Bishop Hill Valentine's day
Oct 16, 2013 Climate: Sceptics Film ;)
Over the weekend I received a copy of Phil Valentine's An Inconsistent Truth. There was no covering letter, but I assume it came from the publicity people for the film.
At a loose end, I took a look and although "Documentary presented by American conservative talk radio host" is a genre that I would tend to be a little suspicious of, in fact it was a very amusing way to pass an hour or so. Valentine has none of the bombast that I was expecting, coming across as a wryly amusing, very straight kind of guy, ready to have a laugh with anyone about anything. I really warmed to him.
The film itself is pretty much as you'd expect it, covering Climategate, the holes in the global warming hypothesis, and interviewing lots of sceptic scientists. In some ways it can be seen as an extended mickey-take of Al Gore, with much of the time spent focused on his high-carbon lifestyle.
The film has none of the showmanship of the Great Global Warming Swindle, but its more understated tone probably means it will hit home with a different audience. The only gripe is that they get Hide the Decline all wrong - lots of talk about hiding declining temperatures, a la Sarah Palin. That apart, it's a very pleasant way to spend an hour or so.
Buy it here.
*corrected 11.20am.
Reader Comments (102)
I prefer to call the Chakra Khan's film 'A Convenient Untruth'.
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Harold (Oct 16, 2013 at 12:08 PM): followed your link on Youtube; very interesting snippet, especially to see Gore squirm so. Full length video will surely be a treat.
Out of interest, I followed the many links re: Obama and beyond, to end up with “Shape Shifters on TV!” I thought, “That should be a good laugh,” and clicked – but my computer promptly froze up, then crashed. How odd. How very, very odd.
BTW, have to agree with the Bish, here. The hounding of Chandra is rather unbecoming of this blog. Please desist, and allow him/her to continue to offer alternative views.
Yes, I'd like to see a precise definition of feedback [or, rather, "a feedback" (sic)] à la climate science.
I know quite a lot about feedback systems but I have yet to understand what climate science means precisely by feedback, other than in a hand-waving sense.
Radical Rodent, the Senate questioning scene was a Valentine fantasy...as you probably know... Slicing and splicing, it must have been fun to do!
It is nice to know that the pretension of the bishop is moderated towards a conservative American talk show host. After all what good can come out of these knuckle draggers.
STOP FEEDING THE TROLL !!! [snip. Raise the tone,please]
Once a Troll has identified themselves with the content or lack of content in most cases, the best course of action is to ignore, no need for insults as its just the attention they seek you are providing.
Taxi for Someone called Chandra!
Harold (Oct 16, 2013 at 7:13 PM): interesting. I can accept that I might be utterly naïve but, what evidence do you have to suggest that it was not more or less as seen?
Hi Radical Rodent.
I think you are naïve if you think this conversation (or something like it) actually took place in Congress Phil Valentine is not a politician but shown in the clip as the Committee member from Tennessee. Also the first 20 seconds of the clip (in colour) are a giveaway. Good questions were asked but the Q and A was a total fabrication (on the A side). Kudos to Valentine, I thought it was funny and will buy the DVD if it is released in Europe, or has a reasonable P&P.
hounding of Chandra! he is the one who knows better about feedbacks, climate science, the English language etc than anyone else on this blog (apart, of course from Rrichard Drake)
Chandra is pushing a point I've long wondered about.
I think of profesional positions on climate change as filling a normal distribution. On the left are the minimalists such as Lindzen and Currie. On the right are those predicting high climate sensitivity and correspondingly high levels of damage.
In the middle, around the mode/mean/maximum frequency are those expecting sensitivity in the 2.5-3.0C/doubling, which would be the position held by the majority of professionals in the field
Assume for convenience, 10,000 professional climate scientists. If there were as many sceptics as you suggest, you should be able to name several thousand. In practice it's difficult to count two handfuls. David Rose keeps coming back to the same few spokespeople. If you want to falsify the consensus, you'll need to demonstrate a much larger sample of minimalists than you've managed so far.
"I know quite a lot about feedback systems but I have yet to understand what climate science means precisely by feedback, other than in a hand-waving sense."
