Thursday
Feb142013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Warm letters
Feb 14, 2013 Climate: Sceptics GWPF has published some interesting exchanges of letters. There's Turnbull and Whitehouse versus Rapley on the subject of sea level rise and Peiser versus Weintrobe too.
I was amused by Weintrobe's accusation about GWPF's nefarious intent...
GWPF’s aim is primarily to sew doubt on the findings of mainstream climate science.
...which conjures up lovely illusions of Lawson and Peiser stitching away furiously with blankets over their knees and cups of tea by their sides. It's not exactly how I imagined the great oil-funded conspiracy though.
Reader Comments (91)
Rapley is into carbon governance!! But just look at what's on the front page of his initiative.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/carbon-governance/CG-membership
Polar Bears.
geoffchambers -
re: Rosemary Randall's statement "For each tonne of carbon dioxide I’m responsible for, someone else, somewhere loses a year of their lives" -- recent emissions of CO2 are somewhere upwards of 30 billion tonnes per year. So, if her statement is to be believed, on average every person is losing 4 years of life, every year.
.
Or perhaps there is a special place on earth where "someone else" absorbs all this lifetime loss, which would explain why we don't notice it anywhere.
Harold W:
“.. perhaps there is a special place on earth where ‘someone else’ absorbs all this lifetime loss..”
This would explain why the fairies at the bottom of my guardian have such short lifespans.
James (Feb 14, 2013 at 9:36 PM)
“You reap what you sow (Hoe Hoe)”
Shouldn’t that be “Hem Hem”?
(bedtime, I think)
SCom: Perhaps, in showing such sensitivity to the needs of his benefactors, the male discussed in this thread, is demonstrating that he is the talented</> Rapley.
geoffchambers -
I'm not even going to ask why you have such detailed knowledge about the bottom of your guardian. ;-)
Geoff was always sniffing around at the Guardian's bottom - that's why they banned him.
The genteel art of the scholarly V-sign!
'Professor Rapley extolls us to ask a climate scientist about climate matters. I don’t agree though perhaps his comments suggest that it should be one with more than a very scant publication record in actual climate science. Professor Rapley’s certainty overrides the reality, the uncertainties and the unknowns of the science of climate change and has the whiff of looking for evidence to support a particular conclusion and ignoring everything else. One should not cherry pick ‘facts’ when communicating climate change. It’s too important for that.'
Quick, alert science denier Lewandowsky about this conspiracy theorist Weintrobe - no doubt he will want to include a few paragraphs in his latest paper describing her pathology.
Geoff Chambers:
"bedtime, I think"
Shear Shear!
Sally Weintrobe
Sorry, 'fairy' is now suspect, see e.g.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LGBT_slang
The following is a list of LGBT slurs. Some of the terms may be considered acceptable to LGBT peoples in a casual register when used among members within LGBT communities and allies. Many imply masculinity in women (e.g. "bull dyke") or effeminacy in men (e.g. "fairy").
Fairy is not as offensive as calling someone a 'Sally' or a 'right Weintrobe', but the term can be misconstrued.
Josh cartoon title: GWPF accused of embroidering the evidence.....
Nice thread.
:-D
Get this. From Rapley
No wonder the climate debate has gone to the dogs.
Quote the primary source man!
She showed that she can knit things together. I wonder if she can purl, 2.
oops, "shown" for "showed"
No more Amarone before posting "has shown"
If activist/psychologists get real power and authority, a lot of good people will suffer.
There appears to be a pattern developing along the Lewandosky quackademic vein that would see bright amoral academics doing the most surprising things in the name of their obsessions.
David Whitehouse says "Professor Rapley extolls us ...". We should be so lucky (even if he'd spelt "extols" correctly). "Exhorts" I could have understood.
Young Ms Weintrobe seems very much taken with the 90% of scientist meme, has no one explained to her that this was debunked yonks ago?
