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Reader Comments (124)
Richard,
When you wrote about overfitting I understood that you did so because you thought it had some relevance to AGW. However scientists did not appear in the year 2000 or yesterday and say 'gee, it's gotten warm how can we explain that away?' - then start analysing time series and fitting curves to see how they could link CO2 to temperature.
Rather in the late 70s and earlier they said 'all that extra CO2 up there must be having some effect, let's see if it is' - and they predicted the warming that occurred. Nor are even the climate models exercises in curve fitting, but rather physical models that (contrary to claims) work surprisingly well.
The idea that AGW was dreamt up because some people looked at some time series and found some correlation is just not true. Given that, wondering whether they applied the right statistical tests during the non event is a futile exercise and not even very interesting science fiction.
And direct correlation over the long run is still an argument made by nobody. There is a word for that.
A treasure trove of opportunity?
You're too kind. Still at this risk of tempting fate I guess I managed to avoid doing so here or you'd be able to point to it, instead of posting sarcasm.
Sorry, this comment was meant for PA:
And direct correlation over the long run is still an argument made by nobody. There is a word for that.
"No mechanism has been proposed that can do the latter."
Apparently this is what passes for "the scientific method" - even from the very respectable and reasoned Eduardo Zorita (from the VS thread).
Isn't a hypothesis accepted if its opposite is disproven/statistically insignificant?
"And direct correlation over the long run is still an argument made by nobody. There is a word for that."
Excellent! So if nobody disagrees with VS (or the Beenstock-Reingewertz paper he's quoting) then what is all the fuss about? Why are people arguing so vociferously with him?
Could it be because actually people do say that the correlation between temperature anomaly and CO2 concentration is meaningful, and indeed frequently plot one on top of the other to demonstrate their close fit? And that you totally misunderstood what I was saying?
It's simple. Temperature is I(1), and CO2 is I(2), and any such processes are asymptotically independent, which means that any short term correlation must be a random coincidence. The observed rise in temperature is not due to rising CO2, because it has statistical properties that cannot arise from the change in CO2.
By the way, in your climate history I am sadly disappointed that you left out Joseph Fourier and Svante Arrhenius. I'm sure they would be, too.
Josh has reached the statosphere - he's been posted by Anthony on WUWT!!
Err no Cedric, questioning science does not make one a purveyor of 'pseudoscience'.
Then it's a good job I didn't say that.
(Whew, that was close. That strawman was mighty fierce.)
Scientists question science all the time.
Skepticism is good.
Yet there is a difference between skepticism and denialism.
I said that all pseudosciences follow similar patterns. The strategy is the same because the goals are the same.
Climate denialism is no different from creationism or HIV denialism or any other pseudoscience.
The methods, tactics, rhetoric (even some of the people!) that creationists use to promote their cause is no different from how the climate deniers are operating.
For example, see if you can spot the difference...
Exhibit A vs Exhibit B
That's not how science is done.
Cedric Katesby
I followed Not Banned Yet's link to your recommended reading list.
http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2010/03/cedric-katesby-lives.html
Do you still recommend James Randi's 'The Faith Healers' ? Hasn't he gone wobbly on AGW?
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html
Personally, I wasn't surprised to see a Skeptic being sceptical.
.
Cedric,
I propose Exhibit C, the list of everybody who has cited an "overwhelming consensus of scientists" or the famous "2000 scientists" that compiled the IPCC reports as another example of exactly the same thing.
The IPCC makes a bogus argument, sceptics use the same argument to demonstrate that the IPCC's claim to consensus is both an invalid argument and not even true, and then you criticise the sceptics for having used such a bogus argument in response. How does that work?
"Climate denialism is no different from creationism or HIV denialism or any other pseudoscience"
I completely agree.
You meant to say climate change denialism right?
I wonder who these people are...you know,..the ones who say the Medieval warm period did not happen or the little ice age did not happen.
Cedric, from the nature of your comments it is obvious you are sort of new to this climate/AGW thingey. So I say - welcome! It is all good fun, I assure you.
Cedric
Why do you keep dragging Creationism into it? You do realise this isn't a theological blog and the Bishop isn't a real bishop?
(Although some of us are considering petitioning the Vatican to appoint him Bishop of Gardar 'in partibus infidelium'.)
http://archaeology.about.com/od/gterms/qt/gardar.htm
Have you deliberately got hold of the wrong end of the stick Cedric? You are quite correct in saying the rhetorical tools used by deniers like yourself are similar to creationists. It's strange that the only person here arguing unscientifically like a creationist is you.
Try reading the posts again to see what I did say (and did not suggest you did) and why there is no 'strawman'.
2000 scientist who refute evolution vs. a panel of experts who refute climate change denialism........yeah now who posted that?
And of course perish the though of using a loaded term ‘denilaism’ to ‘win’ an argument.
Doh!
@Dreadnought
Do you still recommend James Randi's 'The Faith Healers' ?
Oh yes. All of Randi’s books are a good read. The Faith Healers especially. It's a great example of skeptical investigation.
Hasn't he gone wobbly on AGW?
When Randi made his comments about AGW, it came as a great shock to many in the skeptical community. Sadly, he even gave a favourable mention to the infamous “list” that I linked to before.
After other prominent skeptic voices (very carefully) criticized his remarks, Randi backed away from his earlier statement. It damaged his reputation but, in his defence, he was recovering from chemotherapy at the time.
Link.
Ultimately, it’s the method, not the man, that counts.
Randi doesn’t want anybody to believe him just because he says so. That goes totally against what he has striven for all these years.
@Pa Annoyed
I propose Exhibit C, the list of everybody who has cited an "overwhelming consensus of scientists"…
Not the same thing at all.
You don’t understand the methodology.
It starts with a problem.
The creationists don’t have any support in the scientific community.
That's a problem.
They can’t get any real traction in the peer-reviewed literature.
This is a PR problem. Not a science problem.
So, the solution is to create a fake list.
A “list of scientists” with a “big number”.
Creationist supporters don’t have a clue how many scientists are out there, so any number that’s a bit "biggish' will always sound impressive.
They are certainly not going to vet the list for fake names or bogus scientists.
So the trick works.
Scientists deplore the tactic. That’s why they created “Project Steve” as a parody to show how much nonsense it is. Biologists don’t create lists of individual scientists who accept the Theory of Evolution; there’s too many of them for a start! Nor do they have the same basic problem as the creationists.
The Theory of Evolution is firmly grounded in modern biology. It’s well accepted. There is no genuine “controversy” in scientific circles.
I wonder who these people are...you know,..the ones who say the Medieval warm period did not happen or the little ice age did not happen.
No idea who they are. However, the scientists agree that the MWP did happen and the little ice age did happen.
@Dreadnought.
Why do you keep dragging Creationism into it?
Creationism is the pseudoscience that I’m most familiar with and has a ready supply of good illustrative examples.
(Though the tobacco lobby is a good one too.)
I first became interested in skepticism via the “Intelligent Design” movement.
That was several years ago.
Then, as the ID movement faded away, skeptics started noticing how often the creationist movement and climate deniers overlapped.
The PR, the catch-phrases, the general attacks on scientific integrity, the political supporters, the media pundits, the demographic overlap and so on.
It almost impossible to find a creationist blog that supports the science of AGW.
Yet there’s a legion of creationist blogs that promote climate denialism.
Creationists are not known for their strong support of science.
And of course perish the though of using a loaded term ‘denilaism’ to ‘win’ an argument.
