I think she’s had a huge impact. If you look at what was ‘legitimately’ in the field of play before her blog started and since, you clearly see that even accepted mainstream sources are dealing with the same subject matter she is addressing. They’re just not giving her any credit for driving stuff into the open.

And it’s not so much her own personal views that have done it–it’s more the papers she highlights and cross links to, followed by her take on it, that have elevated certain subjects to the limelight.

As someone who has followed the climategate issue rather closely, I confess I cannot agree with sharper00 about it dominating discussion at her blog. I simply don’t see much discussion of it at all. It gets referenced along with other real and perceived shortcomings of the consensus community–but discussed? Nah.

She has turned Climate Etc. into a top-tier blog, and she’s done it the old-fashioned way. The level of work that goes into her posts is evident and the quality that effort produces is high. 

But I’m sure that those with opinions similar to sharper00 will be on the warpath shortly. 

As climate is not my field, I can’t speak to the internal issues. But I will muse on this:
Lots of people publicly take on their tribe and don’t get labeled radical.
Do you have any female examples of that? Maybe there are, but I couldn’t think of one yet. I don’t think most male scientists of my vintage are actively sexist. But I think some of them may not know what it feels like to be on the other side of what feels like a boys club.

�
 

Curry is actually very conventional. You could match her beliefs on climate change with people like Hansen and probably not see much space between them.

Her ‘heresy’ was to criticize the politicization of the process and the ethical and procedural shortcomings of some scientists.

That apparently is far worse than anything else a scientist can do. Hence the attempt by some to discredit her. (And please let’s leave it at that–I don’t want to end up in immoderation again.) 

#6

“Curry is actually very conventional. You could match her beliefs on climate change with people like Hansen and probably not see much space between them.”

Well this is rather the point isn’t it, there’s nothing radical or heretical at all about her. This label is primarily something of her own invention based almost entirely on a sub-heading in a media article. �
“Her “˜heresy’ was to criticize the politicization of the process and the ethical and procedural shortcomings of some scientists.”

Was it? You see while it’s claimed she receives lots of negative attention (via the heretical stuff) and lately that she in turn has had lots of influence (via impact on the field in the last year) I see sparse evidence of either outside of posts written by Judith Curry on Judith Curry’s blog. 

I’m not a scientist. I don’t go to conferences and I tend to only read primary literature when it bubbles up to the level of general awareness. If someone is having an impact I have to rely on either that impact being reported by others or in it showing up in some way I can identify such as references in papers, public statements/comments/blog posts by scientists etc. I see none of this so if someone wants to make the claim and convince me of it they need to provide this.

I find blog hits extremely unpersuasive. I find number of comments even moreso having read enough discussions there to see a small number of commenters feeling the need to reply to almost every other comment with the same nonsense. 

On the internet anything can be popular. It’s not a metric of anything except popularity.  

It’s always so great when she has random guest posts from crazy people so that then there can be 1000 comment+ discussions about crazy stuff. Like the Sky Dragons, and Murray Salby’s “it’s not us wot’s adding the CO2 to the atmosphere!” whiff and various other nonsense she seemingly pointlessly tosses out. This helps move the debate forward because even crazier people come to defend these posts.

Is there still a debate on whether backradiation violates the laws of thermodynamics? Yes, at Climate Etc. there is! A vigorous and long and ongoing and long and unresolved and long debate! What about whether burning fossil fuels adds to the CO2 in the atmosphere? Yes, they’re having a debate about that at Climate Etc.!

Everything is so uncertain! Even that statement is kind of iffy, come to think of it. By definition. But wouldn’t that imply that if we are uncertain about the uncertainty, then it might imply certainty? I don’t know but it certainly would be good to discuss it. Where is David Wojick when you need him? 

It is awesomeness. What an impact.

@10.
�
I’m going to have to dock you points for failing to put that penultimate paragraph into the form of a tri-colored flag of some kind.

Her views of the science used to be mainstream, but at least some of them don’t seem so mainstream anymore.

Eg on the relative rolse of human and natural causes of recent warming
(http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/judith-curry-anthropogenic-versus-natural-causes-of-global-warming/ and her views on the role of unforced natural variability (http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/harry-potter-theory-of-climate-boating/ )

I was very surprised reading such and similar statements from a respected climate scientist. These and other bold statements are usually offered without any evidence to speak of.

Not unimportant either in how other scientists see her is her incessant sweeping and unsubstantiated accusations towards  mainstream climate science and its practitioners.  She really went overboard more than a few times.(http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/judith-curry-building-bridges-burning-bridges/ )

The quote about her big personal impact the last year may provide a glimpse of her motivation. There may be an addictive element to those spotlights.

An important reason for those spotlights being on her is that she’s a former mainstream scientst who is vocally critical of the mainstream. That has something very persuasive to it in the context of the public debate. One of the debating tricks often used is: Present yourself as formerly doubting the proposition you’re arguing for. As in “I used to think such and such, but now I now better: …” No wonder she’s got a huge fanclub.

To her credit, she often discusses very interesting new papers on the interface between physical science and philisophy or communication or sociology. And I agree with part of her message (http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/judith-curry-on-climate-science-introspection-or-circling-the-wagons/ ). Her message would be much better received amongst non-contrarians however if she toned down her rhetoric and/or provided evidence for her stronger statements (both on the science and on the process). But that would probably decrease her on-line fanclub.