Martin A
Under natural conditions climate systems tend to oscillate about mean temperature and CO2 concentration set points determined ultimately by insolation. Thus the glacial periods characteristic of the last two million years tend to settle towards a low insolation set point giving global temperatures of 9C and 200ppm CO2. Interglacials tend towards 14C and 280ppm CO2.
I'm a biologist by original training and the long term behaviour of the climate system reminds me of the homeostasis which maintains our body temperature, or the operation of a thermostat controlled central heating system. There is no climate controller as such, but the system tends to be self-damping through negative feedback loops.
If you are thinking of feedback in the sense which plagued my sound systems during school plays, you are way off base.
Martin A
Alternatively, if you regard climate as a chaotic system, think of the interglacial and glacial conditions as strange attractors.
Where AGW is concerned , feedback is convenient shorthand for the way in which human CO2 release is expcted to drive increases in temperature, water vapour etc which will in turn generate further temperature and CO2 increases. If you are familair with the concept of climate sensitivity, these are exactly the types of amplification which are under discussion.
Thus a direct doubling of CO2 would be expected to produce a temperature change of ~1.1C due to the primary effect of the CO2 itself. Release of dissolved CO2 from the oceans, decay of permafrost, etc would produce a further amplification. Add them together and you have climate sensitivity.
Try this as a verbal description.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/guide/science/explained/feedbacks
For a more detailed mathematical approach, look at the second half of this slide sequence..
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/User/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/YEK7TG5Z/04-12-2007%5B1%5D.ppt#333,1,Slide 1
Of course, a real conspiracy theorist would regard ZedsDeadBed, Entropic Man, Chandra etc as phantoms put in by Bishop Hill or the Heartlands Institute.
After all, a thread with one of us involved tends to be longer and livelier than one without us.
"Someone"s WRONG about the skeptic scientist count in the video.
"Someone"s WRONG about the skeptic scientist count in the video.
@ entropic man - Oct 16, 2013 at 11:25 PM
"Assume for convenience, 10,000 professional climate scientists"
do you include non western countries in this (Russia,China etc) ?
seems to big a number to me even for an assumption (with hangers on added then far to small tho')
Sorry for double post; connection here keeps dropping - Orson
doughie
I dont mind what number you posit. The thrust of this thread is that the number of sceptic professional climate scientists was a much greater proportion than estimated by Cook et al.
A professional scientist stands or falls by their publication record.
Where are all those sceptic papers?
Why arent WUWT publicising the flood of sceptic papers, rather than spending their time trying to debunk Power et al, Marcott et al, etc?
Entropic Man - When I first wandered into the climate debate, the climategate emails were all the rage. Not being one given to conspiracies, I thought all of the talk of suppressing papers and research which did not conform to UEA line of thought was a bit much and it could not be happening in the academic community.
Since then I have signed up to follow the tweets of Michael Mann and Peter Gleick. These two men are quite up front about wanting to squash any alternative views of how the climate is changing in ANY media format. They advocate firing any editor who allows the publishing of alternative views of how the climate is changing.
As a result of the battering of various media outlets (including academic journals), it is quite difficult to get published in many media outlets if your results contradict the Mann/Gleick/Gore theory of the climate.
The result is that skeptical views are primarily published on the internet in blogs like WUWT and in self published books such as Climate Models Fail by Bob Tisdale. In particular, there is a robust discussion of the statistical methods of Mann on climateaudit.com. But you probably know that.
So actually, WUWT discusses a variety of papers on a daily basis. That is why it is more widely read than any blog blindly supporting the government sponsored theory of climate. WUWT spends quite a bit of time "questioning authority". You should do the same thing.
Guys, you can get US format TV right with this acronym -
NTSC = Never The Same Colour.
Chandra depends on cheesy apologetics to defend his/her faith.
what a hoot.
"Oct 17, 2013 at 1:04 AM | entropic man "I dont mind what number you posit. The thrust of this thread is that the number of sceptic professional climate scientists was a much greater proportion than estimated by Cook et al.A professional scientist stands or falls by their publication record.Where are all those sceptic papers?Why arent WUWT publicising the flood of sceptic papers, rather than spending their time trying to debunk Power et al, Marcott et al, etc?"
Sigh..Who cares about numbers..?????
Your confusing how politics work not flipping science..
One quick example..Before the paper by Barry Marshall (who won the Nobel prize in 2005) there were thousands of papers showing how peer reviewed science just knew how peptic ulcers were caused.