There really and truly are denialists out there. Holocaust deniers are actually deniers. Not skeptics. Sometimes a spade really is a spade. Especially if you have examples to demonstrate it.
People who believe that nicotine is not addictive are deniers too.
Science denialism is real. It happens all the time. Moon Landings, anyone?
NASA lies to you about global warming so maybe they lied to you about other stuff too.
Or how about the medical industry vs the anti-vaccers? That's always a good one.
@Anand
So I say - welcome! It is all good fun, I assure you.
Thank you.
One of my heros was a man called David Bellamy.
When I found out that he had gone over to “The Dark Side” I was concerned.
When I saw how…bizzare he’d become I was truly dismayed.
Link.
After a wonderful afternoon in the garden (first time this year, given that it's been continuous frosts for nearly 3 months) and a good glass of well rounded red wine with dinner, I log on to see what Cedric's been up to. Now Cedric, I'm all for a good discussion, but your last reply to me was, frankly, incoherent. I'm going back to see off the rest of the red.
Cedric,
"It starts with a problem. The creationists don’t have any support in the scientific community. That's a problem. They can’t get any real traction in the peer-reviewed literature. This is a PR problem. Not a science problem."
No, this argument is not about science, it's about authority.
The scientific problem with Creationism is that they don't have any good technical arguments, and their own version of events is inconsistent, incomplete, and provably wrong. The problem is not that they don't have scientific backing or authority.
It's a fundamental failure on the part of some of the evolutionary biologists. Rather than explaining evolution in terms of evidence and experiment, in terms of mechanisms and subtle details and correcting misunderstandings, instead they were lazy and used the argument "all scientists believe in evolution, therefore you should too." This was incredibly stupid, and a fundamental betrayal of science. Instead of teaching science by teaching science, they used Argument from Authority.
And by doing so, they handed the entire debate on a silver platter to the Creationists, because religion is an expert at Argument from Authority.
As it happens, there are extremely good and very convincing arguments for evolution, and against Creationism. But you wouldn't know that from the way most evolutionists conduct the debate in public.
The climatologists are making exactly the same error - using Argument from Authority rather than teaching the Science - but the difference is that they don't have the good arguments to back it up. All they've got are the claims to authority, and the support of the political elite.
Climate sceptics mostly talk about technical arguments (with an admittedly wide range of technical competency), and the believers respond with "consensus", "peer review", "experts", the "thousands of IPCC climate scientists" and similar empty propaganda. It's not even true. Consensus has often been wrong, peer review is more superficial than claimed, many of the experts are not, and the IPCC thousands are a misleading deception.
The lists of sceptical scientists are an explicit response to these misleading claims, themselves unsupported by actual surveys or other evidence. But they're not an argument we place any weight on ourselves.
The problem is arguments from authority in general. And while the AGW-believers rely on it in such great degree themselves, your comparison bears no weight.
Frank - my question was aimed at the ASA not the AGU. I watched the presentation you linked and there was not one single statistical reference. The quanititative information given was based on proxies and climate models - these have many critics.
The scientific problem with Creationism is that they don't have any good technical arguments, and their own version of events is inconsistent, incomplete, and provably wrong.
Who says?
Have you ever seen a dog turn into a duck?
What are you, some kind of a Darwin lover? Betcha don't know much about physics, right? Well, your precious "theory" breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics! Ahah.
Take that you Commie.
Rather than explaining evolution in terms of evidence and experiment, in terms of mechanisms and subtle details and correcting misunderstandings, instead they were lazy...
No. Biologists are not lazy. They work for a living.
Biology is hard. Learning about biological evidence, laboratory experiments, DNA mechanisms and the subtle details of taxonomy is hard.
It takes years of rigorous study to learn.
A couple of documentaries on TV with David Attenborough doesn't even scratch the surface.
Nor do creationists restrict their attacks to just biologists.
They attack all the physical sciences.
Creationism is not interested in "evidence" and "experiment". It's about propping up belief and reinforcing preconceptions.
The general public is pig ignorant about biology and science in general. Nor do they give a damn.
Fertile ground for deniers of all shapes and sizes.
And by doing so, they handed the entire debate on a silver platter to the Creationists, because religion is an expert at Argument from Authority.
Deniers love a good debate as much as they love lists of scientists. They win if you debate them and they win if you don't debate them. At the drop of a hat, a denier will seize the chance to get a debate going, especially on the telly. Anti-vaccers, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, moon-landing conspiracy theorists, HIV deniers, creationists and climate deniers.
They all love a debate. They're very good at it and they know they're good at it.
Scientists don't do science by debate on telly.
Science is not sound-bite friendly. The denier has all the advantages.
It's great PR. It's awful science. It's the science that counts.
Not the arguments. Not the debates. The science. The actual work of science.
The climatologists are making...
This isn't just about the climatologists. All of the Earth sciences using multiple different lines of evidence are involved .
All they've got are the claims to authority...
Creationists and anti-vaxxers say the same thing.
It's rubbish. Scientists do the work. They publish their work.
They allow their peers to build and expand upon their work.
It's productive and it all subject to the scientific process.
They don't create lists of fake scientists.
They don't demand that people debate them on the telly.
They don't invoke global conspiracies.
They don't mindlessly attack the peer-review process.
Climate sceptics mostly talk about technical arguments...
Lots of talk. Precious little work.
....the believers respond with "consensus", "peer review"...
No. Not "believers". Science is not a religion. NASA is not a church.
They are not lying to you about global warming any more than they are lying to you about the moon landings.
There is indeed a scientific consensus on The Theory of Evolution, vaccinations, Germ Theory and global warming.
Peer-review backs up all the scientific disciplines. Scientists really, really value peer review.
It's not just a special elitist trick to keep climate deniers out.
The lists of sceptical scientists... are identical in every respect to the creationist ones.
They were created for the same reasons. And they worked very well for the same reasons.
Consensus has often been wrong...
Yep. Creationists love that one too.
There is nothing you have said in defence of you denialism that would not work perfectly well in defence of creationism:
"Creationists mostly talk about technical arguments (with an admittedly wide range of technical competency), and the believers respond with "consensus", "peer review", "experts", the "Fossil Record" and similar empty propaganda. It's not even true. Consensus has often been wrong, peer review is more superficial than claimed, many of the experts are not, and the thousands of biologists rejecting Intelligent Design are a misleading deception.
The lists of sceptical scientists are an explicit response to these misleading claims, themselves unsupported by actual surveys or other evidence. But they're not an argument we place any weight on ourselves. The problem is arguments from authority in general."
I do not deny the effects of CO2 as a GHG, Allow H2O is a much more plentiful one and through change state physics, has many roles to play, as an absorber, reflector and as a refrigerant. I am keeping an open but critical mind about how much of the total of the climate regulating effects are controlled by CO2.
This thread has again brought up the subject that why don't the AGW "Deniers" bring up new facts or ideas to add something new to the science, rather than just detract from the physics, and chemistry, put forth by the "It's only CO2 camp."
http://research.aerology.com/aerology-analog-weather-forecasting-method/
At this link you will find alternative ideas that should be considered as well as the CO2 as they are the Natural Variability Drivers of the global circulation that are not well understood, enough to be represented by valid formula in the weather or climate models, the lack of consideration of these stronger controlling cyclic drivers, is the problem with the projections from the models. If these additional unknowns were solved for they could be removed from the background noise, making the solar variability component more definable and leave you with the CO2 signal with a lot less noise.
