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Apr192012
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Bishop Hill
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Apr 19, 2012 Climate: other I am appearing at a panel discussion in St Andrews next week. It's open to the public.
Apr 19, 2012 Climate: other 
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Reader Comments (55)
All Welcome? Do they really mean that? I'm afraid Dover is a bit far away. Best of luck in the debate, looking forward to seeing notes on your debate on line here.
Is anyone interested in going from Glasgow. If so is there anyway of car sharing (I know we shouldn't ... I was thinking more of the cost)
Crowley+Montford...what an interesting mix! :)
Best of luck
For a moment there I thought it was about baseball!
('World Series')
Bit far from Burgundy but I'll be with you in spirit.
Macallan, probably. <:)
I notice on Crowleys home page (http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/tcrowley) some of his work references Mann, Briffa and Jones. Should be an interesting debate - good luck Bishop.
2pm - 5pm - that sounds like quite a marathon. Interesting that the existence of a "debate" is acknowledged.
Knock it out of the park, Bishop.
The only Tom Crowley contribution to climate debate that is worth remembering is the surprise he expressed when he found out how hard it was for O'Donnell et al to pass peer-review when they set out to debunk Steig's 2009 Antarctic warming paper.
That was more than a year ago.
What other 'update' does Crowley have to offer to climate debate since then?
Is there any chance that it will be streamed live on line?
I would certainly wish to watch it.
Any way. Always anticipate what the other guy will claim. Be prepared and very very Good luck.
If it were my monthly week for being in Scotland I'd be there like a shot.
'Win one for the Gipper, Your Grace!'...or some other such vaguely meaningless Yankee phrase aligned to their poor and insipid substitute for cricket.
Or perhaps you should wait until Crowley is crouching down at silly mid on with his legs apart waiting for a tickle. A perfect opportunity to grab his middle stump and shout Howzat as you hit him with a Hokey Stick.
Thomas Crawley seems to be US-educated and had a research appointment in Texas. Link below:
http://www.gulfbase.org/person/view.php?uid=tcrowley
Unfortunately maybe 2hrs 45 mins of lecture will be followed by 15 mins of debate!
At least they are attempting to have a "Grown up public debate" as they say. I hope you can get some clear thinking into the heads of the already brain washed students;. take no fracking nonsense from them either.
I remember attending a talk at the RIBA chaired by Monbiot, in the wake of Climategate 1. He firstly tried to steal Mr McIntyre's time but Mr McIntyre was having none of it secondly he decided to do boy girl boy girl in the question an answer session. The room was 90 % male, Monbiot's logic of course was the women would be more favourable to his cause and so it proved to be.
I am sure you would not fall into that those traps and lets hope you are treated fairly by your hosts.
Best wishes
S
The World Serious.
H/t Ring Lardner.
=============
It should be an important duel. Tom Crowley, apart from his own proxy work, seems to have been on the main 'cc' list and thus privy to 'Team Hockey Stick's thought processes, so presumably he is intimately conversant with the hockey stick controversy, I would judge.
A search on his name in the Climategate 2 emails returns 401 results.
The Bish will I'm sure not need reminding but on 4 Jan 11 Steve McIntyre wrote this at the start of a long thread on Climate Audit entitled Crowley’s Apology:
A day later Barclay E MacDonald commented:
to which Steve replied:
What a guy. Anyone else ever felt meanminded after they've been corrected in this way on a climate blog? Some of us need that correction, more than once, of that I'm convinced. I also found Lucia's summary of the situation the next day helpful:
I found the backstory on this extremely illuminating at the time. I haven't followed the issue since and I'm in no position to give a reading on Dr Crowley's current state of mind vis-a-vis Steve, Andrew or sceptics generally. But this one act of unprompted apology was a good one. I hope it's a fruitful time on 25th.
In the words of Leo, the Lip, "Stick it in their ear."
Cricket Richerd, that's one heck of a memory you have there!!! :)
Regards
Mailman
Maybe Tom should have got his apology published in EOS and broadcast by the BBC. Otherwise it looks like doing the damage in the sunday papers then printing an apology in the parish magazine.
It's called a personal wiki where I snip things that catch my eye, Mailman. That incident really gripped me.