As soon as Marshalls paper was printed..they were all proven wrong.
Yet they had the numbers/the show of hands..the funding etc..
One of the reasons the rot has set into many fields of science is due to the race to the bottom to produce loads of papers and not actually produce anything of any merit that can be used in the real world.
You appear to believe that most scientists will publish anything no matter how contentious without regard to 1/govt views 2/consensus views 3/their employers views 4/Views of their peers.
This is a nieve view on how the system works…and is just simple scientism.
If you somehow think "scientists" are different to other people.. :)
Its not and never was a game of how many papers support x side..
Yet some people ??? seem to try and reframe the whole "debate" this way.
And Obviously you don't read WUWT.
They publish papers that question "consensus" views often.
And interesting (and bizarre)you would even bring up Marcott.
Try using google and use a + climate audit.
Marcott..is dead in the water but thanks for reminding us. :)
Entropic Man, given your views on the apparent lack of scientific criticism of the 'consensus' in the climate debate, I wonder what you think of this piece?...
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/12/a-physicist-reflects-on-the-climate-debate/
Maybe, but sadly not any more enlightening.
One side believes the majority of global warming since 1950 is manmade based mostly on models that are presumed to be more reliable than observations. The only fact that is worthwhile for them is the sheer number of intelligent scientists who are concerned. This group thinks that hindcasting is sufficient validation for models and that groups of models will get a better answer than individually poor models. They pretend to worry about the poor of the future and think there is a fossil fuel funded conspiracy that is holding back cheap/free alternative energy. They are generally pessimistic about mans effect on the environment who think that free marketeers are seriously deluded. They believe in social welfare, if not actual socialism.
The other side ignores the consensus because there are many occasions that the consensus opinion is proven wrong. They look instead at the arguments these scientists make and the methods used to derive these arguments, note that much of them are assumption led conclusions and the biggest assumption of all is that unvalidated models with largely guessed inputs can have predictive skill. They pretend to worry about the poor of the present and think there is a groupthink mentality in climate science. They are generally optimists, who believe in the free market and low taxes and who believe that green advocacy groups are mostly a front for socialist-type controls over our freedoms which have been otherwise rejected by democracy.
None of this would matter if energy policy was not being based on it. There are many fields of endeavour that have even more shaky foundations than climate science and sometimes they are proven wrong, sometimes right. The previous consensus was that the sun controlled the climate. If the global temperature actually drops then that will likely be the new consensus. But energy policy is the most important thing we do. The notion that we can shut down our current energy production without adequate replacements, based on computer models that are now proven to be inadequate is dangerously idiotic regardless of how many people want to believe in any conspiracy theory.
entropic man (Oct 17, 2013 at 1:04 AM) asked "Where are all those sceptic papers?
Well, I don't think they get published with a key word like 'sceptic'. What you should really be asking is how many papers get published that either:
1) offer alternate models and/or interpretations of the empirical data, such as this one...
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/stadium-wave.pdf
2) assess the model projections against empirical data to indicate their fidelity, such as this one...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/pdf/nclimate1972.pdf
My personal observations suggest that the vast majority (95% :-) of 'climate scientists' and related papers deal with the outcome of models and the consequential future impact on environment/species/society/etc. If this is true, then I would not expect these people to be critical of the models because they assume that the people who specialise in developing them know what they're doing... hence the lack of sceptical statements from the 'majority of climate scientists'.
Harold (Oct 16, 2013 at 11:10 PM): having watched it again, I see what you mean – however, it is supposed to be a blatant dream sequence (just doesn’t take into account numpties like me, who can easily miss the obvious). Still, it was enjoyable watching Gore squirm.
EM (various): you do make quite a number of interesting points (despite others picking up on minor points, possibly just because of it being you raising the points); your reference to “feedback” being more subtle than electronic feedback is particularly valid. To be perhaps too simplistic, we can refer back to Chandra’s analogy of doubling the contents of a kettle, etc., and so many responding with the obvious – try to heat a swimming pool with a kettle element. This becomes a very good analogy, and one I wish I had thought of long while back – CO2 is the kettle element, and the atmosphere is the swimming pool. At risk of sounding oxymoronic, this is an accurate, if simplistic, analogy of how organic systems (which the atmosphere arguably is) moderate extremes.