I do not consider my self on either side of this AGW debate, just offering answers to aid in the solving for some of the other drivers interactive cyclic patterns so that the whole problem becomes better defined and easier to solve.
Richard Holle
Pa Annoyed,
Yes. And argument from authority is only a fallacy when the appeal is to someone who is not in fact an authority.
It is both. They lack the latter because of the former. The same is true of all forms of denialism, and it is true of AGW denialism (which does exist) too. Naturally if you're on the side of the argument which does have overwhelming scientific backing, you'd be a fool not to mention the fact.
In fact as Cedric has pointed out (and he is not alone) claiming to despise argument from authority is also an identifying marker of denialism. (I say 'claiming' because denialists clearly crave scientific respectability and would lose a limb to have the same level of scientific backing as their opponents. On the rare occasion when published research or a Ph.D or Nobel prize winner seems to agree with them, they love it). For example see HIV denialism:
and
Sound familiar? It should. Read the whole thing. And of course, they too have their 'petition'.
Of course this does not cover all forms of AGW 'scepticism' - i.e. not everyone with a bad word to say about AGW or AGW policy is a denialist - but it deals with all too much of it. Most of what remains is consistent with the consensus of CO2 caused warming anyhow. It could hardly be otherwise.
Re the specific comparison with creationism, this is particularly apt because many of the AGW denialists are also creationists or ID believers - and that belief does inform their views on AGW, too, as does a belief in providence, or that 'the weather' is God's domain not mans, etc.
@Frank O'Dwyer
My emphasis in above.
Who says? On whose authority does that definition of "argumentum ad verecundiam" come from? Because it sounds awfully like a convenient one just made up on the spur of the moment.
That definition doesnt square up with how I remember and confirmed from no greater authority than Wikipedia, that "Argument from authority" is defined:
Meaning the best authorities in the world can possibly be wrong. You can't just expect to say "my authority is bigger than yours" and immediately "win" a debate. Authorities are useful for other things though.
Of course it doesn't mean that an argument from authority is always wrong - that would be another fallacy - but it seems if you can't agree on basics like this. then there will a shed load of pointless nickpicking with no purpose but to take up bandwidth.
Frank, I will take your advice to eschew sarcasm and will tell you directly what I think of you based on your extraordinary response to my complaint about your weird and offensive phrase:
I think that you are slippery and dishonourable, a hypocrite and a coward.
Is that clear enough for you? For you obviously realised that you had cocked up in your illegitimate use of rhetoric and that you owed me an apology. I'd said nothing that could possibly be construed as a strawman attack on AGW. Instead of apologising you started by blathering
But I hadn't actually said that and you knew it. It's not a strawman attack if I don't attack AGW, on grounds of overfitting or any other. So your next five sentences add nothing. Then comes something extraordinary. Without a pause you appear to quote me but in fact insert something that I never wrote:
You then comment, sarcastically:
The word you meant was strawman. You are seeking to justify your use of strawman to me by quoting something I had not written. And you clearly realise your mistake because you begin your very next post
and you repeat what you had just said to me. And then you say no more.
This means that you had no justification calling what I had written a strawman and you knew it. In that situation, if the boot was on the other foot, I would at once have apologised to you, profusely and sincerely.
Instead, the last thing you had to say to me was to criticise me for my use of sarcasm - sarcasm prompted by your use of the term strawman when I knew that it wasn't logically possible to construe my comments - about my own substantial experience in finance with the Akaike Information Criterion - that way.
I deserved an apology. You clearly realised that. But you weren't man enough to offer it. That says it all. I repeat: slippery and dishonourable, a hypocrite and a coward. I have no interest in debating with you. Indeed I wish you were not on Bishop Hill's blog, although otherwise I have enjoyed contributing here in many ways.
I think Cedric has blown a fuse.......pity the impartial scientist who rants like a fool!
Who was it who started this with a list of scientists?
Richard Drake,
I suggest you contact the Psychic Friends Network and demand a refund. Turns out you are unable to read minds.
As I said, I understood your comment to have some relevance to AGW and specifically to VS's argument - which I'd already posted was a strawman in a post to which you were replying - hence I wrote 'still a strawman'. If you now wish to argue instead that the technical content of your comment was simply irrelevant, meaningless babble be my guest, but it hardly improves your case. I have re-read your original comment a number of times and your admiration of VS's use of AIC remains inexplicable unless you saw him using it for purposes such as the examples you gave, in which case (like VS) you have clearly mistaken this test as having something to do with the argument for AGW. Here is your comment, quoted even more fully this time and it changes nothing of my interpretation of it:
So we have (a) AIC as crucial measure to stop an ARMA or ARIMA model overfitting and (b) VS gets props from you for applying AIC to climate science time series. Gee, where could anyone get the impression that these things would be connected in your argument?
As for your demand for an apology, I had already said sorry for directing what should have been a comment to PA to you. Aside from that I have (again) explained not only how I read your comment, and still read it now, but that is a reasonable (and actually charitable) reading of what you wrote.
If your comment was unclear or misleading, you are the one that should be apologising - both for the original lack of clarity and your ridiculous and unwarranted insults above. But hey, do what you like.
Sorry, off-topic. However, since Cedric used this in one of his arguments, I hope you will indulge me in enquiring:
Cedric,
I would be very pleased if you could provide evidence to your statement that nicotine is addictive. In addition, I would be pleased if you could link me to information showing a "consensus" definition of addiction in the first place.
I myself have found neither so far, and I would greatly appreciate finally have these questions resolved.
Thank you in advance
Pa Annoyed,
Wiki is hardly an authority :-) ...but note that it goes on to say:
And nobody claims that the scientific method is infallible, just that it is the best available.
And
Denialists understand and believe this too - hence the majority of their energies are directed at ad hominem and attempts to tear down the authority of the scientists, because they do not have and cannot have the same authority themselves. And since they have no scientific theory of their own, the best they can hope for is to play for a draw.
Frank, I don't take back one word of my evaluation of you. But you have explained one thing in your latest reply: the reason for your use of the word 'still'. That is helpful. It's wrong and despicable but it helps me understand your state of mind as you came to comment on my post with what I hope will soon be a canonical example of empty and offensive rhetoric on Bishop Hill:
I now hear that you had already called VS's argument a strawman and, that having presumably got you in the mood, you saw that I had mentioned VS and his use of the AIC on at least one climate time series and you couldn't help but apply the strawman label to what I had said as well, whatever it was.
In the weird psychology of consensus defence this is no doubt not only permissible but laudable. Now let me explain how it feels from my point of view, as the author of what you were and presumably are still calling a strawman.
First up, though, I have to admit to my shame that I only came across the Akaike Information Criterion in 1995. When did you first come across it Frank? When did you first use it on a real world time series of any sort? When did that use of the AIC lead directly to a hedge fund or other financial vehicle with over $500 million under management, because of the success of automatic trading rules governed by ARMA models simplified under the strict mathematical guidance of the AIC? I'd seen all that happen by 2001. I was also the first person to run a simulation of the software I was personally developing in C++ trading against real world financial market time series of the past, late one night in 1995, and saw, almost without fail, the graphs go up and up, showing profit in market after market. The execution of a business to take advantage of this amazing facility in real world TSA was another thing, what with trading costs and other risks. But the $550 million under management at its peak was I have to say satisfying. In the process I gained substantial regard for the work of Professor Hirotsugu Akaike back in 1971, something that I already knew had made it into the book Breakthroughs in 20th Century Statistics (like the much earlier Principle Component Analysis made famous by the work of men like Mann and McIntyre around the turn of the next century). But unlike some pieces of maths the AIC also seemed directly involved in enabling a company I was a stakeholder in make a good deal of money. That tends both to concentrate the mind and stick in the memory.