I used to joke about the computing power of the sewing circle at the nursing home. A dozen women in their eighties, cogitating in parallel, amounts to over a millenium of experience, knowledge,humour, and perhaps a couple of million quilts.
==================
Come on SuderlandSteve...thats besides the point. The real important thing here is that 90% of scientists supposedly agree with her, regardless of whether that 90% actually exists!
Mailman
@ MM,
True but I'm 90% certain that 90% of the time 90% of Weintrobes use an inverse proportion of 90% of their cognitive functions ;)
Simon abingdon,
extolls is fine, and is spelt correctly, used in as to inspire/exalt.
Whitehouse is a literate writter IMHO
Geoffchambers, Foxgoose, and others, it is a simple as can be. Sally is psychoanalyst and climate psychologist, implying that she does, unlike Corner and Lewandowsky, psychoanalysis of Gaia. As you should know, Gaia has become hot in recent times, whereas her heat does not show up. In that case psychoanalysis is needed to discover her defense mechanisms. Psychoanalysis may take more than twenty years before the truth is discovered. So be patient with Sally.
GWPF and Geological Society exchange of letters
Embarrassing misrepresentation of scientific evidence by the Society's VP.
By coincidence, I was drawn this week to a similar exchange of letters at GWPF via the website of the Geological Society of London (of which I have been a Fellow since 1993).
https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/en/Geoscientist/Letters
See item titled 'Evidence-based debate on Climate Change', a letter from Colin Summerhayes, VP of GeolSoc to Beny Peiser.
It appears at GWPF here:
http://www.thegwpf.org/geological-perspective-global-warming-debate/
This letter appears to be personal opinion masquerading as representative of the Geological Society (and its members). He misrepresents the members. Myself, and many other Fellows I have spoken to do not share his views, although the Society's leadership is too cowardly to have an open debate on it. Political correctness comes first of course.
The differing in opinion is demonstrated in this favourable review of 'The Hockey Stick Illusion'.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/en/Geoscientist/Previous%20issues%20-%2002%20Oct%2020h44m/2010%20issues/August%202010/August%202010
I can only assume this review slipped through while the Geoscientist magazine editor (Ted Nield) was on holiday, as I know him to be an AGW supporter, who has written opinion pieces against "denyers" (his preferred spelling). The following issue included a prominent 'soap box' by our friend Bob Ward, in his standard style, ad homming the review writer ("an oil industry geologist") rather than tackling the arguments.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/en/Geoscientist/Previous%20issues%20-%2002%20Oct%2020h44m/2010%20issues/October%202010/Climate%20scientists%20are%20innocent%20%20OK/Not%20so%20jolly%20hockey%20stick
Bizarrely, a look at the starting date of Ward's fellowship actually post dates the date of his article! So, if you like conspiracy theories, did he conspire with editor to become a fellow for the sole purpose of counter-attacking the review he didn't like??
Going back to the exchange of letters, GWPF has published Summerhayes' letter with a response from Bob Carter. I think Carter in fact flatters Summerhayes by raising his response to the level of debate.
On the contrary, Summerhayes' approach is just amateurish. He starts pompously with "In the interest of contributing to the evidence-based debate on climate change.." Via reference to the Society's official statement on CC, he presents plenty of evidence of past CC, of past CO2 changes, and makes a good case the climate always has and always will change. Carter acknowledges that. Where he fails is to provide ANY evidence that CC was driven by CO2 changes. His 'evidence' boils down to the Al Gore 'trick' (from Inconvenient Truth film) that 'the relationship between temp and CO2 is complicated; when temp is up, CO2 is up, when temp is down, CO2 is down'. Thus leading the lay viewer/reader to be tricked into believing this is evidence that CO2 is the driver.
Summerhayes says "The Geological Society deduced that by adding CO2 to the atmosphere as we are now doing, we would be likely to replicate the conditions of those past times when natural emissions of CO2 warmed the world, melted ice in the polar regions, and caused sea level to rise and the oceans to become more acid".
