2015 Warmest Year on Record

[Northeast Stinger]

OK. It seems that I've been unclear. I think open discussion on science to be about scientific data not about opinion of scientists.

That you are framing the question as one of discussing objects of faith is the problem. Which of these do you trust, ie, put your faith in is not a science question.

FYI:
https://judithcurry.com/2013/11/10/the-52-consensus/

My problem is that whenever you want to show that this should be about scientific data and not scientific opinion, you resort to a source who happens to have an opinion. For instance you seem rather fond of Judith Curry.

Is she a better source than the over one dozen organizations I listed? Apparently if she agrees with you, then she is.

As I have said to you before, your threshold for proof would make it very hard for me to prove to you the earth is round. I could give several anecdotal experiences and explain how I think these correlate with what my old elementary text books said, as well as photos from space. But if you are convinced these are all part of a conspiracy, that the data has been doctored or the photos faked, then I've got nothing because I cannot prove direct knowledge of the earth's spheroid shape.

I have not read the 5000 or so emails from the so called climategate debate. In the past I have read the ones in question and found them to be either blown out of proportion or taken out of context. That was my experience of them. Honestly. When I further read that 8 different investigations found nothing to the "conspiracy," that jived with my reading. To me it sounds more like an article of faith to believe this was some big conspiracy.

At the risk of getting off on a tangent and regretting it, let me put it this way. I was a young child when JFK was assassinated. It was a very paranoid and suspicious time to be alive.

In my youth I began to read everything from the Warren Report to every theory that came up. I watched TV shows, documentaries and news stories. I found lots of anomalies in the traditional accounts of the assassination. Lots of suspicious things. I don't care to go into detail so I will put it this way. I ended up with a 90% belief, after examining all the evidence, that the assassination happened just as the conventional interpretation says. I found that most of the conspiracy theories did not hold water. But then I also was left with about a 10% possibility that some of the unexplained aspects of the case might lead to some bombshell. What was really worrisome was that some of the unexplained aspects of the shooting still do not have an airtight explanation.

But the problem with that 10% alternative view was this. For that 10% possibility to be the true interpretation it required that I maintain a "conspiracy mindset." In other words, I had to be on a mission. I had to start with an alternative interpretation, believe that it was true, and then dare the known facts to refute the conclusion that I started with. But even if I did that there was no way to make all the pieces fit into a grand alternative story.

I don't know if this makes sense or not but I guess what I am trying to say is that at some point I learned that you have to step back from the alternative story and just ask yourself if it really makes sense for something true to be hidden in plain sight for so long that it can only be discovered by uncovering a conspiracy so big that it touches almost every area of our public life. I concluded that to do that was a bad bet, if one wanted to remain rational.

 

[collegeballfan]

Sea level is the first indicator that "climate change" (feel free to pick your own term) will change things. Miami Beach has spent over $100 million on a series of super pumps to pump out the high tides that are now flooding some of the low lying properties and roads. More spending is in the plans. Everyone pays a pump tax.

And now some "environmentalist" (again chose your own term) are complaining that the pumps are pumping dirty water into the bay and ruining the bay.

Unless this subject has an impact on Bobinski picking a new BB coach, this is my last contribution to the topic.

 

[AE 87]

@Northeast Stinger

Okay, let me respond to your approach to the conversation.
1) You claim that I cast everyone who disagrees with me Fundamentalist Liberal. That's simply not the case. Consider this conversation that I had with @cyptomcat a while back:

https://gtswarm.com/threads/noaa-nasa-2014-warmest-year-on-record.5995/​

That's what discussing data looks like. I think that he and I may agree that ultimately the data is currently inconclusive, but we disagree in that he's more sympathetic to AGW being a problem than I am. I do not consider him a fundamentalist liberal even though we disagree on how much we should accept the so-called consensus on AGW.
2) You misunderstand my linking of Judith Curry. I do not link her as authority to be trusted by faith but rather as a source of information to be discussed.
3) Your digression on conspiracy theories is off-point. You cannot conclude because some conspiracy theories are based on fear and wild speculation that no conspiracies exist. That's not logical. In the case of ClimateGate, there are actual e-mails that can be discussed which refer to using Mann's "trick" to "hide the decline." A peer-reviewed article exposed crass errors in Mann's hockey stick. As was linked earlier, there was a computer program which included within the hack where the programmer's notes reveal that he knew he was producing illegitimate results after 1960. There were e-mail exchanges where one scientist wants to know where the data for post 1970 used in a report was coming from because he couldn't duplicate the charts and was put off.
4) Consequently, unless you are actually willing to discuss data, your assertion about what my threshold of proof would be is a straw man.

So, if you would prefer to discuss data rather than use ad hominem and straw man arguments. We can start with the post that I included earlier in this thread:

LOL, "almost purely defamatory" according to whom?

Seven of the following charts were created using Mann's processing on random data. The eighth is Mann's actual hockey stick graph on temperature data:

Last year, GT's Judith Curry acknowledged the possibility that federal funding was inducing a bias into the science.

Now consider how much the reported temperatures of the last hundred years have changed in the last 15, 30:

Now, I don't know anything about what Ted Cruz knows about science, but most 3rd graders only know what their teachers tell them, and their teachers probably just tell them the PARTY line.

That 2001 IPCC chart was produced, in part, by scientists involved in the climategate e-mails. With respect to ClimateGate, I can read e-mails that talk about deleting data and deleting e-mails to keep them from Freedom Of Information requests and know that research paid-for by tax dollars shouldn't be covered up this way. When you read e-mail exchanges where one scientist is complaining that he can't find the data sets to support published findings, and he's getting a run around about where the data is coming from, I can say that that's a bad deal. When you have one climate scientist saying in an e-mail, "The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t," it's pretty clear that they are not objective scientists.

 

[Declinometer]

Short and sweet

http://www.investors.com/politics/e...mist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare/

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Short and sweet

http://www.investors.com/politics/e...mist-admits-real-motive-behind-warming-scare/

Short, sweet and totally in contradiction with what U.S. Department of Defense says. Odd, isn't it.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

You cannot conclude because some conspiracy theories are based on fear and wild speculation that no conspiracies exist. That's not logical.

That's not my conclusion, but good going with the straw man argument. My conclusion is that if a conspiracy by necessity involves thousands of people, public, private, non-profit and government agencies and world wide connections to keep it a secret, it should not be difficult to find and prove. If it is difficult to prove, and remains elusive for an extended period of time, then someone is straining at gnats to swallow camels to connect dots that don't exist.

I hold a dim view of people who hack computers in order to mount smear campaigns. I suspect I would probably want to keep any further violations of private emails from becoming more fuel for conspiracy theories. Especially if it was going to damage further important research. But that is just me.

I guess 8 different investigations into "climategate" that found no conspiracy were also all part of the conspiracy. Gee, that is the problem with conspiracies once they get started, huh.

Yes, I followed the conversation with @cyptomcat. I honestly thought that the conversation would have cured you from thinking that everyone who accepts global warming is a fear monger and out to take over the world. Guess I was wrong.

I listed over a dozen organizations that accept global warming and, who, in many cases, think the climatgate email thing is a manufactured scandal. All I was curious about was which of those organizations do you generally trust. You can say that trust is not a scientific principle, and you would be right. But whenever someone comes on this thread and gives a link to a source that agrees with your position you seem to have no qualms about letting it ride. I do not believe I have ever seen you call into question the web sites or organizations that others have shared on this thread because they did not discuss data "in the proper way." Discussing date "in the proper way" seems to only be reserved for people who disagree with you. That is just my observation.

So which of those groups or organizations that I listed do you trust? Or, if you prefer to put it another way, which ones are involved in the conspiracy?