It is a fact that VS applied the AIC to at least the globally averaged temperature anomaly, the GISS variant if I remember correctly. That got my attention. That was all I was saying. For the moment. I have to admit that, despite having come across ARMA and ARIMA and the AIC in 1995 I didn't find all that VS has come out with from 4th March, including all the references, immediately and easily either refutable or internalisable. I'm still working on that, as is he, with great patience, bless him.
You however have had no such qualms. You have declared his argument to be a strawman. All of it? Or only those parts of it that you understand? Anyhow, your understanding of his argument is clearly much greater than mine and I'm impressed by that. That's why I'm interested in when you first came across the work of Hirotsugu Akaike. I'm interested when you first knew about the theory of unit roots and applied that. And a lot of other things.
Don't worry, take your time to explain. I have plenty for this particular debate. Because something tells me that it's an extremely important one.
One thing I had picked up and was convinced of so far: that it is invalid to use the Ordinary Least Squares method to calculate a trend on the GISS temperature and provide confidence intervals on the trend. That is definitely out of order in the presence of a unit root. And that is the one argument of VS that I refered to in my original post, in the second paragraph, the one you didn't even selectively quote from. Are you saying that this finding is wrong, that OLS and its CIs are not invalid in the presence of a unit root? Is that a strawman or a basic piece of modern mathematical statistics? I say it's the latter.
But never mind. The part of what I wrote that you quoted and said was a strawman wasn't one. Wasn't even remotely. It was about the AIC and my experience of it, and about why VS's use of it had got my attention. I actually felt abused by your condescending response - as well as very angry. You had connected dots that I'd been careful not to connect, partly out of respect for mathematical statistics as a discipline. And in your later response you have been sloppy, shifty, hypocritical and cowardly. That's my considered view.
And now it's time for you to explain yourself further, not least your judgment of all of VS's work so far on Bart's site. Good luck. I think you're going to need it.
Cedric
I am sorry to hear James Randi has been undergoing chemotherapy.
I merely described him as 'wobbly' on AGW. P Z Myers and friends were less restrained in their language, They called him a 'denialist'.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/say_it_aint_so_randi.php
Separate point: 'Yet there’s a legion of creationist blogs that promote climate denialism.' If you are implying that all AGW sceptics are Creationists then you have made an error of logic. (Not all black birds are crows.) If not, what is your point? I hope it's not just implying guilt by association.
Now I'm off to catch up on some other posts.
Richard Drake,
If you have no rebuttal to my arguments then you have my full permission to instead post further unsolicited, irrelevant and worthless 'evaluations' of my many failings. Seeing as you apparently 'evaluate' many of the world's eminent scientists the same way, I suppose it is a badge of honor. However I would prefer you to stick to addressing what I write. I notice that you have been too busy frothing to tell me how I read your comment incorrectly. Do you plan to get around to that sometime? Instead everything you post simply confirms my reading of what you wrote.
Perhaps you can also explain why it is 'despicable' to note that someone is flailing at a strawman, while you're about it? Exactly what is so despicable about thinking someone is mistaken?
Well, I'll happily plead innocent to the charge of involvement in financial models. Especially as the geniuses in charge of those have recently led the world economy over a rather impressive cliff, it would be nothing to boast about, would it?
But I'm glad you now look for domain expertise - that is unusual for a 'sceptic' as they normally dismiss it as 'appeal to authority' (having no authority of their own). As for time series analysis, there is no need to take my word for it since Tamino has already dealt with VS's stuff. And with your new found respect for domain experts, you'll be slower to dismiss AGW, or at least will provide us with your own relevant credentials before doing so in future I guess.
But there isn't a unit root, is there?.
On the ~150-year timescales VS is talking about, yes that's still a strawman.
Thanks for sharing - I'm neither responsible for how you 'feel', nor do I care. I am responsible only for what I write.
Cedric,
"Have you ever seen a dog turn into a duck?"
We've seen a wolf turn into a Pekingese. :-)
"No. Biologists are not lazy. They work for a living."
You're saying they're too busy to teach people why evolution is the best theory? And then you're surprised that people who have never been taught don't automatically know?
"Creationism is not interested in "evidence" and "experiment"."
But AGW-sceptics are.
"They win if you debate them and they win if you don't debate them."
They can't win if you debate them, because you've got better arguments. Unless, of course, you don't have any better arguments.
"They publish their work. They allow their peers to build and expand upon their work."
We've got 25 years of work invested in this. Why should I give you the data, when you're only going to try to find something wrong with it?
"They don't create lists of fake scientists."
...apart from the IPCC "more than two thousand".
"They don't invoke global conspiracies."
...unless it's somehow funded by Exxon or "right-wing think tanks"...
"They don't mindlessly attack the peer-review process."
Unless a journal publishes sceptical papers.
You see, most of the things on your list are things AGW-promoters have been caught doing, and are precisely the things sceptics object to. An actual scientist said "why should I give you the data, when you're only going to try to find something wrong with it?" An actual scientist! And you are not outraged at that!
How can you possibly look at some of the things they've done, and not recognise it for the voodoo science that you claim to be so ardently against?! I could understand it if you condemned both sides, but to completely ignore everything going on with just one of them?
"It's not just a special elitist trick to keep climate deniers out."
According to the Climategate emails, yes it was.
Don't you think it's a serious matter when such an important part of science is corrupted? "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically". That's what one "scientist" wrote to another, asking for help in rejecting a sceptical paper that demolished their methods as statistically invalid, that he had been asked to review. Peer review is normally confidential, but the Team see no problem sharing advance copies received in confidence with an author's research rivals when the Theory is at stake. And they see no problem in going to such extreme lengths to try to reject a paper they believe to be technically correct.
You can seriously read about that sort of behaviour and not be perturbed?
"There is nothing you have said in defence of you denialism that would not work perfectly well in defence of creationism:"
Actually, none of that will work, because "consensus", "peer review", and "experts" are not part of the evidence for evolution. Genuine scientists reject all of those from the outset, so they are not things that the Creationists can pick up.
This is what I said earlier. If you use a stupid, wrong, unscientific argument to try to persuade people of evolution (or AGW) - because you are too "busy" to do it properly - then you shouldn't be surprised to find it backfire horribly. That's why you lose if you try to debate. You asked for it by turning your back on science.
Frank,
"Yes. And argument from authority is only a fallacy when the appeal is to someone who is not in fact an authority."
No!!! This is the fundamental error! Argument from Authority being a fallacy applies especially to people who are real authorities! That's what it's all about - the dangers of trusting in even genuine authorities; a lesson that has been learnt painfully over centuries.
And how can you tell who is an authority, anyway?
"They lack the latter because of the former."
Maybe, but the point is that they don't lack the former because of the latter.
"In fact as Cedric has pointed out (and he is not alone) claiming to despise argument from authority is also an identifying marker of denialism."
And considering it as an identifying marker of denialism is itself an identifying marker of somebody who has fallen subject to the fallacy, who believes whatever they are told to believe by people they are told are authorities. It is the identifying mark of the fanatic, immune to all argument that does not come from the anointed sources.
The Pope is considered by many to be an Authority. Claiming to despise arguments from Papal infallibility is the mark of Theistic denial. Yes?