As an aside, and to back off the snark, I think that the recent work people like Mike Lockwood and Sarah Ineson have been doing on solar-climate connections offers an interesting counterpoint.
�
Clearly given some of the reactions of late plenty of “skeptics” believe that mainstream climate science denies solar-climate connections. It doesn’t*, but it’s easy to understand how some in an echo chamber would come to believe otherwise.
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Mike Lockwood could easily play up his research as representing something anti-establishment, claim that because the effect of indirect solar isn’t known with extreme precision that it throws the whole emissions stabilization issue into question, and so on. He could create a blog, make assertions and refuse to back them up, get called on it, cry persecution, etc. Instead, he does science.
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* Just like it never denied the role of ocean-atmosphere couplings, potential GCR-aerosol nucleation, etc.

@13
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Keith. It’s not just the “crazy commentors”. It’s her blog posts and comments, too.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/
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If she doesn’t actually know better, then she should have done her homework before commenting. If she knew better, grossly irresponsible.

Other than sour grapes, I don’t see any real arguments against what I posted: That she has helped legitimize a wider discussion of topics and that this is despite her conventional point of view about the essential elements of anthropogenic climate change.

Keith, I think you’re wrong in calling for her to be tougher regarding her commenters. One of the principal complaints from the non-consensus crowd prior to her opening her blog was the sense of being shut out of the discussion–not having a seat at the table. Many from the consensus team (including some familiar names in this thread) would sneer ‘go and publish a paper if you want a seat at the table.’ And notwithstanding the concerted efforts of some idiots on the consensus side to prevent that from happening, most are not in a position to publish in the literature.

Judith gave them a seat at the table.

Fifty years from now she will be recognized as having saved Gavin’s British butt–mostly from himself. She has defused a lot of the anger, helped marginalize Morano and Monckton by continually recentering the argument where it should be, without hiding the real uncertainties that plague climate science wrt sensitivity, etc.

There are some here who think that because she’s cordial and courteous to skeptics that she agrees with them. But Keith told me not to be all derogatory and stuff, so I won’t characterize them.

But if they don’t even know who their friends or enemies are, why would we believe them on weightier topics? 

wrt 13:

‘That said, it does seem that Judith push backs more on pro-agw commenters that challenge her than the crazier climate skeptics who spout some incredible stuff.  

There is a reason for that. Its no fun arguing with a loon. I just wasted 10 minutes over at Goddard’s. Well, its kinda fun. Seriously, the only reason to argue with a loon is either to perfect a winning argument, ( always nice) or to amuse yourself or keep your wit in game condition. I don’t know why people dont get this.

For years people argue with skeptics and then throw up their hands and stop. Now judith comes on the scene and she just lets the loons prattle on between themselves and you all expect her to repeat the behavior that you have decided was stupid.  You all expect her to argue with the people you believe its impossible to argue with. like duh. 

This one time, at Lisbon ( kinda like a band camp story)  some loon was prattling on,  man I wanted Judith to shut that idiot up. But no, she just let him blather, he ran out of gas, and we returned to what we wanted to talk about. go figure.   

#20

“Other than sour grapes, I don’t see any real arguments against what I posted: That she has helped legitimize a wider discussion of topics “

I’m getting a distinct “Um..all of them” vibe from this line of argument. 

WRT 19.

 No keith I think she does follow the criteria set out by the article. The author of the article was pretty clear about two key elements

1. sticking to you guns in the face of adversity ( tenure helps here )
2. going beyond the institutions methods ( blogging)

For christs sake Keith its a standard definition of being radical.

Stage 1. you bite the hand that feeds you and are critical of your institution. You use the freedom youre are granted to attack the institution you are a part of.

Most “radicals” stop there. That part of the dialectic is called “negative freedom”  to be truly radical you have to go beyond that and start something fresh. So you go back to the roots and plant a new root.  Thats the blogging part, moving beyond academic publishing.

So as a journalist  you would be radical if you used your column inches to attack  the mast head and whole dead trees contraption and then did the blogging thing.

You would be really radical if you figured out how to make money doing it.  

@19 kkloor:
Let’s not turn this into a selective referendum on Judith’s blog posts.
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In all seriousness, what do you want this thread to be about? You asked us:
What do you think Curry’s impact has been since she’s become a self-described radical?
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I’m not sure why my comment at 18 and Bart’s at 14 aren’t exactly what you’re asking for.
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I grant that WMC could have used less derogatory language at 21, but he’s giving you his honest answer. He could have disguised it in more socially acceptable language, but that would only make it a less genuine response. I understand that you need to keep things civil in the comments, and I am not saying you shouldn’t, mind you. I just don’t know what you want.
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Her blog’s legacy is a gathering place for the “not IPCC” crowd and is catering heavily to its prejudices. Tom Fuller and Oliver Manuel think that’s great. People like myself and Bart don’t. Make of that what you will, I guess.
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I’d also like to expand on my initial response by piggybacking on what Bart said toward the end of 14:
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Her message would be much better received amongst non-contrarians however if she toned down her rhetoric and/or provided evidence for her stronger statements (both on the science and on the process). But that would probably decrease her on-line fanclub.
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It’s not even that I care if she “tones down her rhetoric”. It’s only that it is so unsubstantiated. If she actually backed it up, I would want her to scream it from the rooftops, not tone it down!
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Where’s the there there, Keith? We’re not supposed to talk about her blog posts it seems. We can’t really talk about scientific contributions that don’t exist. So where does that leave us?
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@4 Mary:
I can’t speak to what Curry thinks, but her gender certain has been more of an issue at her blog than I ever expected it to be, even (or maybe because) I don’t remember it being an issue back in her early Climate Audit interactions. A lot less white-knighting then, that’s for sure.