Follow the links in the ClimateAudit post - to the "EOS" paper and to McIntyre's reply.
Crowley looks bad. His "apology" looks bad.
It's a fake non-apology - impersonal and not really saying sorry for anything.
good
& remember this -
http://climateaudit.org/2011/02/18/publishing-review-comments-the-crowley-incident/
bygones
Jack, you're happy to ignore Steve McIntyre's expressed view at that time, are you?
dougie, thanks - I'd forgotten the "bizarro world of climate academia" bit.
Richard Drake
Thanks for those quotes. Yes, I remember now, the apology to Steve McIntyre came on the heels of Crowley expressing surprise at the hostile peer-review the O'Donnell et al paper was put through. Prior to that, Crowley was known to skeptics -or at least known to me- as a typically unreliable climate doomsday scientist. His name was all over the place in the Climategate mails too. In fact, that was when I first heard his name, being fairly new to the climate doomsday debate.
As for Lucia saying,
Yes, thanks for that too, because now that you've mentioned it, I distinctly remember wondering at the time whether Crowley read Lucia's comment and whether he'd follow up his apology to Steve with a letter to EOS. Had he done so he would have catapulted his credibility up near those of Eduardo Zorita and Hans von Storch, who IMHO are among the few warmist climate scientists whose honesty and integrity remain untarnished.
(As a side note, although I believe von Storch was wrong in resigning as the editor of a journal that published Soon & Boulinas, he more than made up for that mistake by genuinely reaching out to skeptics and criticising ever-so-diplomatically the leading figures of climate science and their mixing of science and politics in his blog Die Klimazwiebel. What has Crowley offered apart from a belated and dubious apology to Steve?)
I hope Crawley will get a question about his role in attacking climate doomsday skeptics and whether he is objective enough to offer a credible update to the debate.
Apr 19, 2012 at 11:52 PM | Richard Drake
-----------------------------------------------
I prefer Lucia's thoughts on the matter, "Now that Tom Crowley has admitted that his published letter was inaccurate, I hope EOS will see fit to publish a statement that Tom Crowley retracts his own EOS letter and publishes Steve McIntyre’s rebuttal, along with a note explaining that they had received Steve McIntyre’s rebuttal but declined to publish it."
It goes beyond Mr McIntyre's personal feelings ... this is about slandering the sceptic view to the warmista. The warmista need to be informed that the slander was wrong or, as sure as God made little green apples, Dr Crowley's opinions will continue to influence their thinking and citations.
Richard Drake (Apr 19, 2012 at 9:34 PM) asks:
Yes I have. But as Streetcred says above, this goes beyond Mr McIntyre's personal feelings. I too have felt a warm forgiving glow when some journalist has deigned to reply to my criticisms instead of treating me as a denier and a scumbag. It’s called the Stockholm syndrome.Streetcred et al: I was very conscious as I wrote that Andrew is going to be face to face with Dr Crowley in five days time. As I've said recently it's easy to do outrage on climate blogs. But Montford is about to do a head-to-head with this guy in public. That will reveal much - and Montford's attitude will influence the way he comes across. I'd very much prefer to leave the story open for that reason.
Of course when we are guilty of wrongdoing - gross libel and defamation of Steve Mc in this case - we should put it right to exactly the extent we got it wrong in the first place. But let's just say Dr Crowley knew that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that EOS would publish his apology and Steve's original correction? Maybe he did try to persuade the journal privately but it didn't listen and he didn't record a public complaint about this on Climate Audit, at the United Nations, or wherever?
I don't know which it is. All I have is Steve Mc's reaction at the time. And that Andrew has this very important public outing coming up in front of what one hopes is an intelligent crowd. (Will NT Wright sit in? One of the most intelligent men I've ever met is now at the university. There's got to be some play on words there - Tom having given up being a Bishop, and his seat in the House of Lords, and the very place he's chosen to return to academia celebrating Saint Andrew :) )
It's easy to damn this man for what he failed to do - but how many of Steve's critics have shown the integrity to do what he did? Why close the door on something even better on 25th? Once again, how do such counsels of perfection come so easily to those whose own track record under moral (and peer) pressure is completely opaque to us all?