@John
Who was it who started this with a list of scientists?
That's easy. The creationists. Back in the early Twentieth Century.
There's plenty of lists of individual scientists around today.
They all have the same characteristics though.
1) They are outrageously padded with individuals that are not actually scientists.
2) Of those scientists that there are: the vast majority of them are speaking outside of their qualifications.
3) Some of them will be dead or unaware that they have been put on the list.
4) It always provides the mainstream scientific community will an endless source of amusement/grief that the general public could be that malleable.
So how do you convey to the public that the vast, vast, vast majority of scientists support evolution, and only an insignificant minority oppose it? How do you demonstrate that anyone who claims that a "growing number of scientists" question evolution is trying to mislead the public? How do you satisfy the urge of every mainstream biologist who wants to say, "Shut up and get a Ph.D. in biology and do 20 years of research before you tell me that the uniting principle of our field is a fairy tale!" How do you create a list that will end, once and for all, the use of lists? And finally, how do you do all this without giving the creationists any grounds to claim we're taking them seriously?
The answer? Project Steve.
@Kendra
Cedric, I would be very pleased if you could provide evidence to your statement that nicotine is addictive. In addition, I would be pleased if you could link me to information showing a "consensus" definition of addiction in the first place.
Oops.
Sorry everybody.
(…insert really awkward pause here…)
I thought it would be easy to demonstrate that nicotine is addictive but...I have to admit it...I can't.
I've got nothing.
Doing a google search on "nicotine" and "addiction" just didn't produce anything of significance at all.
Zippo. Nada. Nothing.
Just take my word for it, there’s just nothing out there.
There’s just nothing apart from some trade unions and committees armed with little more than boiler-plate statements touting for taxpayer handouts but...well…I'm going to need a lot more than that to make up my mind.
I think for myself.
The trade unions seem to be in a sort of lukewarm “consensus” on the issue but, well, the "consensus" has been wrong before so...y'know.
;)
However, it turns out that some critical thinkers have managed to get together and take a stand for real science and challenge the scientific orthodoxy.
They seem to be quite confident in their testimony to Congress that nicotine is NOT addictive.
The eminent and completely respectable scientist Fred Singer has not been able to establish any health risks from cigarettes at all. None whatsoever.
There is clearly a serious controversy in scientific circles over this issue.
Let’s all remember that there’s no such thing as settled science.
It's best to adopt a "wait and see" attitude. A healthy skepticism is the best approach to theories that are not really (as yet) facts. Science is all about the facts, not just “theories”. When science comes up with a single scientific paper that proves 100% beyond all doubt that nicotine is indeed addictive then I'll be prepared to say once again that nicotine is addictive.
Until then, make mine a Kent for that rich, full-bodied tobacco flavour!
@Dreadnought
If you are implying that all AGW sceptics are Creationists then you have made an error of logic. (Not all black birds are crows.)
Oh no. Exactly the opposite.
I'm saying that all the crows are black birds.
All the prominent bat-guano crazy creationist organisations out there have embraced climate denialism.
They are very proud of the fact. It's all very seemless, natural and consistent.
That's not because creationists suddenly and mysteriously became science-friendly.
It's because they recognize kindred spirits.
They too understand how unfair the peer-review process is.
They too understand that "consensus" is just a silly-billy word.
They too understand that statements from scientific bodies in support of biology or geology or nuclear physics or climatology or any of the physical sciences is just a bunch of atheist/commie/greenie pencil shufflers touting for business and maintaining the status quo.
They too, understand that there is a conspiracy out there.
An orthodoxy. A dogma. A high priesthood. A Church of Blind Faith in "scientism" and "Darwinism" and "Alarmism".
They too, are happy to point out how the "HMS Darwin" is sinking at about the same rate as the "USS AL BORE".
(Five years max! Boy will those sciency types look stoopid. Har Har.)
Pseudoscience, facing the same basic problem of being on the fringes of science, uses the same basic solutions. If you can't run the gauntlet of peer-review then go around it and launch a glitzy PR campaign on a hapless public. Plug the talking points that take 10 seconds or less to blurt out. Set up cardboard cutout "Institutes" that magically pop up like a fairy ring to lend gravitas.
Churn out bogus lists of individual scientists.
Get you papers "peer-reviewed" any way you can. Even vanity press journals.
Demand equal time! Demand balance from the media! Get those press releases out there.
And of course, insist on debates. Debates, debates, debates and more mass debates.
Mass debate endlessly.
Denialism isn’t just a frame of mind. It’s a regular cottage industry. Only the labels change.
[BH adds: For some reason this post got automoderated. It may be that it was too long and had too many links].
Frank, what you wrote was offensive because it was based on something that I had not said. I said that the AIC corrects for overfitting in an ARMA or ARIMA model. And I said that VS had used the AIC on climate time series (for instance in producing the most appropriate ARMA model for the univariate GISS series 18xx-19xx).
You deduced from that that I had set up a strawman. Exactly what strawman was it that I had set up? Unless you tell me that I consider you either a fool or a knave or both and I have every right to.
For it's not possible to put forward a strawman argument without being very specific. I put forward no argument at all, except that VS, in my opinion, had made an interesting start, and that his work was likely to get a good deal more interesting when he got into the multivariate, cointegration area.
Now, before he gets to the cointegration, you tell me that Tamino has already seen off all his arguments? Anyhow, I will no doubt read more of the Tamino thread as time goes by and I'm not ungrateful of the reminder, though I was already aware of it.
But I still say that I set up no strawman in my paragraph on the AIC. You accused me of doing so. You seemed in trying to justify that assertion to get me confused with someone else. And you have never retracted your groundless assertion.
Situation normal for you perhaps. Not for me. As I've said already, if the boot had been on the other foot, I would have already offered you a fulsome apology, because clearly I'd got the wrong man - there was no strawman here. Indeed, my motives would not be wholly altruistic, as I'd be very concerned by how I was viewed by any other reader of this blog if I did not do so.
But there is one other factor perhaps, in the psychology of the thing, that is worth teasing out. I'd had really graphic experience 1995-2001 of the power of the AIC not just in correcting for overfitting but for the consequent predictive power of the resulting ARMA models. And I think the very mention of overfitting hit a sore spot for you. You heard me saying something that I didn't in fact say, because the issue of overfitting in some climate models really bothers you - at least perhaps the possibility of overfitting.
Is it the lack of predictive power of many climate models that gets you down, unlike the algorithm based on the AIC I developed at that time, in a daily and highly verifiable way? Or what exactly? That's another reason I am genuinely very interested in what the strawman was you were convinced I was setting up, that had something to do with overfitting and the AIC. In your honourable openness about the exact meaning of the slur you immediately aimed at me you would also perhaps be shedding light on a weak spot in current climate science as you yourself see it. And that could be beneficial for all of us.
On recent financial problems and their relationship to modeling generally, it was subprime mortgages and the layered CDOs built on top of them, in a most irresponsible way, that caused the credit crunch. The kind of 'stat arb' modelling (statistical arbitrage) I'd been involved in from 1995 had nothing to do with this. In London I'd recommend anything by Gillian Tett on this, one of the very few journalists who sounded the alarm about CDOs in advance, from the moment in 2005 she was put on the Capital Markets desk by the Financial Times - seen as a thoroughly boring posting by her and everyone else until it she looked into it! For a single, gripping online account of how the crisis developed and of the one Wall Street hedge fund that saw it coming, big time, I strongly recommend Michael Lewis (author of Liar's Poker) and his brilliant article in Portfolio.com on Remembrance Day, November 2008.