“Slime jobs”? “Ill-wishing?” What the hell?

Another fun question is “Andy Revkin a radical journalist (i.e. heretic) or just doing his job as being sensible.

It seems journalism is in the same boat as climate scientists on both sides. 

Reading these comments, I just get the idea that many of you just aren’t comfortable with the idea of a many <–> many blog at all. I guess some of you occupy relatively senior positions in academia where you are used to being listened to ..and if questioned, only in tones of hushed respect. Or maybe you run your own blogs where you have ultimate sanction of deleting posts that you disagree with…in all of these circumstances, you are in some form of control of the discussion. You decide what gets discussed, and have a very strong influence on where it ends.
A Climate Etc blog is not really like that. It is a many <–>many discussion with a flat hierarchy where the participants decide how the topic will be addressed. And all participants are welcome irrespective of academic position or formal qualifications. Those who don’t like the style fade away, those who do stay..and that seems to be a growing number.
Partcipants are, to some extent, anonymous. It is a very democratic place. They do not come with additional extra genuflections for their qualifications or citation list. The concept of ‘Trust Me I’m an Important Scientist’ is pretty foreign there. If you can argue a case you get listened to..if not you don’t. Mere assertion form authority gets the Bronx Cheer
People participate for all sorts of different reasons. I blog there and sometimes I do so to make a serious point or offer a different perspective, sometimes to make a joke (though it must be said that they are in general a pretty dour lot), sometimes to test another participants argument, sometimes just to take the piss out of an overinflated ego and soemtimes just to have some fun or have a bit of blue skies thinking. I’m sure that everybody else has their own reasons
So to critcies the blog for being a free-for-all and not a well organised and trictly regulated academic discussion is to miss the point by a mile (1.6 Km for overseas readers). It is not a traditional seminar that happens to be conducted electronically. It is a roller coaster whose course is determined by the participants – with a bit of nudging from our host.
If you don’t like it or are uncomfortable with the format, that’s fine. You are not obliged to partcipate. But don’t just criticise it for not being something it doesn’t set out to be.
�
�
 

I think what both Kate and Judith are talking about is not so much being “radical” as being a non-conformist, true to one’s own beliefs and aspirations. It’s arguably “radical” in the original sense, of going back to the roots of what an academic or scientist is supposed to be about. It’s a complaint about how the academic career structure forces people into doing things they don’t want to do, in ways they don’t want to do them. You have to publish papers in peer reviewed journals, you have to get them cited, you have to apply for and win grants, and along with that you have to fit in, not rock the boat, be conventional, enhance the institution’s reputation as a sound and serious scholar, make friends and influence people.
�
Kate’s complaint, I think, is that the effort to be conventional in order to get tenure, especially for women competing in a male-oriented job, stifles the unconventional innovation that really ought to be your fastest route to tenure. Nobody does their best work when they’re unhappy. She’s saying do it anyway, concentrate on doing a good job the way you think it should be done and don’t worry about tenure, and you never know it might come anyway.
�
Judith’s radicalism is the same sort of thing – doing things the way she thinks they ought to be done, not the way the Scientific Establishment expects and requires them to be done. She’s agreeing that she probably wouldn’t have dared do what she’s done if she hadn’t already got tenure, a reputation, and been financially independent. It’s still radical, even without the risk.
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Take blogging, for example. RealClimate do it the Establishment way: all comments are peer reviewed, and only those the editor approves are published. You have to agree with the right people and disagree with the right people to get on. You have to present your business as serious and professional, take the high ground. You don’t air your dirty laundry in public. You don’t break another man’s rice bowl, or let others break yours, and you circle the wagons against criticism of the profession/institution, by whatever means are necessary. And only those people and those words that pass peer-review are worth listening to; all others are by definition excluded from the debate.
�
Judith has taken to heart the principles that science should be open – open to everyone to participate in, open to alternative views and new ideas, open to scrutiny, open to criticism when it goes wrong. These are the roots of science. She’ll let anyone comment with any view and let the reader decide whether the argument has any merit (which many of course don’t), rather than censoring/suppressing views she doesn’t agree with or think are worthwhile. She’s not defensive about the profession, although she clearly cares passionately for it. And she’s happy to try out speculative and half-formed ideas and have people argue with them, rather than trying to nail down every detail and paper over the weaknesses before letting anyone see.
She’s trying to practice science the way she thinks it should be practiced. Climate sceptics might not agree with her on the science, but they do often agree with her on the philosophy.
�
As for whether she’s a “bozo” and making unsubstantiated statements – so does everyone in this game. To err is human. The argument is not to say that Judith doesn’t make mistakes, the argument is with the claim that the paragons of the RealClimate in-group don’t. They also have made unsupported (and unsupportable) statements; published and given a pass to bad science and other nonsense. That’s OK; mistakes are a part of how science works. But people’s careers in the Scientific Establishment (and more recently their influence over national and international policy) have come to rely on giving the impression that they don’t – that they’re always professional and competent and rarely make unjustified mistakes. That’s where things have gone wrong.