No, the Goelogical Society did not "deduce" this. They used the 'trick' mentioned above and made reference to the IPCC conclusions/opinion. That's it.
The drafting of the official CC statement was by a small committee chaired by Summerhayes. Seeing the similarity with the style of his letter, I conclude he was the main author. Members/fellows were invited to submit their own views. I did, but with the main request that its conclusions be based on science and evidence rather than politics or political correctness. There was no open discussion. I did not worry much about the final CC as it was clearly a case of falling into line of PC that most other scientific societies around the world have done, and in fact, its final statement is not that strong. "In the light of the evidence presented here it is reasonable to conclude that emitting further large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise, uncomfortable though that fact may be." It could be lived with.
But its a concern to see Summerhayes now use it to unilaterally express his own opinion to GWPF in the name of the Geological Society.
(I remain anonymous as I work in a field where AGW-scepticsm can damage your career. Sorry, I can't see how to make web address into a hyperlink - if possible ).
Mindert Eiting
“As you should know, Gaia has become hot in recent times...”
She always was a bit of a goer. She had it off with her own son, then persuaded him to emasculate his father. She could do with cooling down a bit.
Oakwood, if you right click and view page source you can see the html code you need to type in to make links.
You need a less than followed by a href="url" then a greater than.
As a sceptic I am sometimes doubtful of the claim that AGW scepticism damages careers. I have had no ill effects (very little response, and what there is, positive) and I think Jonathan Jones says something similar. There is a long rambling discussion thread on this topic.
Paul - thanks for the tip on links.
Regarding 'career damage': I find I can express my scepticsm with other Earth scientists, and will often find one of three responses: (1) they believe AGW, but because they've accepted the 'expert view' without looking into it, (2) agnostic/indifferent, or (3) aligned with me.
The ones I find shocked at my views are either non-scientists (eg Public Affairs and communicators) or those with a 'soft' science degree such as 'Environmental Science' where they have learnt about the issues, but not learnt how to think as a scientist.
I have found from experience that with the latter group, its better to avoid the discussion. Their incredulity ultimately forms their view of yourself. If you do try to discuss, they just assume you are the one 'taken in' by the anti-science brigade. Currently I patiently await the opportunity to say 'I told you so', while influencing anonymously - which is of course less effective and a bit cowardly.
Would be grateful if you can provide a link to that 'rambling discussion'.
oakwood, the discussion is here but unfortunately gets sidetracked several times. I don't want to sidetrack this thread but I do think the sceptic case would be stronger if more people "came out". My experience matches yours - I went to a social science meeting at my uni on Monday and kept very low - but there are a few people on the social science side who are beginning to understand the sceptic viewpoint.
oakwood
I've been following that debate likewise and have reached very much the same conclusions about the hijacking of the Geological Society by a small but pertinacious group of AGW militants. In fact I prompted the original Bishop's thread when the call for fellow's opinions came out. I used to be a fellow but lapsed out when I had to drop some society subs due to costs, marginal reading pertinence and lack of sufficient bookshelf yardage for journals.
In the recent exchange of letters reprinted on the GWPF site I note the assertion about the 55my warming and oceanic benthos extinction which Summerhayes links to acidification and frames in terms of dramatic certainty with much foreboding concerning dissolution. This is disingenuous in my opinion. Deep oceanic foraminiferal populations are always meagre, and anyway mainly agglutinated not calcareous. There was no crisis in shelf carbonates as far as I am aware.
It is possible that any deepwater benthic crisis was more to do with planktonic algal blooms and oxygen starvation. Anyway, much of this is still conjectural as much work is still in progress, as indicated below
http://wzar.unizar.es/isps/DeepWaterForam.htm
Paul Matthews:
Which is why (in addition to my libertarian leanings) I so agreed with Geoff Chambers yesterday:
I think of someone like Frank Furedi, a sociologist with some very good things to say about fear. This is for me a foundational issue lying behind the CAGW scare and is surely not treatable in a fully Popperian way. Which is why I honour folks like Paul and Jonathan for seeking to allay groundless fears on our side of the debate too.