As those accounts show, not all models are equal, nor all hedge funds. There are plenty of extremely good lessons for climate science if one is able to read with discernment and draw the right conclusions.
Richard Drake,
LOL! You mean it was a strawman? Haven't you just explained at length how despicable it is to say such a thing? Didn't you just send teddy into orbit because I said that you were putting forward a strawman?
Well, you have hurt my feelings now. You must be a very bad person. :p
But what I wrote was prompted by a perfectly reasonable interpretation of what you said anyway.
And you told us you liked the cut of his jib because he had done so.
But that is still a model that nobody is putting forward on that time scale. In other words it still doesn't address an argument anyone is making.
Not only is your mind reading poor, your basic reading comprehension is not too good either. I actually said that climate models are not based on fitting at all.
Methinks the Rev O'Dwyer finds it difficult to handle discussion of technical facts, and even moreso the complexities of theological debate without recourse to the bitter rhetoric of condescension.
"O wad some Power the Giftie gie us..."
Quidnunc,
Maybe next time you will remember to include some discussion of technical facts with your ad hominem and blatantly hypocritical accusations of condescending rhetoric.
"In other words it still doesn't address an argument anyone is making."
Nobody is saying they were. What VS was complaining about was the fact that they weren't, but they should be.
I(1) processes have the property that if you take short segments of them, you get the appearance of strong trends in them, but when you take larger samples these effects disappear. The appearance of a linear trend is spurious - the result of random noise. They're called stochastic trends. They are a case of weather, not climate.
What VS is saying is that if you do a formal statistical test on all the data, it shows that the short linear rises are stochastic. Cherry-picking short segments where it rises will therefore give misleading results. As will fitting it to estimated forcing curves that have the same effect. (Especially ones that have been partially picked by looking for forcings to fit the data.)
Tamino's response is that everybody else is fitting straight lines only to short segments or the forcing curve, not to the long one of all the data.
It's like the gambler who claims to have finally hit on a system that works, and to prove it cites the last few games in which he won. Accumulated winnings trend upwards - a nice straight line. On being told that when looking at the whole history this was nothing very unusual, his response is that this is a straw man because nobody was making claims about the whole history: he wasn't using his latest system - the explanation for the winning streak - back then. Since the system is what explains the winning streak, it's the only appropriate alternative to test against. Unfortunately, if the random process as a whole works the way it appears to when looked at as a whole, and frequently generates such incidents anyway, then such a test is weak verging on meaningless.
It's well worth developing one's intuition about I(1) processes by plotting some out, because they're very common and commonly misleading.
Frank, yes, you set up a strawman, glad the irony finally reached you. But I didn't. Your argument that I did isn't based on what I said. It's based on the fact that I liked the cut of VS's jib and your extrapolations from that. Come again? Because I like his approach I've set up a strawman? That's fantastical and ridiculous.
Let's give one example from yesterday. Eduardo Zorita addressed VS as follows:
Now, this is partly to say that I like the cut of the jib of both VS and Zorita. They are engaging on some very important questions, given how influential the Zorita paper in question has become, and although they disagree on much they are interacting in such a way that sheds light for any open-minded third party who wanders in. I thoroughly approve and I've got a lot to learn from it all.
Does that mean I've set up a strawman? Has Zorita set up a strawman by bothering to interact in such a polite manner with VS?
Please, get real and accept that I set up no strawman in recommending this thread for others to learn from too. You made a mistake. So has VS, made a few in fact (including that he thought he'd used the BIC, the Bayesian Information Criterion, rather than the AIC at first, a point he later corrected). I have no issue with people making mistakes. You did. And I'm harping on it because I think it would do you and this blog a power of good simply to admit it.
As for climate never overfitting the data because it is never fitted to the data - well, I have frequently heard words like 'tuning' used and I have recently heard fascinating reports of Jeff Kiehl's work in 2007, for example here's Richard Lindzen in the Wall Street Journal last November:
That sounds very much like fitting to many of us not addicted to climate science terms. Freeman Dyson has also taken a close look at the GCMs and makes the same criticism more generally, as reported by Larry Solomon: "They are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data."
Now I'm sure you've heard all this before and you have some ready answers. But I think that Dyson's right to say that the GCMs are fitted to real world data, through their fudge factors. Although I fully expect you to explode in another fit of disdain and condescension I think you should accept that it does look exactly like fitting the data to those of us who have tried modelling and forecasting in other areas. And no necessary problem with that.
Now the terminology is behind us, are any climate models overfitted? Very good question. But I wasn't offering VS's use of the AIC as any kind of proof of that. Just as a token of his good practice, of his facility with modern methods in mathematical statistics. And that it is. No strawman. But certainly one in your various responses.
Quod erat demonstrandum
You're saying they're too busy to teach people why evolution is the best theory?
Yes. Teaching is the responsibility of teachers.
Biologists are kinda busy doing biology. It’s a full time job.
It’s like being a doctor.
Doctors practice medicine. Not much time left over to educate the huddled masses on Grey’s Anatomy (the book) . Most of the public can barely comprehend the TV show.
Getting the public educated about science is a full time job.
For educators. Who can afford to devote their full energies to it.
"Creationism is not interested in "evidence" and "experiment"."
But AGW-sceptics are.
Not according to the peer-reviewed literature. The climate denier track record there is woeful. It’s the climatologists that are doing all the heavy lifting.
There’s such a small pool of climatologists on the climate denier side that you know them all by name.
They can't win if you debate them, because you've got better arguments.
Debate relies upon razzamatazz! The zip. The zap. The kapow. The mojo.
It’s showmanship.
The audience decides the winner. High school dropouts who feel asleep during science class.
They will vote for the one with the biggest tits.
That’s why you get a nutjob like Jenny McCarthy debating with a doctor who can read without moving their lips….and HAVE McCarthy win! And gain fabulous free publicity for their dispicable cause.
Denialists need debates like they need air.
Science is not done by debates on TV because it’s not a game show.
Science is hard.
That’s why we have…specialists.
Knowledge is earned. Not passed out between commercials like a bowl of popcorn.
Cedric: "They publish their work. They allow their peers to build and expand upon their work."
Annoyed: Why should I give you the data, when you're only going to try to find something wrong with it?
No. You don’t get it. I was not talking about one individual. Nor a team of individuals. Nor one research center. Nor one community of scientists. Nor one scandal; real or otherwise.
I was talking about the scientific process as a whole. The global community. The big picture. Millions of scientists living in the real world getting on with the job of science. To suggest that one individual or one research center or even an entire university is somehow “bad” and that therefore the global community is somehow “bad” is…odd.
It’s not logical. Unless of course, you want to claim some systematic, global conspiracy? Do you really want to invoke a conspiracy theory?
Cause that would sound a lot like…a creationist.
Cedric: "They don't create lists of fake scientists."
Annoyed: ...apart from the IPCC "more than two thousand"
“Tu quoque”? Bad form.
The idea is to show that you are…different from, say, the HIV deniers. You’re not supposed to mimic them.
You have to show how your list isn’t like creationist lists or HIV lists.
Because if you don’t we get this…
A: Hey, HIV denier. Your list is fake.
B: Oh yeah, well your IPCC is blah,blah,blah…
Notice how we are magically no longer examining the fake HIV denier list?
Now the topic has switched to the mainstream science.