One of the main problems with the entire GW argument, and its concomitant AGW scam, is that it has been hijacked by politics – even many of the posts on this site tend to be primarily political than scientific. JamesG wraps it up very eloquently in his Oct 17, 2013 at 9:29 AM post. The sooner the scientific debate is removed from political decision-making the better.
james G - This rather sounds like the pleadings of a bigot. Let's get this straight, once and for all. All true scientists are sceptics. There is no final science save in broad terms e,g. gravity causes objects to move. Gases lighter than air rise etc.etc. The whole subject has become politicised by those who do not take the trouble to study the science of climate change. They are the losers because they are afraid to learn the truth and reveal their error.
Jamspid (Oct 17, 2013 at 10:33 AM): perhaps anyone who brings Galileo into the argument should also be regarded as a troll – particularly if they spell his name wrong!
Bit below the belt there RR. J's spelling may be errant at times but he's always clear and thoughtful.
Radical Rodent (Oct 17, 2013 at 10:24 AM), talking about analogies, says "...CO2 is the kettle element, and the atmosphere is the swimming pool."
Sorry to sound pedantic, but CO2 is *not* an energy source. Sure, it can act to modify energy transfer within the system via absorption and re-radiation/conduction (e.g. like a Kinetic Energy Recovery system in an F1 car), but the only true source of energy into the Earth's system is the Sun... heat from the core and energy released by Man (fosil fuels, nuclear, etc.) being somewhat secondary, at best.
OTT Matt Ridley on warming is beneficial - http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/
entropic manOct 16, 2013 at 11:54 PM
"There is no climate controller as such, but the system tends to be self-damping through negative feedback loops. If you are thinking of feedback in the sense which plagued my sound systems during school plays, you are way off base."
But the "enhanced greenhouse effect" that is supposed to produce dangerout temperature rise is PRECISELY like your sound system!
CO2 induced temperature rise producing more water vapour producing more temperature rise producing more water vapour etc etc is PRECISELY like your sound system. Feedback is positive.
These systems are bistatic, so we either end up with 100% RH and hot all the time, or almost 0% RH and cold.
Look around you - do you see a world like that? Theory disproved. Right, let's go back and think again.
Interesting that you got it right the first time "the system tends to be self-damping through negative feedback loops".
So why did you abandon a sensible viewpoint for outright lunacy?
Bish, I just caught the end of Matt Ridley on the Politics Show talking about renewables. I expect it'll be on the I-player some time.
entropic manOct 16, 2013 at 11:54 PM
Entro - thank you. However, if I can do so without causing offence,...
- You seem to have a blind spot which manifests itself as lecturing people whose depth of knowledge is far greater than your own - aka telling your grandmother how to suck eggs*. I ascribe this to a lifetime of lecturing schoolkids - a worthy activity but not the same as working with experts in their subjects.
- Climate scientists seem to see no problem in classifying interacting variables (in a distributed, stochastic, nonlinear, system many aspect of which are understood not at all) as either "forcings" or "feedbacks". They then make the assumption that simplified feedback theory can be used to usefully calculate things in this system.
- The Met Office page you pointed to just confirms my views - plausible sounding hand-waving stuff.
__________________________________________________________________________________-
* EM - have you...
- Read Bode's book and can explain the implications of what he shows on gain/phase relations for feedback amplifier design containing resonant elements such as an output transformer with leakage inductance and capacitance?
- Ever plotted a Nyquist diagram for a conditionally stable system?
- Computed Ricatti equation solutions to compute optimum feedback parameters for a linear system described in state-space form?
- Drawn a root-locus plot for a feedback system?
- Designed a stable feedback system for an object with non-minimum phase characteristics?
- etc etc
entopic man -:
"For a more detailed mathematical approach, look at the second half of this slide sequence..
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/User/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/YEK7TG5Z/04-12-2007%5B1%5D.ppt#333,1,Slide 1"
Oh dear...
It would appear entropic man struggles as much as Phil Jones with these newfangled personal computer thingies....
SimonJ (12:24 PM): But the "enhanced greenhouse effect" that is supposed to produce dangerous temperature rise is PRECISELY like your sound system!