#38

“making unsubstantiated statements ““ so does everyone in this game. To err is human. The argument is not to say that Judith doesn’t make mistakes”

I have not seen any indication she considers this a mistake. Requests for explanations or evidence are met with irritability and rejection of her arguments due to lack of explanation or evidence is attributed to the persecution of her heresy. I have not seen any modification of her behaviour towards providing better and more substantiated arguments as I would expect from someone simply making mistakes and working to rectify it.

The style of argument is exemplified by Tom Fuller in this thread – make grand statements but refuse to be specific or provide any type of evidence. When questioned simple assert the questioner is part of the problem and refuse to acknowledged answers are needed. At no point accept opposing views can be honestly and earnestly held or that opposing views may have better support and evidence, all opposing views are simply part of the problem. Then claim to hold the mantle of honesty, tolerance and openness so that opposition can be presented to being to those principles.

People can complain all they like about Realclimate but I learn things there. Real things about how the world works. I learn real things about uncertainties in conclusions and the specific things leading to those uncertainties rather than simple slapping “uncertainty” on everything as if it’s a magical qualifier. I don’t need to agree with the moderatorship policy, they don’t need to run the blog the way I might and they don’t need to phrase things the way I would for this to be the case. 

Regardless of hits and numbers of comments it’s easy to see the impact blogs like Realclimate or even WUWT have. Even when I’m not actively reading either of them they show up elsewhere all the time and in different contexts.

When I’m not reading “Climate Etc” I forget it exists. It appears to exist within its own bubble for now at least. People go there to discuss whatever but seem to bring little from it elsewhere.  

Tom, 

Curry’s views on “the essential elements of anthropogenic climate change.” are not quite as manistream as you make them out to be. Eg check the first two ref’s I gave in 14. She has repeatedly implied a much larger role for natural variability and natural oscillations in the recent warming than is warranted by the available evidence. She has stated that virtually nothing is known about climate sensitivity (the 0-10 deg/doubling range). Just to provide a few examples.

And just to be clear: There’s nothing inherently wrong with advancing an argument that runs countre to mainstream knowledge; to the contrary. But if they start to be very numerous, you can’t seriously claim to still be in the mainstream. And if you don’t back those extraordinary claims up with extraoridnary evidence (or any evidence at all), mainstreamers will increasingly take you less seriously.

Is “mainstream” a proper benchmark for science?

It is interesting to consider the counter example.  You could build a clubhouse high in the trees with a rope ladder; leave a bell near the ground.  You and your chums can sit in the clubhouse and pull up the ladder.  If someone else wants to come up they have to ring the bell.  If you don’t like them you don’t throw down the ladder.

Then you and your chums sit around discussing how handsome you are – but miss the prom.

Judith gets invited to the prom.  That matters.

Keith,

Judith has frequently responded to my comments on her blog, but perhaps more so at the start of her blog (when I was moderately positive about her efforts) than more recently (when I turned more critical of her efforts).

I certainly won’t complain that she didn’t engage my arguments. Even if she hadn’t, that’s her perogative of course. Her day also only counts 24 hours I’m sure and she doesn’t owe me or other blog commenters anything.

Also after being sharply critical (eg my building bridges->burning bridges post), I can still see some kernels of truth or insight in what she writes.
(e.g. http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/science-dissent-polarization-and-ideology/ ). In contrast to perhaps many others who criticize her, I try to not only focus my attention on where she goes off the rails, but also on where she may have a point.
 

I find myself staying away from her blog. The discussion there is not edifying at all, consisting mainly of posts by denier cranks.
The clincher for me was the stupid way in which she gave credibility to the idea that humans are not responsible for the increase in CO2.  I don’t find that anything said there is at all enlightening.
I can only speculate about her motivation, but it seems to me that she panders to the skeptics and deniers, and revels in the notoriety this gets her.  I had never come across her name as a result of her contributions to climate science until she started her blog.
 

Curry’s place is one of the few places where you can actually witness the full state of the public discourse on Climate change.
Public polling is all fine and dandy but it doesn’t answer the question as to ‘why’ someone may hold a belief.
Those who are tasked with ‘shaping public policy’ need to know not only how many people are for or against something, but why they are for or against something. Without the ‘why’ one can not effectively shape public attitudes or policy’s.
Real Climate and Romm’s place are ‘shaping’ operations. As far as I can see they spend all their time fighting an invisible menace they don’t understand and can not see.
They both rely on conspiracy theory to explain the enemy.
It always has been and always will be that the human mind will fill the void of ignorance with a mysterious almost omnipotent force. Some variation of ‘Gods will’ or ‘It’s a conspiracy’. People with Phd’s in physics are just as susceptible as the rest of us.
Curry’s ‘radicalism is that she has exposed the ‘mysterious omnipotent force’ to be real people with real questions and real concerns.
 