The HIV denier can do it and thereby deftly change the subject away from himself. You can do it too in order to avoid criticism of your list. Yet another example of imitation.
Cedric: "They don't invoke global conspiracies."
Annoyed: ...unless it's somehow funded by Exxon or "right-wing think tanks"
Exxon is not a “global conspiracy”. It’s just a big company with lots of money that it doesn’t want to lose. To protect it’s interests, it and other members of the energy industry are engaged in a well funded PR campaign to manipulate public opinion.
Not via mind-control rays but via PR firms. Mudane. Unethical but mundane .
Cedric: "They don't mindlessly attack the peer-review process."
Annoyed: Unless a journal publishes sceptical papers.
Peer reviewed papers are routinely attacked in journals. That’s kinda the point of the peer-review process.
It’s open season. No holds barred. If you can’t handle the heat then get out of the kitchen.
The performance of climate deniers has been dismal.
Hence the need to do an end-run around the scientific process and play to the gallery for support with tiny, zappy sound-bites.
Mainstream scientists don’t need to do that. They follow the boring old-fashioned method of doing the job, writing it down, getting it published and then seeing what happens next.
How can you possibly look at some of the things they've done, and not recognise it for the voodoo science that you claim to be so ardently against?
The key word here is “they”. If you’re referring to a manageable group of people doing something wrong then…ok.
Hang ‘em from the highest yardarm.
If , however you’re trying to get some traction on a getting a global conspiracy theory going then…welcome back to the wonderful world of denialism and general kookery.
According to the Climategate emails, yes it was
Emails?
I don’t get my biology from “emails”. I don’t get my medical science from “emails”. There’s no reason to get my climate science from “emails’.
It’s the work that matters. Not the post-it notes stuck all over the office cubicles.
Don't you think it's a serious matter when such an important part of science is corrupted?
No science has been shown to be corrupted.
That would require people going to the peer-reviewed literature and examining it for errors.
Emails, secret diaries, dangerous liasions with bonobos smothered in whipped cream is all very thrilling. However, after the outrageous outrage is passed, I want to see the effect on the work as represented in the peer reviewed literature.
That’s all that counts in the end.
The work.
Actually, none of that will work, because "consensus", "peer review", and "experts" are not part of the evidence for evolution.
Imagine how more credible that would sound if you could back it up.
That HIV is the primary cause of AIDS is the strongly held consensus opinion of the scientific community, based upon over two decades of robust research. Deniers must therefore reject this consensus, either by denigrating the notion of scientific authority in general, or by arguing that the mainstream HIV community is intellectually compromised. It is therefore not surprising that much of the newer denial literature reflects a basic distrust of authority and of the institutions of science and medicine.
HIV Denial in the Internet Era.
Evolution vs. Creationism:Experts vs. Scientists-Peer Review
And
Evolution vs. Creationism: Epistemology
Richard Drake,
Perhaps the irony of accusing me of being, among other things, a hypocrite simply for stating the same about you will one day reach you. I can wait.
See, I've said you've made a mistake and you've said I've made a mistake. For some reason it is "despicable" when I say this, but not when you do it.
It's possible that one or both of us have made a mistake. Neither of us accept that we have (except that I have actually spotted and apologised for my mistaken attribution, which is not relevant to my original remarks).
But only one of us has engaged in egregious mind reading (that would be you) and only one of us has thrown their toys out of the pram and called the other a coward, a hypocrite and generally dishonest (this, again, would be you). All because I won't "admit" to a mistake I don't believe I have made, any more than you will. Well I must be a very bad person indeed.
Do you need me to elaborate or shall I fetch a bigger mirror?
Fallacy of equivocation.
The models aren't produced by curve fitting. Period. You may as well ask if they have too much yeast in them.
Cedric,
"Getting the public educated about science is a full time job."
Any scientist can do their bit.
"Not according to the peer-reviewed literature."
Will you please stop going on about the peer-reviewed literature! That's not experiment and evidence.
As I'm sure you well know, the reason that sceptics don't get as much past peer review is that almost all the peer reviewers the journals use are AGW-supporters who judge by whether a paper supports the orthodoxy over whether it is correct. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically" - that's what scepticism is up against. Even if their papers are correct, even if the peer reviewer cannot find anything wrong with it, he'll keep on looking until he does! They'll try to oust any editor who lets sceptical papers past, and threaten to boycott any journal that does so. And the journals won't publish it anyway, because of all the lost custom and political attacks they'll catch from the community for "being a denier". Journals are businesses out to make a profit. It's simple self-interest.
And academics who can't get published don't stay employed for very long. It's like Natural Selection. :-)
"Debate relies upon razzamatazz!"
No it doesn't. You can fool some people that way, but there's a large segment of the audience who are quite capable of spotting BS and rejecting it. Your group are so firmly convinced that the general public are incapable of understanding, that everything you say is dumbed down to the point of incoherency. But the general public includes people who are well-educated, and they can speak to their friends and colleagues who are less well-educated, and so the word spreads. And what those well-educated people are saying is that AGW as presented in the media is dumbed-down BS and authority-spin. You're trying to use razzamatazz yourselves, and it hasn't worked for you, either.
"To suggest that one individual or one research center or even an entire university is somehow “bad” and that therefore the global community is somehow “bad” is…odd."
Straw man. I was talking about climatology, not scientists generally. But this is the nearest you've come so far to acknowledging that one individual or research centre might have done something bad. Well done! Just one more little step...
"“Tu quoque”? Bad form."
Quite so. I don't generally agree with such lists, because it's just mimicking the IPCC. But first, you'll have to show me how the IPCC claim isn't just like the HIV deniers...
"To protect it’s interests, it and other members of the energy industry are engaged in a well funded PR campaign to manipulate public opinion."
Very poorly funded, actually. Sceptic funds are roughly three orders of magnitude smaller than the government/NGO/carbon-trader funding for CAGW alarmism. Al Gore alone once announced a $300m advertising campaign, ten times larger on its own than everything Exxon has ever given. And the energy industry are amongst the funders of AGW-alarmism too, once they realised just how much they could cash in on it.
"Peer reviewed papers are routinely attacked in journals. That’s kinda the point of the peer-review process."
Almost right. Peer-review is the bit that gets it in the journal. After it's published is when it gets attacked - by people downloading the data and trying to replicate the result. And then making a fuss when they discover the data isn't available, the algorithms are wrongly described, and basic stats errors render the results invalid. (And before you say anything, they wrote it up and got all of that published in a peer-reviewed journal.)
That's kinda the point of publishing it.
"The key word here is “they”. If you’re referring to a manageable group of people doing something wrong then…ok. Hang ‘em from the highest yardarm."
Hurrah!
Bravo! I agree! Excellent! And thank you.
You've still got a stray conditional in there, but nevertheless, I feel such a statement deserves a positive response.
"If , however you’re trying to get some traction on a getting a global conspiracy theory going then..."
Nope. No global conspiracy. Just lots of people all going along with it because they all assume that somebody else must have checked it. None of them realising that nobody has.
"It’s the work that matters. Not the post-it notes stuck all over the office cubicles."
Umm. You're expecting that they would publish their conspiracies to rig the peer-review process in peer-reviewed journals? How very... how did you put it again?... odd.
"That would require people going to the peer-reviewed literature and examining it for errors."
To test for corruption, you have to go to the literature that was both accepted and rejected by peer-review and check it for errors. If the bar is set higher for sceptical than for orthodox, that's corruption.
"Imagine how more credible that would sound if you could back it up."