Just as I would honour this scientist just interviewed by the BBC:
How many reports on any aspect of climate science in the last decade have ended "don't lose any sleep about it." This is what both scientists and social scientists should be saying far more than they do. And we do need the social scientists, as long as, as Geoff says, their work is grounded in rational principles. (And that of course is where Lewandowsky and co have grievously missed the mark.)
oakwood
I had not seen that Hockey Stick Illusion review before, and it's very good.
I wonder if the Bishop knew? Feather in his cap - a glowing Geol Soc book review with Bob W annoyed.
Just needs the same at the Royal Society and he's home and dry.
Thanks.
Pharos and oakwood: The Bishop indeed knew, as shown by Fallout at Geoscientist in November 2010. It seems the Geoscientist has changed all its URLs since then so the Bish's links now give 404 page not found. As mentioned by HaroldW in that thread Joe Brannan replied to Bob Ward in the October issue and that letter has likewise moved. It's been cached by Google though and bears repeating in full (not least in case it's moved again):
Superb. Thanks for the reminder.
There are lots of typos in the emails/letters. Maybe the people who transcribed rather than the authors? Though the "sic" after sew suggest that one was there to start with. I have to say, I do somewhat resent being lectured to about what "the Science" says by the likes of Rapley and Weintrobe.
Oakwood, I too have suffered no consequences that I'm aware of from using my real name. Though that is in part because I'm much more of a lurker than others like Paul. I can well imagine that in some jobs being known to be anything other than a full blown consensus follower could be very awkward.
Regarding the lost links, they are available here:
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/en/Geoscientist/Letters?y=2010
Joe Brannan's response to Bob Ward, see 'Reply to Bob Ward'.
For "This is totally out of order, and I take great exception to being hectored in this way.", see Climate Change 2, 3rd comment by Peter Whiteside.
See 2010, Climate Change 2
(the hyperlinks instructions are not clear. I try what Paul Mathews advised, but it turns all the remaining text into one hyperlink)
Oakwood's link to Brannan's reply and other letters.
Aug 2010 issue containing Brannan's review
Oct 2010 issue containing Ward's response
P.S. Oakwood, From the sound of it, you're halfway there -- you have the tag which creates the hyperlink correct, but you omitted the corresponding tag which concludes the link. After the text which you are tagging, add the following text: less-than-sign /a greater-than-sign. [The punctuation has been spelled out to avoid being interpreted as a tag.]
Example:
Read about it at less-than-sign a href="http://www.bishop-hill.net" greater-than-sign Bishop Hill less-than-sign /a greater-than-sign
produces this:
Read about it at Bishop Hill.
Oakwood: HaroldW's example is typed thus:
Read about it at <a href="http://www.bishop-hill.net">Bishop Hill</a>
See Character encodings in HTML for clues on how I did that. Or perhaps not. Some say that way madness lies :)
Thanks both of you for pointing out where everything now lives. But note that the URL links in Joe Brannan's letter are still pointing to the old places and thus give 404 page not found. Not the way to run a proper website. (Old URLs should always give what they always have, even if wish to arrange for the future. Otherwise it's a waste of all those Google page ranks and the rest.)
Richard Drake -
I tried using that form for expressing the angle brackets, but it didn't work. I see I had to be cleverer. Thanks for the trick.
Harold: It was more tricky than I expected, in a couple of ways. I might put up a discussion thread on this and related topics in due course. I have developed a simple Firefox extension that gives me well-formed anchor links to any page I'm interested in, for example, for pasting into blogs like this. It also produces Markdown links and some wiki formats. I'll put that up on GitHub when I think the code is both simple and smart enough. But I've got some other internet stuff to do in the mean time.