And geoffchambers knows Steve Mc was suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome in this situation. Wow. Such ability to reach into the mind of another in history and defame them thereby. Great stuff, keep it up.
Richard Drake
No, I didn’t say or mean that Steve McIntyre was suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. (and I won’t be demanding an apology for suggesting that I did : )). I did agree with you about sometimes feeling meanminded, but this isn’t one of those times.
Steve, like His Grace, has a policy of politeness and the infinite patience to carry it out. We in the congregation are not bound by such strict rules. The question I try to ask myself before being rude on a sceptic blog is: Will Leo Hickman pick this up and quote it as typical of the opinions of the Big-Oil-financed-denier-shill-flat-earth community? I hope that my comments, like Richard Drake’s, are sufficiently intelligent as to be beyond the comprehension of Hickman and his kind.
Your Grace,
Delighted as I would be by a debate between intelligent people on both sides of the question I cannot but wonder if Dr Crowley will show up.
The record to date suggests that warmists, however hot, tend to avoid debate like rabies.
Good luck and all but please have several hours of solid material ready in case this rather doubtful man fails to show up.
Geoff, given that Steve's the wronged party I'd be very strongly inclined to take his lead on this one (and that would include any update he might want to give publicly or to Andrew in private). Ross McKitrick made the case on the original thread that Crowley's apology wasn't manly enough, because it seemed to make excuses and it didn't make amends as far as EOS was concerned. Steve sure didn't disagree with any of that. But Steve thought some criticisms of Crowley went too far. I wanted to clarify the Stockholm Syndrome point - thanks for doing that. I think your Hickman test is exactly right. We live and, hopefully, learn.
Pardon my ignorance, but could someboby tell me what EOS is?
HTTS: Eos (their preferred capitalisation) is the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. When I just googled it the relevant html page came up second, with:
Richard Drake
Sorry about my lack of clarity. (I hope our difference of opinion isn’t too boring for everyone else, but I think it’s important). To be clear, when I accused myself of suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, I was being silly. Since it’s an irrational, unconscious reaction, if you think you’ve got it, you haven’t.
Like you, I’m thrilled that scepticism is at last being taken seriously, (as shown, for example by the presence of Betts &co here), and the choice of Montford to debate the subject at a prestigious event is important in itself. He’s the best person in the UK to do it, though hampered by the fact that he has no academic or elective mandate: he’s got a book and a blog, and that’s all. If he can establish a reputation as the person to consult when the media need an authoritative sceptical voice, this will be an enormous step forward.
How the debate goes depends on factors outside our control. Crowley and his supporters may read this thread, and it seems to me useful that Streetcred, sHx and others have reminded the opposition that we know who Dr Crowley is (which is not at all the same thing as saying we know where he lives).
@Richard Drake
The whole thing is now in the public domain. We are free to make our own judgement of Crowley's conduct including whether his "apology" is sincere or not.
If Steve Mc wanted to fully accept the apology he should have either said nothing at all in public or just briefly mentioned there had been an apology and left it at that. Instead he posts the details and the "apology" with a commentary on his public blog.
We are free to judge the incident and the actors by our own standards.
Just by way of an example a neighbour borrowed my saw and broke it. He said "I am sorry I have broken your saw. I will get you a new one or give you the cost of a new one". I accepted this apology in private: I did not post the exact wording on a blog with a commentary. The genuine sincerity of my neighbour strengthened our relationship.
The real apology contained the key ingredients of a real apology:
1) The words "I am sorry".
2) Specific details in active voice "I broke your saw" - not "sorry that you don't like having a broken saw"
3) Making amends where possible.
4) Nothing else - no waffle or blaming the saw or the wood or any other deflection.
I judge the character of a senior academic Crowley by the same standards as I judge my neighbour.
PS: is this the Skeptical front of Judea or the Judean Skeptical Front :)
Geoff:
That strikes me as a racing certainty.
With respect it was I that pointed to the key thread from Steve in January last year and Lucia's excellent summary of what was lacking in Dr Crowley's unexpected public apology the next day. I was busy during the day yesterday but had been somewhat irked to read this from sHx:
The reaction to O'Donnell being a useful addition to shared memory - but it wasn't the only contribution worth mentioning. And of course no URLs were included so there's nowhere we can check out exactly what Crowley's contribution in that other area was.
