Scientists Create Their Own Communication Problems
Scientists urge Senate action on global warming
In a move to shore up credibility for climate change science, American scientists and economists are asking the Senate to enact immediate legislation to reduce emissions related to global warming.
Two thousand US economists and climate scientists, including eight Nobel laureates, are sending a letter Thursday to the Senate urging lawmakers to require immediate nationwide cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions tied to global warming.
. . .
“We call on our nation’s leaders to swiftly establish and implement policies to bring about deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions,” the scientists write in the letter. “The strength of the science on climate change compels us to warn the nation about the growing risk of irreversible consequences as global average temperatures continue to increase.”
Only the last blockquote is in the letter. But the summary by the writer of the article seems to me to be correct.
Oh, and their own creditability problems, too.
IPCC Peer-Reviewed Literature
This post over at Roger Pielke Jr.’s place, Gray literature in the IPCC, A guest post by Andreas Bjurström is reassuring information for me.
I’ve read ‘peer-review’, ‘peer-reviewed’, and ‘peer-reviewed literature’ just about as many times as I’ve read ’science’, ‘the science’, and ’scientists’. I was beginning to doubt the validity of my own, merely engineering related, publication record. I was becoming depressed and thinking that I was unworthy of commenting and that I should follow only the advice of Peer-Reviewed Scientists.
But now I see that my publication record, and all the engineering literature that I have worked with, is more nearly completely peer-reviewed than the real-world standard set by the IPCC. The technical documentation for almost all engineering literature falls under the first column on the left at the post, plus technical reports from the middle column. I will argue that if these technical reports are in any way associated with organizations performing work for government / public agencies, they have been peer-reviewed. And actually reviewed in much more depth than that typical peer-reviewed journal reviews.
Additionally, I think that I can say that the engineering literature is on a much firmer foundation than the IPCC when it comes to peer-review. I have never, for example, cited, ‘articles in the daily papers and magazines’, or lectures, or audio/visual media, or blogs, or preprints, or e-prints. And I’m certain that I’ve not seen these cited in any of the engineering literature that I’ve used in my work. I have, however, cited technical reports from the middle column.
This information is yet another example that certain buzz-phrases have been over-utilized in The Climate Science Community to the extent that they have become, as jstults has noted, merely words and have no real meaning.
Maybe I’ll start working on a Climate Science Bingo scoring pad.
A Milestone
Sometime yesterday Monday March 1, 2010, this blog had its 1000th page view. A state attained by many blogs in a matter of minutes every day. I think this counter is counting from some time in August 2007.
That’s ok. I prefer a small, boutique-ish, highly-focused environment.
The Curry Open Letter on Climate Science
For me, the focus on Towards Rebuilding Trust is not the issue. The general public very likely has some vague overall concepts of the basic nature, characteristics, and properties of science, and the behavior of scientists. The general public, however, has never been directly subjected to results solely produced by a science community.
The critical aspect, in contrast to trust by the general public, is as follows. Policy decisions the outcome of which affect the health and safety of the public are never based solely on the basic concepts of science and scientists. Every one of these outcomes, without exception, have been implemented through independent regulatory agencies of governments. These agencies have been designed first of all to be placed between advocates and the general public. The agencies are also responsible for conducting rigorous, independent, deep, and difficult, review of not only the background science, but more importantly the science, engineering, and technology that is necessary for implementation of products and services. All of these agencies have set in place procedures and processes that must be followed without exception.
Interval Arithmetic
This is a test.
Update January 6, 2010
I have uploaded a file that has additional details about the calculations.
The CRU Info Leak . . .
I’m thinking there just might be some problems in some of the GCM software.
Many Links Broken
To my tens of thousands of readers.
I have discovered that all links to posts and documents internal to this site are broken. I had to move the site from its previous server to the present location and the URLs to site-internal locations all point to the previous server. URLs to external servers still work, so long as those servers are still up and running.
I’ve also noticed that funny characters have popped up in the text again as they did when the original site had problems.
I have a day job now and don’t have time to fix these problems.
If a post has a URL that links to a previous post you’ll have to track down the previous post and open it directly.
Al Gore Predicts 1500 meter Sea Level Rise
Take a look at the cover of Al Gore’s recent book below the fold:
Tom P. does not meet RealClimate’s Bona Fides Requirements
I made this comment at Climate Audit. I’ll repeat it here:
The degree of inconsistency that RC exhibits becomes more astounding every day.
How many times have we been told that replication does not require that all the original material be readily available. Indeed, we have been repeatedly lectured that true replication is not obtained if only the original material is used. Yet, Tom P. could not have carried out his rapid-response function if Steve had not made all the material available.
By RC’s usual standards, Tom P.’s results could have been considered true replication only if he had started from a clean piece of paper, gone out in the field and gathered up some tree rings, properly selected the data to be used for analyses, developed the analysis methods, produced the coding for the solution of the methods, and then carried out the analysis. ( I’ll let Tom P. skip the Verification and Validation procedures as Climate Science does not do these. )
More and more, it seems to me that RC’s views are shaped by what is convenient in contrast to what they say is the correct approach.
By the usual RC standards, RC cannot accept Tom P.’s analyses and conclusions.
NASA's Gavin Schmidt and Penn State's Michael Mann are Liars
Climate Science . . . The Science of Personal Destruction
In the RealClimate post linked above appears this statement:
“So along comes Steve McIntyre, self-styled slayer of hockey sticks, who declares without any evidence whatsoever that Briffa didn’t just reprocess the data from the Russians, but instead supposedly picked through it to give him the signal he wanted. These allegations have been made without any evidence whatsoever.”
These statements are false. And they are known to be a false by those you made the statements. The statements are lies and the persons who made the statements are liars. If Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann cannot point to where Steve McIntyre has made these statements, Gavin and Michael are liars.
By this action Schmidt, Mann, and RealClimate have taken the next step and moved to a higher level of promoting dis-information. That is, while always refusing to correct mis-information stated by commenters, and even RealClimate in-line responses, Schmidt and Mann purposefully lie. The purpose being to jump-start the peanut gallery’s, aided by RealClimate, usual attacks on persons while ignoring the technical issues. The Science of Personal Destruction; invented at RealClimate.
A post and 176 Responses ( and counting ) and not a single error on the part of Steve McIntyre has been identified. Not a single error !! This is reflective of the way RealClimate has of diverting attention from the real issues. In effect, the entire post hinges on becoming discussions of nothing that the subject of the post has said or done. Yet another naked strawman post. Additionally, the comments, with supporting responses from RealClimate, rapidly deteriorate to nothing more than de-meaning, unfounded attacks on people; shooting the messenger and ignoring the message.
To paraphrase, RealClimate continues to take absolutely no responsibility for the ridiculous fantasies and exaggerations that their supporters broadcast, apparently being happy to bask in their acclaim rather than correct any of the misrepresentations they have engendered.
RealClimate, having been unable to point to any technical errors, have continued the Climate Science policy of the Science of Personal Destruction.
They must continue to feed the small-minded, foul-mouthed labelers such as tamino and dhogaza. It’s interesting to me that those who chose to label with the most extreme and debasing labels chose also to remain anonymous. The, mostly non-scientists, peanut gallery at RealClimate seems to revel in this race to the bottom, cheering on tamino and dhogaza at every opportunity.
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt and Penn State’s Michael Mann are liars.
Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann lied in the subject post, therefore everything they have written is suspected of being lies.
Climate Science . . . The Science of Personal Destruction