Moderated? For what? No links. Did I say a word that triggers a sp@m filter?

@53 Matt B:
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You don’t. In typical fashion, Curry was regurgitating completely unsubstantiated claims made in the book, got called on it, hand waveed furiously, then backtracked saying she hadn’t read the book and wasn’t necessarily endorsing its claims, etc. She got called on that as well, got defensive, etc.
�
This is why some of us are more frustrated than others. The pattern of behavior isn’t new, and it isn’t evidence of “persecution” or “heresy” or “radicalism”.
�
She can present analyses and data all day long that go counter to the mainstream for all I care. Actually I would really love it if she did and actively support her. But that’s not her MO.

#55, in #32 you asked ‘what the hell?’ when I talked about you sliming Curry and wishing her ill. Please refer to #54.

Again, what the hell are you talking about? How was that wishing anyone anything, let alone wishing Curry “ill”?

???

Among other things, I think Dr. Curry’s blog is an intelligence test for the climate orthodox and mostly they flunk.

Dr. Curry gives greater latitude to uncertainty than the IPCC, but otherwise her views on climate change are pretty standard. Yet she is publicly reviled, sometimes in quite nasty terms. Her crimes seem to be her willingness to allow skeptic discussion on her blog and her outspokenness against Climategate and similar dysfunctions in the climate change community

This response strikes me as odd, unfortunate, and part of that general dysfunction.  It seems that the climate orthodox do not notice the unpleasant Stalinist-like chill emanating from their movement. Those who do not adhere to the party line or even question it are treated roughly.

Dr. Curry’s blog is a warm summer breeze  in that context. If nothing else, she provides an alternate face to climate science that at least some of us find refreshing and are willing to learn from.

Climate change as a political issue has dropped like a rock in polls since peaking after the Al Gore movie. Thus we constantly hear how climate science needs to “change its messaging.” Leaving aside whether that is the real problem with climate science, Dr. Curry’s blog is indeed a change in the messaging and her blog traffic stats show that she is reaching many people.

If climate change is the threat we are told, the climate change community ought to welcome diverse approaches to communicating climate change issues. But they don’t and that’s why I say they are flunking the Climate Etc. IQ test.

#59 Huxley – Agreed

In much the same was as Hal Lewis was brave  or Murray Salby is brave

It’s a cheap way of trying to argue that the reason people don’t say the same things as them isn’t that there’s no evidence but that they’re afraid. Afraid of disagreeing with the mainstream because it will ignore their arguments and punish them for not towing the line. 

Naturally now that a courageous few have stepped forward it will embolden others. Any…second…now…

thingsbreak Says:
October 15th, 2011 at 12:59 pm @50
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<i>Front group/think tanks (CEI, Heartland, CATO, et al.) ginned up talking points that became part of conservative political platforms.</i>
So what is ‘The Center for American Progress’?
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<i>Voters who self-identify as conservative take their cues from the conservative political discourse….. None of this is novel to climate change. The same thing happened with respect to health care.</i>
I took my cue on the ‘Health Care Debate’ from the OMB. It was quite clear that my demographic…self employed making more then twice the poverty line with a catastrophic health insurance plan would bear a disproportionate additional burden. The premise that I would be able to ‘keep my existing plan’ was an out and out bold faced lie.
If you look at ‘pew center’ polling referenced in this Wiki article-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideologies_in_the_United_States
1/3rd of ‘the right’ is comprised of a group labeled as ‘enterprisers’, 46% of which are college graduates. We are quite capable of thinking for ourselves.
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I will take the heat off TB.
It’s very odd. Sometimes Curry is very interesting and responsible and clever, <em>when it’s on Keith’s turf</em>. The social insights about what makes scientists and their critics tick are bang on. And you feel like jumping on the bandwagon. Yes! This is what the scientists are blind to! This is what the cynics are blind to! All very perceptive.
But then the closer she gets to science, the more absurd it gets. It’s not that she has unusual theories or interpretations. This isn’t Lindzen or Spencer territory. It’s just that she is plain wrong at an elementary level, with amazing regularity and stunning insouciance.
She’s a better Pielke Jr. than Roger himself, and then spoils it by being a worse Watts than Watts himself. What are we to make of it?
Perhaps this is some clever denialist game. By stating the real dimensions of the social circumstance very perceptively, and then wrapping it in substantive nonsense, she forces the scientific community to not take her seriously.
This feeds neatly into their desire to paint the scientific community as closed-minded, arrogant and insular (which has some truth to it) and nothing more than that (which certainly has no truth to it at all).
So on that theory, it’s a clever con.
Unfortunately if she really is as she claims, it’s a problem for the defenders of science. If one can have a successful ladder-climbing career in meteorology with the level of scientific sophistication she demonstrates, that doesn’t speak well for the quality control in meteorology.
Look, I’m really rusty myself. I’ve spent half my career doing things other than science, and I’ve been stuck in a corner for five years meeting nobody in any capacity except as a blogger, and so though I am familiar with quite a few areas I’m not really ahead of a predoctoral grad student in any of them. But I can hardly read a paragraph from Curry about an actual scientific question without finding gobsmackingly sophomoric mistakes.
Also, she seems to think of the climate problem as a problem for the integrity of science, remaining absolutely indifferent to the problem for the human species and the future of the world. “Somebody else’s job”, she’ll claim explicitly.
Her web site keeps the main crackpots busy, even Iron Sun Guy. That at least is a service.
But I fully accept “agnostic’s” summary as honest. And this is a problem. Curry’s credentials and demeanor make her appear credible to the beginner. And so a skewed picture of the balance of evidence is promoted to the point where an intelligent, inquisitive person can in good faith refer to the scientific mainstream as “warmist”.
 