Because I would expect Crowley or his camp followers to read this thread this struck me both as unnecessarily negative and missing something of greater significance. As people may have picked up I have an issue with the unnecessarily negative from pseudoni on Andrew's blog just before he meets the individual in question very publicly.
Thanks for the rest of what you've said which exactly summarise my own feelings. Go Andrew.
What will these people do for a living when they finally realise Tyndall's apparent proof of direct thermalisation of IR by GHGs was nothing of the kind and that probably what really happens is pseudo-scattering followed by indirect thermalisation at clouds and other aerosols, or escape to space?
Do we have the physical explanation of Miskolczi's observation of constant IR optical depth, the mechanism by which clouds on a water planet control IR optical depth to a constant level?
Jack, in case you've haven't noticed the debate around Steve McIntyre has been bitter and polarised. I personally was gobsmacked by Tom Crowley's unsolicited contribution in January 2011. I think it should be judged not just in terms of what it lacked (which should be mentioned - and Geoff's right that it's a good thing for Crowley supporters to read before next Wednesday) but according to the very strong feelings and prejudices that had built up before it. It may be that peer pressure has done its evil work since and Crowley will perform even worse than Michael Mann on a bad day. But let's note this good deed and hope, even pray, for the best, including for our host to have the wisdom of Solomon in real-time.
mdgnn: First 'these people' have to read your landmark paper which overturns their understanding of all these things. Maybe if you're lucky that process will quicker than for continental drift or what became tectonic plates. But I think the landmark paper will be needed. All the best with it. Andrew meanwhile needs wisdom on how to position sceptics viv-a-vis greenhouse theory. I'd cleave to the Lindzen line.
Hi Richard: I'm working on the next stage of the IR story. Nasif Nahle reportedly observed no warming [IR pyrometer] when he repeated the 'PET bottle experiment' using a very thin walled Mylar balloon to hold CO2 enriched air and he argues that theory predicts extra CO2 reduces emissivity/absorptivity: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/04/determining-the-total-emissivity-of-a-mixture-of-gases-containing-overlapping-absorption-bands/
So, how does the observable GHG warming really occur? Lindzen's problem is that he is trying to compromise but being a meteorologist was taught incorrect physics like 'downwelling IR'. You can't compromise with incorrect science, you have to correct it.
Richard Drake
Thankyou - Obviously I was using the wrong search engine
Jack Hughes (Apr 20, 2012 at 8:44 AM)
I thought it was on a par with the disagreement between Bakunin and Marx which split the first Socialist International, but you’re probably right. Better to split hairs than to split Our Great Movement on the threshold of its Great Leap Forward.Tom Crowley also made an appearance in the comments to Revkin's article relating to Gleick and Heartland. One of the few mainstream scientists (along with Annan and Schmidt) who were entirely clear in their condemnation of Gleick.
He may not be overly sympathetic to the skeptics, but he has at least shown himself, in both the Steve Mc apology and in the Heartland episode, to be motivated by the science and not 'The Cause'. As such, and as someone peripheral to the Hockey Team, he will be an interesting person to debate with.
I'm glad Richard Drake posted those links. When I first started reading the "hockey stick" papers, I assumed that Prof. Crowley (& his wife, Prof. Hegerl) were as unopen to reason as Prof. Mann. Indeed, McIntyre pegged him as one of "the Team" when RealClimate came up with the term. So, like Richard Drake, when I saw his apology to McIntyre, I was shocked - in a good way! Sure, it was hardly a complete apology, but considering the antagonism in the "climate debate", it was a brave and admirable admission.
I gained considerable respect for him for that. I would have gained more if he had given a complete apology, though...
As Ian B comments above, I now think Crowley "to be motivated by the science and not 'The Cause'". He just seems to have fully accepted paradigms, he shouldn't have, i.e., "CO2 is the main driver of all things climate". He seems to be stuck viewing ALL his results (his "hockey stick" studies, his "Snowball Earth" studies and his GCM studies) through that paradigm. I actually think a lot of the current climate scientists have the same problem.