It's a standard part of the philosophy of science. It's even the motto of the Royal Society. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.
Pa Annoyed to Cedric,
It is where experiment and evidence are formally discussed.
No that's not how it works. Results are best replicated as independently as possible.
When you did high school physics did you use some other classes data or did you do the experiment yourself?
That's what the HIV cranks say too, but it's BS.
Of course another possible reason the 'sceptics' don't get much past peer review because they don't do much good science.
My God Cedric. I see you haven't started having fun yet! :)
Pa Annoyed,
What VS is saying is not at all clear, its relevance to AGW still less so, and as I mentioned before his argument is itself something of a random walk. We've gone from random walk, to bounded random walk, and lately he's started saying the series trend is partly deterministic.
But w.r.t. your statement, short segments aren't cherry picked where they rise (for example see Tamino's demonstration of sliding regressions to show that the change since the mid 70s emerges from the data itself). More importantly however the enhanced greenhouse effect and the GHG forcings aren't simply pulled from nowhere to fit past data but have been confirmed by observations of increased downward radiation. See in particular this nice post from skepticalscience.com and the referenced paper Evans 2006.
Frank
That's good to hear. That means you may have something to learn. I've already said I do. Neither of us knows where that's going to take us. At least Zorita is secure enough to say thank you.
Nobody's saying that there's been no attempt to model the physics. What Kiehl, Lindzen, Dyson and many others are saying is that there are fudge factors, not able to be determined by fundamental physics, that can be used to fit past data, and they are used this way. There is a fundamental divide on this, between those who believe curve-fitting is a fair description and those that for obscure reasons I have never grapsed do not. James Lovelock's words on the subject yesterday are worth quoting in full:
Clouds and aerosols. Fudge factors. Not a single thunderstorm ever simulated, falling between the cracks of the grid. But not in real life. Fudge factors. And thus curve fitting. In five years all the physics sorted, able to make a start on the biology. I remain to be convinced on that one, not least for reasons of computational power and the time we've got before the Sun goes dark. Many really fascinating issues.
There's a body of opinion that says the old-fashioned description works. I'm suggesting for now that you admit folks like Dyson think so, you don't and we park it there.
But in my original post, which you dismissed as 'strawman', I wasn't making that point and could not have been construed as making that point. I was telling the story of what grabbed my attention when I first looked at VS's work. What that needed perhaps was this comment from you:
That would have done fine. You had no need to insult me and you had no basis to. I remain angry that you cannot find it in yourself put that one thing right. Whatever I've said back does not justify your sticking to the original insult, if it had no basis. And you can't show me that it did from my own words, because I said nothing about AGW at all. It's a ridiculous impasse Frank. I'm not sure how long I will repeat the point to you this week. By all means keep coming back to find out.
Compliments to you, Cedric, for being able to admit that what the general "consensus" on nicotine is not supported by evidence. This is rare indeed.
While it seems there is a fairly strong correlation between active smoking and lung cancer, cancer being a disease of old age, normally, obviously that is one area where smokers are more vulnerable, while in non-smokers the vulnerability might be elsewhere, although never-smokers also suffer from it. Keep in mind this is the "science" of epidemiology. An interesting subcategory of one of the more well-known studies is the comparison between smokers who eat vegetables and non-smokers who don't - lower risk for smokers!
Thousands of animals have been tortured in an effort to prove the addiction theory as well, to no avail. What is truly scandalous is the junk science used to support second-hand smoke fear mongering, you would be appalled! And have a look at whose self-interests are being served in Tobacco Control movement.
Although this seems off-topic, it's relevant to the creationist-skeptic argument: you would see that almost everyone who has investigated the tobacco issue and found it lacking also questions every issue where "science" is being used as a bludgeon for control. Forums discussing the issue all also have a "global warming" subcategory. So I've provided more ammunition for this (specious!?) sort of argument!
I find it a bit of a shame that this doesn't go the other way, most skeptics are on that bandwagon too and assume the tobacco science is settled. Not! It's one more huge scam, that has already had disastrous effects. Denormalization, extortionate taxes (far more than they supposedly cost society, which is in itself junk science - you should see how that's reckoned!), turning children against their parents, neighbor against neighbor, running roughshod over private property rights and freedom to assemble, as well as a downright cultural genocide. Not to mention the unintended consequences of rapes and muggings in alleys, old people freezing to death.
On a personal note, I'm part Native American - how ironic that a plant sacred to us has been demonized.
The parallels also exist in what comprises the vested special interests - including the global governance one (Framework Convention).
Healthist fear-mongering has also spread into other areas, as I'm quite sure you're aware. Ironic, I'm a nutrition nut but I would never dream to impose my "belief system" on others - altho there are those who are interested (my health is "robust") and I'm very pleased to give not only my opinion but point them to the latest "studies" that at least for now have some validity, never forgetting the next study might very well put a different slant on things. I actually use my powers of reasoning as well!
If nothing else, just for fun, have a look at numberwatch.co.uk.
Sorry, Bishop, for going off-topic like this but I find this a very important, overlooked issue that overlaps in many ways with the climate wars.
Richard Drake,
It may also mean that VS has something to learn.
Just as well that I provided exactly such a comment in my very first contribution to this thread then. Don't you remember replying to it?
The only one hurling unwarranted insults in this thread has been you.
All I said was that I considered that you were arguing against a strawman - you have said exactly the same about me, along with hurling a great deal of out and out abuse. If you cannot handle the idea that someone thinks you might have made such a mistake without considering it an 'insult' then you must be a very sensitive flower indeed and perhaps the blogs aren't for you.
And no, physical models (whether good bad or indifferent) still aren't done by curve fitting any more than they are made using pasta and your use of this term is still equivocation. As the man said 'I gotta use words when I talk to you', and words mean something.
I called your phrase 'this is still a strawman' gibberish and I stand by that. In your response you used sarcasm about something you quoted me as saying that you considered a strawman, criticised me for using sarcasm, then admitted that what you thought I'd said hadn't been said by me but by someone else. At which point I did let fly with words like hypocrite and coward, which again I stand by. Sorry that you may not have picked up at that point or later how amusing I found your various mistakes. The fact that you can't smile ruefully and admit that you, the great debater and rebutter of sceptics, in this case made a horlicks of your self-appointed task I was in fact quite surprised by. I have a lower opinion of you than I expected but I still find the whole incident amusing and for that I thank you. Pip-pip.
Richard Drake,
No I didn't use sarcasm there. I'm beginning to wonder whether you are communicating using English or your own private language.
Actually I criticised you of sarcastic praise instead of simply pointing to examples of my 'empty rhetoric'. Since I didn't do that, that isn't hypocrisy. An example of hypocrisy would be acting like using the term 'strawman' was an insult beyond the pale, somewhere on a par with calling your invalid aunt a crack addict, and then turning around and using the same term and hurling abuse yourself.
See, I don't mind how much sarcasm you use or how many insults you hurl or what your opinion of me is - as long as you get around to addressing the arguments I make at some time. And if you recall, I already gave you my full permission to call me names if you have no rebuttal to my arguments.
So now you were amused? You didn't mention that when you shared your feelings earlier. Could have sworn you said you were angry. But amused, no. You certainly seemed angry when you launched into your rather frothing and disproportionate rant. Indeed this suspicion was confirmed later when you said you were angry.
Still it's good that you can laugh at it now, eh? Maybe one day you will be able to laugh at your own mistakes, or even admit to one.