I was rather enjoying this thread, Keith, until I realized you were calling me a loon.  smile…
(Apparently, you have an entire corral of loons locked away somewhere, according to the comments on Judith’s blog…?  Let them out, Keith!)
Oh well.  Back down into the teapot.  ….Lady in Red

Trying to build the same tired edifice on the same appeals to authority with the same tired iron rules of moderation–editing and deleting comments, insulting people who don’t agree with you.

Highlighting a post that has been published 3 times in praise of Dr. Thomas Malthus?

Take all the credit you want. 

Be careful, Agnostic and Huxley.

Basically all I want out of a Curry or even a Lindzen is a model that does at least as good of a model as our present one, that incorporates or at least offers of a denial to us. They’re just not up to it (e.g. even if one was foolish enough to buy into Lindzen’s arguments for an absurdly low sensitivity.

“MT 11/6/2010: “It’s hard to stop thinking about all the oddities coming from Judith Curry. I think one could easily fill a blog just cataloguing them.”  (Don’t worry, Dr. Tobis. You did.)

Not me, but somebody did take this suggestion to heart.

http://curryquotes.wordpress.com/
 

@81 – Michael, I agree. I too mostly lurk. I have read nearly every post at judith’s for near a year, and often all of the comments. Very often it is the exploration of an issue, the back and forth that defines the problem and the uncertainties. As far as the dragonslayers are concerned, I fully understand the physics they are trying to debunk and I have no problem with it. That said, some of the things they are pointing too are generally not addressed adequately by those technically minded enough to take them on, leaving me with a feeling that they may be on to something even if it isn’t what they think it is. At any rate, I think for the purposes of the climate debate they are wrong, but they should be listened too from time to time, because science has a venerable history of having it’s most established beliefs overturned.

“But I can hardly read a paragraph from Curry about an actual scientific question without finding gobsmackingly sophomoric mistakes.”

This jars somewhat. Please name 3 mistakes. If there is one in every paragraph it should be quite easy.

Also, don’t take me/us, ie her denizens for complete ignorami. I spent a lot of time trawling peer reviewed papers on various issues to try and establish whether or not the skeptics had a valid argument. I read rebuttals and rebuttals of rebuttals. The same to and fro that occurs in an abbreviated easier to digest form on judith’s site, if you are willing to be patient and examine some of the comments thoroughly.

If you are trying to discredit Judith you really will need to do better than you have. They merely look to be ad hominem attacks with no substance at all. I should add that some of her denizens are extremely technically well informed and while they sometimes disagree with her, I think they would take great exception to your characterisation of her.

Just quote us three clear cut substantial “sophomoric” errors that are not generally debated. If you can do this I will be more guarded about accepting her conclusions. Deal?

The

She has quite successfully demonstrated why peer review was such an important development in the “march of science”.  Her blog is one tortuous mess of ignorance and baseless assertions.  It advances the science not one whit, but does create confusion and reassures the ignorant.  There is something there for everyone in her smorgasboard of opinions.

For my own edification and those who are not Americans, SDSers refer to this movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society

I believe no one need to know who hippies were.

In any case, we feel huxley’s affectionate use of these terms. 

***

I’m not sure what “moderate skeptics” is supposed to refer to in that comment from huxley, except for a way to exploit the Overton Window stretched by way of  “extreme skeptics’.  Would this exploit count as being crazy like a fox?

There is a problem with the editor.  A comment with one link activated the spam detector when formatted by simple copy-paste from somewhere else.  

When I remove all format with the eraser, or when I edit comments in an external editor, this behavior never happens.

Despite Curry’s claim that her blog is very influential and others’ claims that it’s bozos all the way down, it’s far too soon for anyone to judge her impact, whether they like or dislike her. Curry’s been doing her blog for a short time—much less than one funding cycle in research terms—and if she’s successful, both she and the people listening to her will change over time.
When someone tries something new, they may take big missteps, and we should judge Curry not so much on her mistakes as on how she reacts to them. Perhaps she says some damn fool things sometimes just to try the ideas out and get feedback, and will then use the exchange to develop something interesting. I’m willing to watch where she goes, even if I’m skeptical about the trajectory I’ve seen so far on that latter part.
Over time, what I would look for in assaying Curry’s impact is whether the signal-to-noise ratio of her blog improves to the point that discussions become largely substantive exchanges; whether we see her blog (either the posts or the comment streams) changing people’s minds instead of only stirring up rehearsals of familiar talking points; and whether we see her developing original ideas that, over time, others take up and extend.
That said, it doesn’t take nearly so much time to judge whether reading rough drafts of someone’s work in progress is worth the time and effort from day to day. Folks can decide pretty quickly whether they get enough substance from Climate Etc. to justify wading through the crap. But don’t confuse that with knowing what her impact will be over the longer term.

harrywr2 @ 89: People are working worldwide for cheap energy, whether they support climate change or not. So I don’t quite see that as a climate change strategy.