A good scientist should routinely try to identify his/her paradigms and then try to disprove them. Crowley (& a lot of the top IPCC climate scientists) don't seem to be able to do that for the CAGW theory. Climategate and talking to my fellow scientists has also made me realise it is a systemic problem.
As Konrad Lorenz jokingly said: "It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young."
Unfortunately, it is not always as easy as Lorenz implied. I guess he didn't get a Nobel Prize for being a typical scientist.
So, while I am personally unimpressed with Crowley's current understanding of the science, I do believe he genuinely believes what he is saying. The apology also shows he has more integrity than many of his peers. I didn't read the comments on Revkin's article that Ian B mentions, but if that's true it's another example of his integrity.
I would be very interested in the debate, particularly as both the Bishop and Crowley have written a good deal on the same topic i.e., the "hockey stick".
Bish, any chance the lectures will be recorded and available online afterwards? I'd definitely drop by if I was near Edinburgh, but I won't be. Good luck, at any rate! And, enjoy it!
P.S. @MDGNN, your writings remind me of my problems with Crowley's, even though your views are diametrically opposed!
You seem so absolutely convinced that you're right and everyone else is wrong. I'm not objecting to your hypothesis itself. I actually have a number of serious concerns with the current greenhouse effect models, which I'm pursuing.
But, repeatedly stating your hypothesis as fact, does not make it so!!!
Especially, when you do so in off-topic comments on other people's blog posts!
Have you thought about setting up your own blog to present your ideas?
Blog Lurker: the difference is that I am totally independent. I am not convinced I am right on the particular subject I have presented today. However, I am right on my initial study which was to show net 'cloud albedo effect' cooling has been exaggerated and is probably slightly positive.
This is easy to prove: look at clouds preparing to rain and they go darker underneath, higher albedo. This has been reported by others and runs counter to that predicted by the 'two stream approximation' in the climate models.
No cloud cooling and you reduce by 44% the IPCC's claimed AGW. Account for Hansen's incorrect 33 K present GHG [really ~9 K on the 'flat earth' model] and IPCC AGW falls by a factor of ~6.7.
The real physics is the reduction of cloud albedo when you reduce droplet coarsening kinetics. This is the real mechanism for the end of ice ages which starts 2 ky before any CO2 increase and also explains recent warming in the Arctic, now reversing as shown by the substantial reduction of N. Atlantic OHC: bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/figure-102.png
You can't get that from GHG-AGW. So, we probably have no net AIE, AGW is much smaller than claimed, possibly zero and there is apparent evidence showing real GHG warming is from indirect thermalisation. No cooling by polluted clouds means it's not looking good for this 'settled science'?
@MDGNN, have you thought of putting your ideas out on your own blog? You seem to enjoy discussing your research in the comments of the Bishop's posts. You seem to have comments in every second post or so & they're frequently off-topic. So, it seems to me, you've plenty of material for your own blog. And if you're running your own blog, you get to decide what's on-topic or not. You also can go into as much or as little detail as you like.
With http://wordpress.com or Google's blogspot.com, you can set up a reasonable-looking blog in 5 or 10 minutes for free! It's genuinely as easy as setting up an e-mail account. In fact if you have a gmail account, you probably already have a blogspot.com account. Wordpress.com is much nicer & more flexible (don't confuse it with wordpress.org - you need to get hosting & it requires a bit of work...), but it won't let you include AdSense.
You could still comment here, but you would have your own forum for going into more detail. The Bishop might even add you to his excellent blogroll, which I know I for one find a very useful resource. Thanks, Bishop! :)
The current Global Climate Models (GCM) are useless in my opinion.
I have some experience in computer modelling in another field, so I'm not against computer modelling, or climate modelling for that matter. But, so many approximations and assumptions which are implemented in the current GCMs have been poorly justified, and their hindcasts are unimpressive. (although, I've only looked at CMIP3 and earlier)
P.S. I never understood what "settled science" was. I assume it's something to do with studying the stuff at the bottom of these things: http://www.garic.co.uk/settlement-tanks.php? Am I right?
Blog Lurker; for the moment I must remain on the sidelines. However, if events allow, I shall open the discussion because 'Nature' is publishing more junk science and GISS et. al. are fiddling yet more data.
This is alchemy not science and it's the duty of any scientist to oppose this attack on scientific integrity.