 

[AE 87]

That's not my conclusion, but good going with the straw man argument. My conclusion is that if a conspiracy by necessity involves thousands of people, public, private, non-profit and government agencies and world wide connections to keep it a secret, it should not be difficult to find and prove. If it is difficult to prove, and remains elusive for an extended period of time, then someone is straining at gnats to swallow camels to connect dots that don't exist.

I hold a dim view of people who hack computers in order to mount smear campaigns. I suspect I would probably want to keep any further violations of private emails from becoming more fuel for conspiracy theories. Especially if it was going to damage further important research. But that is just me.

I guess 8 different investigations into "climategate" that found no conspiracy were also all part of the conspiracy. Gee, that is the problem with conspiracies once they get started, huh.

Yes, I followed the conversation with @cyptomcat. I honestly thought that the conversation would have cured you from thinking that everyone who accepts global warming is a fear monger and out to take over the world. Guess I was wrong.

I listed over a dozen organizations that accept global warming and, who, in many cases, think the climatgate email thing is a manufactured scandal. All I was curious about was which of those organizations do you generally trust. You can say that trust is not a scientific principle, and you would be right. But whenever someone comes on this thread and gives a link to a source that agrees with your position you seem to have no qualms about letting it ride. I do not believe I have ever seen you call into question the web sites or organizations that others have shared on this thread because they did not discuss data "in the proper way." Discussing date "in the proper way" seems to only be reserved for people who disagree with you. That is just my observation.

So which of those groups or organizations that I listed do you trust? Or, if you prefer to put it another way, which ones are involved in the conspiracy?

LOL.
1) My conversation with cyp should prove that I do not think "everyone who accepts global warming is a fear monger and out to take over the world." No matter how much you repeat it, it won't make it true. I've defined my limited use of Liberal Fundamentalist. I do not paint everyone with whom I disagree that way.

2) As far as your response on "conspiracy theories," you failed to actually respond to the data in the e-mails. Rather, you again make an appeal to authorities. I could probably come up with a list of critics who did find evidence of wrong-doing whom you don't trust. Also, show me where each of those 8 studies found that scientists were not conspiring to hide data from FOI requests, including the deleting of e-mails etc. (I bet you'll find that many of them find things like "no direct evidence" of wrong doing or that they don't overthrow the conclusions of climate change).

3) As far as not being able to keep a conspiracy secret, you are right. It wasn't. Even before ClimateGate, there were lots of voices being raised that the science wasn't supporting the conclusions. MIT Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lintzen a member of the IPCC complained that the executive summary of the 2001 report did not reflect the science and was not written by scientists alone. In 2005, Research Meteorologist Christopher Landsea stopped his participation in IPCC because he complained it was being driven by "preconceived agenda" and "scientifically unsound." From 2003-2005, Stephen McIntye and Ross McKitrick published, ultimately in peer-reviewed journals evidence that the "Hockey Stick" which had been used as the basis for much of the consensus was based on flawed data/modelling. Then you have the words of the scientists involved in the climategate e-mails.

So, let's not talk past each other. I accept this list as representing the problems raised in the ClimateGate e-mails:

1. The scientists colluded in efforts to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (across continents no less). They reference deleting data, hiding source code from requests, manipulating data to make it more annoying to use, and attempting to deny requests from people recognized as contributors to specific internet sites. Big brother really is watching you. He’s just not very good at securing his web site.

2. These scientists publicly diminished opposing arguments for lack of being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In the background they discussed black-balling journals that did publish opposing views, and preventing opposing views from being published in journals they controlled. They even mention changing the rules midstream in arenas they control to ensure opposing views would not see the light of day. They discuss amongst themselves which scientists can be trusted and who should be excluded from having data because they may not be “predictable”.

3. The scientists expressed concern privately over a lack of increase in global temperatures in the last decade, and the fact that they could not explain this. Publicly they discounted it as simple natural variations. In one instance, data was [apparently] manipulated to hide a decline in temperatures when graphed. Other discussions included ways to discount historic warming trends that inconveniently did not occur during increases in atmospheric CO2.