But leave that aside. I’m asking about the strategy of the climate change movement in public debate. How do the climate orthodox plan to persuade people to come to their side to affect government policy? For instance, the Waxman-Markey Climate Change Bill failed, ultimately, because of the lack of voter support, even with a popular Democratic President and Democratic control of the House and Senate.

Until recently the strategy was to win the battle among scientists, then the scientists would advise policy makers, then the policy makers would enact legislation and budgets, and ideally the problem would be solved or improved like pollution or CFCs in previous decades.

However, that strategy has failed with climate change for various reasons that boil down to voter resistance. We live in a democratic society and voters are not persuaded that the risks of climate change are sufficient to support big ticket climate change efforts. In fact there is such a significant backlash against climate change that President Obama won’t even mention climate any more.

Now you can argue that it’s different in other countries, you can complain about Fox News, oil companies and the Koch Brothers, and you can dismiss the intelligence of skeptics and Republicans, but if you want to be effective you usually have to have a strategy. Or you can wait for the climate to change or Mr. Fusion to be invented.

Thingsbreak @ 79


(e.g. even if one was foolish enough to buy into Lindzen’s arguments for an absurdly low sensitivity based on flawed obs, one still can’t account for paelo).
�
Yes. Squaring paleoclimate behaviour with a low CS is tricky, isn’t it?
�
harrywr2 @89
�
The Cancun declaration talked about “˜technology transfers’”¦and a big chunk of the developing world went home and started work on setting up their legal and regulatory framework for nuclear power.

It is starting to look like the shape of things to come, isn’t it? Early days though.

> Personally I think the “˜how much?’ will end up being “˜less then we thought’. In which case the “˜precautionary principle’ holds. If it’s only a “˜little bit extra’ to “˜be safe’ then why take a chance.

I’m unsure why now this logically evaluates, whereas in another thread it did not, but this looks quite sound to me and I do hope you’re right.

Her impact on the ‘scientific’ community has been substantial, as a role model. She objectively looked at the increasing amount of information available and adapted her thinking accordingly. That is not radical, that is ‘scientific.’

What is radical is that she had the courage to speak out despite the Consensus Shunning and all that.

I expect that history will see her as a hero.

Sashka (65),

“in your “Harry Potter” blog post you are not even making any arguments.”

Uhm, conservation of energy.
Or, pointing out the lack of logic when trying to blame something on coincidence, in the presence of a clear mechanistic explanation?
Sashka: “What evidence specifically do you have in mind?” [re limited role of nat variability and oscillations]

variability: conservation of energy
oscillations: lack of a long term trend

harrywr2 (95)
“I  think Waxman-Markey failed because the “˜conditions hadn’t been set’.
The voters want to know “˜how much will this cost’.That was the Montreal Protocol”¦the alternatives to the banned chemicals existed and their cost was known. The same thing in SO2 regulation”¦the cost difference between low SO2 coal and how much scrubbers cost was known.”

 If you think that voters actually know (or pay attention to) what the costs of regulating CFCs and NOx/SOx are and use that information in to shape their voting intentions…well…

With all your talk about military analogues, I’d have thought that you’d have a better sense of the politics of power (not the electricity kind btw), and how that informs climate change policy.

If you want to know why Waxman-Markey failed, you need look no further than here, and the economic carnage that ensued.  Were there other factors involved? Sure.  But I’d say that a sizable block of voters who where educated about projected cost curves for low carbon power sources isn’t one of them…

Judy Curry has her plusses and minuses as a blogger.  The point in this thread that sticks with me: one thing she’s done is to broaden the conversation. 

Overall, my sense of comments here is that is generally seen as a Bug by adherents to Mainstream positions, and as a Feature by dissenters of various stripes.

A few weeks back, Lucia (The Blackboard) claimed that the math in certain high-profile posts by Lord Monckton at WUWT was wrong.  That dispute — which she won — got her blog noticed by many people of “CO2 can’t cause warming!” beliefs.  Their strident and ill-informed commentary is usually annoying.  At least to me:  I’m interested in becoming more familiar with the math, statistics, and modeling practices that determine the predictive power of GCMs and climatology in general.

On the other hand, there is utility in following the basic issues; seeing how different people view and discuss competing claims and evidence.  Some “regulars” develop a reputation for integrity and for explanations that check out (e.g. Fred Moolten at Curry’s, in my book).

Maybe the noise that these open fora develop is an acceptable price to pay.  Along the lines that other commenters in this thread have described, exposure to Stoat and then RealClimate had me thinking that AGW claims must be pretty dodgy:  else, why would knowledgeable people act as those folks do?  It took wider reading and exposure to open discussions to convince me of the validity of the science behind AGW.

At any rate, Blackboard commenter SteveF just penned a short summary of his views of the subject, at the tail end of one of those low S/N threads.  Here’s the link. I think his views represent a sensible position, and one that is in general not far-removed from Curry’s.  It seems to me that events of the past few years have forced the sclerotic climate Mainstream to grudgingly accept that such perspectives are fit for discussion in polite company.  Given the stakes, that’s important progress.