Not quite. The prevailing usage of "positive feedback" in climate science is not as it is used in electronics. It is recognized that higher temperatures will, all other things being equal, lead to increased thermal radiation from the Earth, and that this constitutes a negative-feedback system (in the electronics sense). When climate scientists talk of "positive feedback", what they mean is a weaker negative feedback system. So not one which is unstable (as the sound system), but one with a higher equilibrium point.
Think of a constant force tugging on a spring -- the spring will stretch a certain amount. A negative feedback, in the climate science sense, would be an effect which weakens the spring, allowing it to stretch further. A positive feedback will stiffen the spring, reducing the distance stretched.
HaroldW Oct 17, 2013 at 4:04 PM
Thanks for the explanation of what a climate scientist (TM) means by "positive feedback". Of course, everyone elses definition of feedback is completely different, but if it's good enough for Humpty Dumpty, it must be good enough for climate scientists (TM). Semantics notwithstanding however, I still don't see how the warm leads to more water vapour leads to more warming can be anything other that a positive feedback (classical definition) mechanism.
Of course I know, and you know, that there are other mechanisms at work (clouds, probably) but they still need this "multiplier" to get from basic CO2 doubling effects to something scary.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' - Through the Looking Glass.
Adding the prefix “climate” to the title “scientist” adds almost as much credibility as “witch” does to “doctor”.
I've watched the film in full and am left wondering why Al Gore still runs scared from any debate? Well done Phil!
Martin A
Alas, I'm not an electronics engineer. Nor do I expect a chaotic multivariate system like a climate system to respond as if it were an electronic circuit. Be wary of extrapolationg from your electronics experience to a different field.
Harold W has a clearer idea of how climate systems actually work.
Anthony
When I was young it took Titan, a Cambridge University computer the size of a tennis court, to allow my brother and I to play Space War, a very basic computer game. I regard a computer as a tool for which I've occasional use, so dont bother with the toys .
"doughie
I dont mind what number you posit. The thrust of this thread is that the number of sceptic professional climate scientists was a much greater proportion than estimated by Cook et al.
A professional scientist stands or falls by their publication record."
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A professional fund raise and make worker stands or falls by their publications. Scientists stand and fall by the research they do.... not on publishing.
"Where are all those sceptic papers?
Why arent WUWT publicising the flood of sceptic papers, rather than spending their time trying to debunk Power et al, Marcott et al, etc?"
Oct 17, 2013 at 1:04 AM | Unregistered Commenterentropic man
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
A few papers that you asked for.
Having read my hurried previous posting I think I should add "given his lust for publicity". If his case is as water tight as he seems to think it is there should be no worries about debating it in public with say....Christopher Monkton?
I don't get this Spy vs. Spy Leftists/Tea Party warring positions. Science is one thing, and always debatable (remember Plate Tectonics, stomach ulcers and the like?). There is NO "settled science" inasmuch as science is a continuing process (let's immediately discard creationism or Ptolemaic epicycles). I myself would describe my position as a "lukewarmer" far removed from the shrill cataclysmic bunch and the IPCC (with, well, rather good credentials). And I am firm in my social-democratic stand, believing in what used to be called "progress". If anybody wish to understand this stand, it is here :
http://revereveille.over-blog.com/article-etre-de-gauche-93304362.html
But be warned: it's in French (I'm Belgian... Nobody's perfect!)
Orson,
no mention of John Christy in Chandra's IMDb sourced post and IMDb says that he's in the film too.
The IMDb list is limited to those considered part of the "cast" and does not usually cover subjects of interviews, so using it as a source for a claim about the number of scientists interviewed is pretty foolish, but for comparison the IMDb list of cast for "An Inconvenient Truth" is Al Gore, Billy West, George Bush, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan - by comparison the Valentine film is chock-full of scientists.
enthropic man
"Harold W has a clearer idea of how climate systems actually work."
is the question, why don't climate scientologists use apporpriate language for the concepts they imagine?
As a point of order, I'd like to clarify that I do not have a clear idea of how climate systems actually work. [I hadn't noticed entropic man's earlier post. I thank you, e.m., for the kind words, but...not true.]
I like to think that I have formed an understanding of how climate scientists describe and parametrize. Of the outlines of the large-scale phenomena which dominate energy transfer. Beyond that, I make no claims.