4. The emails show examples of top scientists working to create public relations messaging with favorable news outlets. It shows them identifying and cataloging, by name and association, people with opposing views. These people are then disparaged in a coordinated fashion via favorable online communities.​

None of this list claims that AGW is wrong or falsified. However, it does suggest conspiracy to limit access to data, hide data, and silence alternative views. So, again, please show where the 8 investigations falsified these claims. Let's move the conversation to data not faith.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I think you are getting close to the problem. To quote from your link...
"What the emails/files don’t do is completely destroy the possibility that global climate change is real."

The problem, that I see, is that this is the kind of statement that is usually buried or even non-existent in most of the email debates. Frankly, I would find it easier to debate the scientific merit of this theory or that theory if I didn't have to wade through slogans and slanders about positions that one disagrees with. It is this "all or nothing" way of starting a conversation that tends to turn me off. So if a climate change model breaks down or the data is a little off it becomes proof that there is a conspiracy and that people who view the data as supporting climate change are somehow part of a religious cult. The list of organizations that I have gave you are all ones that see the flaws in the models but find a preponderance of data that logically leads them to the conclusion that climate change is real. I was just curious if you thought they were part of a conspiracy, misguided or "fundamentalists," as you sometimes put it.

I am going to try to keep this short because I agree with you about one thing you said. We are talking past each other. I am not sure how to resolve that. But I will try one more point and see if it gets us anywhere. You said, "None of this list claims that AGW is wrong or falsified. However, it does suggest conspiracy to limit access to data, hide data, and silence alternative views."

This sounds like a change in your position. Perhaps it is not. But when I hear blanket statements decrying or debunking global warming supporters, often with ad hominem attacks thrown in, it gives a different impression than what you are now stating. This "new" statement seems to suggest that global warming is not a conspiracy, which, if this is your position, would be refreshing compared to some of the sources posted on this thread in the past. One further point, not to convince you but just to be clear about how I see it, the kinds of charges against certain scientists mentioned in the article do not constitute a conspiracy. Not to me at least. It sounds more like something that I have witnessed over the years in many different disciplines. Someone works hard over several years, tries to build a life's work, and, at the very end they try to "fix" one little thing that might throw doubt on all they have tried to achieve. The cover up is usually far bigger than the failing. The failing was not fatal but sometimes the cover up is. To me this is not conspiracy in the sense of covering up something big like the assassination of a president, or create panic over a non-existent challenge of global warming. No, to me this is more like human frailty, mendacious and duplicitous.

Still don't want to comment on this list I gave you? If not, that's o.k,, I will not ask anymore.

 

[AE 87]

@Northeast Stinger
Thanks for this note. My position has not changed.
I've already commented on your list. I first said that I don't want to talk about putting blanket faith in any organization. I then asked you to show where those 8 studies actually showed that the four bullets on the conspiracy was wrong. If you want to suggest that a reasonable person just puts his faith one side of a controversial question, ignores all the opinions from the other side as if they don't exist, then I am saying you are acting like a fundamentalist.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I have no problem with looking at all sides of an argument, as I have stated before. I am glad that in our interchange we have whittled the "conspiracy" down to a bite size morsel. Now I will know in the future that when you refer to alarmists, fundamentalists and climate change conspiracies that this is hyperbole not to be taken literally.

Thank you.

 

[AE 87]

I have no problem with looking at all sides of an argument, as I have stated before. I am glad that in our interchange we have whittled the "conspiracy" down to a bite size morsel. Now I will know in the future that when you refer to alarmists, fundamentalists and climate change conspiracies that this is hyperbole not to be taken literally.

Thank you.

Very disappointing. I don't know why, but I had still held out hope for greater maturity than this response demonstrates.

I have given, on several occasions, a concrete definition of how I use Liberal Fundamentalist. It does not apply to everyone with whom I disagree but only to those who operate dogmatically from a faith position and an unwillingness to discuss reasons for their position beyond citing authorities that they accept on faith.

