, and any area that depends on "groomed" data, has to be redone. Otherwise it will be open to accusations of corruption forever.

Not to worry, there is so much $ flowing into Climate Science, there is no funding issues, and it's not as if a few years spent redoing research will put us back very far.

Geoff

I knew rpg got confused - that's why I replied.

______

Don

Thanks. Can I encourage you to submit an OLO article on Aly's QE?

Don,

What is your basis for the sweeping assertion that "those early searching questions have not been asked"? Are you that familiar with the (very large) primary literature? I don't find this credible, so I think you're hostile to climate scientists.

Leo Lane,

Whereas you are routinely, frequently, gratuitously ('your peabrained mate') and baselessly (my alleged corruption) offensive, my comments about Bob Carter are my considered, and quite defensible, opinion about his publicised work.

My comments in my last post were of course deliberate. You can dish plenty of it out but of course your thin skin can't take it.

I think Graham Young ought to give you an enforced holiday, because your posts are routinely offensive.

Oh dear!

Geoff,

The early searching question for the AGW upholders ought to be: 'Can we explain the current warming without recourse to our favourite hypothesis? We will need to counter the argument that it is another warming phase post the LIA. How could we show that it is not, but is something special? Well, our models need AGW to explain the current warming. But people will say, "Why is that? There wasn't any AGW in the MWP, was there?" Well, no, but people pay too much attention to the MWP, and in fact we would like it to disappear, and we managed to do that, courtesy Michael Mann et all, in the 2001 IPCC Report...'

Somehow or other, you've got to do better than this, and telling me to go and read a thousand or so journal articles whose conclusion is consistent with the AGW doesn't work unless they are consistent only with AGW. The observational data (MSU for example) are too equivocal to allow such an outcome.

No more!

Now to kwonder and his efforts. The following are examples of his more hilarious statements, from this thread:

22 March “has lent his name to a paper published in a so called journal of (dis)repute,”
22 March “Carter tagged himself to junk science”
22 March “You, again, are demonstrating your ignorance (if not stupidity) - this time misconstruing Professor Ian (Ove) Hoegh-Guldberg's site with some other.”
22 March “ my criticism of Bob Carter does not depend on complicated technicalities, nor on faith in any opposing person, and is not simply abuse of the kind you are so fond of flinging. It is that he has quite misrepresented the recent temperature and CO2 records in an elementary way, a way that any sensible undergraduate or intelligent layperson can understand.”
23 March “They parade their ignorance (innocent though it may be) as a badge of honour, unwittingly digging their holes evermore deeper. Carter tagged himself (and dug his own hole) to the paper of McLean (OLO’s ‘snowman’) and de Freitas ostensibly to counter the fact that he had not written or even contributed to any scientific paper on ‘climate science’, at all.”
24 March “This is a Wiki list of ‘climatologists’ Bob Carter is nowhere to be seen”

Our little trickster gives Wikipedia as a reference to support his outlandish assertions.
This is an extract from Wikipedia,”The majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is primarily caused by human activities.”
This is an outright, unsupported, scurrilous lie, about the level of the arch-liar Al Gore, or the IPCC, and is typical of Wikipedia.

The Journal of Geophysical Science is the journal of disrepute to which kwonder refers. It published McLean et al (Carter’s study), which showed that all warming is accounted from natural sources, and there is no room for the asserted “very likely” of the IPCC as to human emissions causing global warming. In any event only 55 scientists, 50 of whom were so conflicted that they should be disregarded on the question, back the unscientific opinion of “very likely”. (continued)

(continuation)
Since publishing the Carter study the journal had a change of editors, and hastily published the article emanating from the Hadleygate miscreants, said to refute the Carter study.

The authors of the Carter study submitted an article which disposed of the purported criticism of their article, and were refused publication.

These actions appear”very likely” to be corrupt conduct, with the filthy fingers of the IPCC all over the situation.

One of the comments about the original McLean et al was that it was accepted science, and may not have sufficient novelty to justify publication, but puny mouse thought it wrong in a way any undergraduate could understand. They would have to be down to kwonder’s level of comprehension, and hopefully there are not too many in that state.

kwonder would you care to tell the truth for once, when I ask you the scientific basis for the assertion of AGW, just answer truthfully “none”, instead of attacking a reputable scientist who has participated in removing the possibility of there ever being such proof.

Minor quibble, Leo

>> 22 March “ my criticism of Bob Carter does not depend on complicated technicalities, nor on faith in any opposing person, and is not simply abuse of the kind you are so fond of flinging. It is that he has quite misrepresented the recent temperature and CO2 records in an elementary way, a way that any sensible undergraduate or intelligent layperson can understand.” <<

You are confused, Geoff said this - however, I fully concur :)

______

Major quibble, Leo

On 2nd thoughts ... nah, your a waste of space!

Others maybe interested in this update:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#more

Suggest you follow the embedded links.

Cutting to the chase, Leo:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2858332.htm

Bye