I also didn't introduce the language of conspiracy. You did in order to dismiss me with a broad brush as a 9/11 truther or denier of the Warren Commission results. I did accept the language of conspiracy in the sense that the e-mails gave evidence of conspiring to hide data inconsistent with the theory. There is no hyperbole there.

I used the term alarmist as a handy term which I considered neutral. I really don't think those warning that humans are making a dangerous contribution to climate change would be bothered by being characterized as raising an alarm. That's also pretty literal.

smh. Very disappointing.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I have given, on several occasions, a concrete definition of how I use Liberal Fundamentalist. It does not apply to everyone with whom I disagree but only to those who operate dogmatically from a faith position and an unwillingness to discuss reasons for their position beyond citing authorities that they accept on faith.

This all sounds good except for the fact that you tend to lead with this. It is only after the fact that you want to define terms. I would be hard pressed to find more than a few times when you did not pepper your conversation with these descriptors as your opening salvo. These tend to taint the conversation as being less than objective. If you did not intend for these to be a way of belittling those who disagree with you then I would suggest the internet is not the place for you to bring these topics up with people you don't know.

 

[AE 87]

This all sounds good except for the fact that you tend to lead with this. It is only after the fact that you want to define terms. I would be hard pressed to find more than a few times when you did not pepper your conversation with these descriptors as your opening salvo. These tend to taint the conversation as being less than objective. If you did not intend for these to be a way of belittling those who disagree with you then I would suggest the internet is not the place for you to bring these topics up with people you don't know.

That's not true. Do a search of when I've used the phrase Liberal Fundamentalist. You'll find it only begins after repeated attempts to elicit conversation about the data.

It's also easy to show it doesn't apply to you:
discuss data rather than asserting authorities.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

That's not true. Do a search of when I've used the phrase Liberal Fundamentalist. You'll find it only begins after repeated attempts to elicit conversation about the data.

It's also easy to show it doesn't apply to you:
discuss data rather than asserting authorities.

Either you pretend to be objective to gain a rhetorical advantage or else you honestly believe you are being objective. Frankly, I don't know which is scarier.

There is so much you say that I just let pass by, but since you have claimed that you are all fair and above board on this let me just mention three things that are part of a pattern with you.

(1) Use of the word "Alarmist" when describing proponents of global warming. The definition of that term is "someone who is considered to be exaggerating a danger and so causing needless worry or panic." Look it up for yourself but I doubt you will find a standard definition that isn't in some way pejorative. More recently you claimed that your use of the term was meant to be "neutral." Whatever.

(2) Implying that some kind of conspiracy with emails, the so-called "climategate" affair, casts doubt on all scientific projections of global temperature increases. Though you have recently moderated your position on this somewhat this has been the tenor of many of your statements. Multiple organizations and agencies have found the conclusion that hacked emails prove a climate change conspiracy to be false. Your only response is always a broad assertion about science over faith in sources.

Here is just one example of the multiple reports that have been written:
The supposed manipulation of data by East Anglia and other scientists in the Climategate affair also proved to be completely unfounded, as we have written twice before.

Climate skeptics claimed that leaked emails between many climate scientists around the world showed there was a coordinated effort to inflate the global warming signal in temperature data. But several separate investigations, including by the U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General and the Environmental Protection Agency, found no such wrongdoing or manipulation.

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/nothing-false-about-temperature-data/

(3) Also in the past you have claimed that the federal government is spending 100s of billions of dollars on climate research and implied that this also distorts or skews the data. I have looked at the federal budget from 2014, primarily because it includes the money to be spent over a five year period on climate change, as well as GAO reports, and I have to say your number seems to be exaggerated by a power of five. Keep in mind that I was including tax incentives and anything else I could throw in to increase the numbers.

I have looked at your arguments, when you stick to facts, and found them interesting. In the past I have given you the benefit of the doubt and even compared you to a possible new Copernicus doing battle with forces of the status quo in the scientific community. But you have a tone of argument that completely undercuts my faith in your objectivity. You have a difficult time concealing your contempt for those on the other side of the debate except for one lone debate partner.

Now you want plausible deniability on any possible aspersions you have cast in the past involving use of terms like alarmists, fundamentalists, conspiracies and the like, so we can "return" to the data. You also apparently do not care for anything in these discussions to involve "trust" or "faith" or "authorities." That sounds could in theory but in the real world you have to have trust and faith in someone you are debating with, hence the term, "arguing in good faith." Frankly, I have become increasingly skeptical about your ability to argue in good faith on this topic. Perhaps it is that your passion gets the best of you but you cannot help letting ad hominem statements creep into your prose.

Finally, you seem to want me to accept that you are a more reliable authority than scores of authorities that most people put their faith in on a daily basis. You will forgive me if I find this hard to do.

 

[AE 87]

@Northeast Stinger

One nice thing about public conversations in internet forums is that the data is still available. Just as people can search the forum to see when and how I used "Liberal Fundamentalist" to know that your last post about me was a lie, they can also search the forum to see when I've used the words "billion" and "billions" to show that bullet 3 of this post is based on a lie about me.

Moreover, they are also aware that the complaint addressed in the report you cite in your second post was not included in the list of 4 complaints that I listed. You get around that by claiming what I was implying.

Also, I explained why I used the word "alarmist," while I think the data still supports that term, I admit that it's not as rhetorically neutral as I assumed, so I was wrong for using it.

Finally, I think everyone reading this forum knows that I have never advocated people trusting me by faith but rather getting at data on which we can agree and discussing the data.

Given your demonstrated tendency to lie about me and what I've said, I also think it's pretty clear which one of us is not able to have a conversation in good faith.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I will trust the readers to make their own determination about how you use these words.

None of this was meant to attack you, just giving you honest feedback. I think that you getting friction from others on the things you write on this site is not unusual. Perhaps you don't notice but I suspect others do.

I think we are done on this topic. Have a good day.

 

[AE 87]

I will trust the readers to make their own determination about how you use these words.

None of this was meant to attack you, just giving you honest feedback. I think that you getting friction from others on the things you write on this site is not unusual. Perhaps you don't notice but I suspect others do.

I think we are done on this topic. Have a good day.

No worries. However, I'm sure that you will not find any place where I have been shown to be lying about or misrepresenting another person. There has been a case where I made comments that were misunderstood, and I apologized. Even here, I apologized and admitted that I was wrong for using the word "alarmist."

I agree that we are done. The evidence clearly shows that you have lied about what I have said in order to argue against a straw man. The fact that you respond to being shown to be a liar by saying that you were giving "honest feedback" defies credulity.

Have a good day.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

There has been a case where I made comments that were misunderstood, and I apologized. Even here, I apologized and admitted that I was wrong for using the word "alarmist."

As I have said to you in past discussions, if I have misunderstood you, then I apologize.

I have never called you a liar and I will not now.

 

[jwsavhGT]

New climate change report predicts that thousands will die or get sick

http://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-government/article69915607.html

• Obama administration spent 3 years compiling report on effect of higher temperatures
• Impact: more air pollution, more severe storms
• Children, elderly, pregnant women among groups likely affected

WASHINGTON
Global climate change will lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and hospitalizations by 2030, a new federal report released Monday predicted, spurring the Obama administration to announce a series of new initiatives aimed at lessening that impact.

 

[Declinometer]

New climate change report predicts that thousands will die or get sick

http://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-government/article69915607.html

• Obama administration spent 3 years compiling report on effect of higher temperatures
• Impact: more air pollution, more severe storms
• Children, elderly, pregnant women among groups likely affected

WASHINGTON
Global climate change will lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and hospitalizations by 2030, a new federal report released Monday predicted, spurring the Obama administration to announce a series of new initiatives aimed at lessening that impact.

Ahhhhh....! You had me going for a minute!! APRIL FOOLS!!!