�
Having read the entire thread I see one aspect of the Dr. Curry phenomenon that I do not feel have been adequately considered: the quality of her readers or “denizens”.
Take a read at the list of “denizens” of the Climate Etc. blog. It is a list of Engineers/MDs/PhDs/computer specialists/etc… These are the well-educated professionals who serve as the backbone of science communication in their communities. These are the people who write letters to the editor and get phoned when their local/regional paper wants an informed/educated opinion on a subject. Malcolm Gladwell would call them his mavens but I think of them as micro-communicators. They don’t have a loud voice on national matters but have disproportionately loud voices in their local communities. As such Dr. Curry’s reach cannot be solely judged by her readership numbers, but rather by the reach of that readership.
Moreover, these denizens include a disproportionate number of policy specialists. In my opinion, one of the real disconnects in the climate change discussion is not in the quality of the science (although I have my personal doubts on the reliability of much of the models) but rather the quality of the policy professionals and the public face of the CAGW clique. Using exceedingly broad strokes the vast majority of the communicators on the CAGW side can be placed in two groups: the RealClimate (RC) types who are highly educated but, to put in bluntly, not personable, and the Desmoggers (DS) who are professional communicators who sometimes appear to have an insufficient depth of knowledge. When reading comments from the RCs one always feels like a student in a bad lecture class. The audience is unconnected to the speaker and at least personally, even on those occasions when I agree with the content I feel the desire to disagree with the message due to the bad nature of the messenger. As for the DSs it can be incredibly grating to be lectured to by political science grads many of whom didn’t even study science in high-school, let alone grad school. Folks who lecture me with authority that is not earned will not influence me to change my mind.  Dr. Curry, if nothing else, is an excellent communicator in this genre (I have not heard her speak so cannot speak to her skills in public) who has the benefit of also being well-verse in the topic. Her influence, once again in my opinion only, is built on this combination of communication skill and hard-earned respect through years of devotion to a topic.  As one of her denizens I will continue to read her blog and give her opinion my ear and while I may not agree with everything she says she has earned the right, in my mind at least, to voice her opinions widely.

re 108

Marlowe Johnson writes

If you want to know why Waxman-Markey failed, you need look no further than

here, and the economic carnage that ensued
==================
 

The ‘here’ refers to a set of slides on the the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. This fiasco was the result of the considered policies of high officials in major economic offices and the considered opinion of academic economists. This resulted in legislation to implement these peer-reviewed findings.
�
So in this Marlowe Johnson is probably correct; the public has learned how much faith to put in pronouncements that result from academic consensus. This is especially true for an academic and political consensus that proposes radical changes.
�
The slides that Johnson references do not go far enough to show the folly that these distinguished leaders went in for. major financial institutions were financing long term mortgages with overnight borrowing. They were hedging these risks by buying insurance (credit swaps) from companies which were using the fees generated from the swaps to invest in collateralized instruments that were based on the mortgages that they were insuring, In effect the collateral for these loans were the loans themselves.
�
This was a house of cards based on supposition masquerading as economic knowledge. This was a house of cards that drove economic and political reality in the US. A similar house of cards drove economic policy in Europe. We were all told that new economic knowledge had ended the business cycle and we could look forward to continuing prosperity
�
Now the academic and political elites tell us that they have a new set of policies based on sound scientific knowledge. These policies will require a profound change in how the economy works but we should not worry because it is based on an elite consensus.
�
These people really do think that they are smarter than everyone else.

Bart Verheggen, sorry for addressing you as “Bart R” in my #107

Bart Verheggen is not Bart R is not Bartemis, but Bartemis at Judy’s is Bart at Steve’s.

@108
While I’d agree that the events of the past few years have certainly diminished the public’s confidence in the infallibility of the ruling class, that is not the point I was trying to make.  

Unsurprisingly, concern/support for environmental issues  closely tracks the business cycle.  When times are bad, people tend to put greater priority on near term pocket book issues (e.g. social safety net) than they do on environmental issues.  This isn’t a particularly controversial observation I would think.  So it’s hardly surprising that political support for ACES by centrist Dems and Republicans wavered in the face the economic meltdown.  It doesn’t take a genius to predict that opposition attacks on the ‘costs’ of ACES would get much more traction in that kind of environment than they would have say in the late 90s when the economy was doing much better….

I think TB is failing the IQ test (see #60).

TB, by all means come over and discuss this post at Climate Etc. Frank Lemke has received an award from SIAM for his knowledge mining work, he has applied this  method to interpreting the last 23 years of climate data.  He has some interesting results that are of relevance to our understanding of feedback.

You and MT should be less quick to criticize things you know very little about.  If you have serious criticisms or identify a technical error, send me an email or discuss it on my blog. 

#119 “I asked Michale Tobis how he and I could talk”

Perhaps this will help:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/22/friday-funny-f-word-fusillade-by-michael-tobis/

“Evidence amassed to date…” Hmm.

She’s roused the ‘skeptic’ rabble with her authoritative bafflegab.  That’s all, but that’s enough, because that rabble have a disproportionately large voice now in climate change response policy.  And that’s a tragedy.  And some day she’ll find that part of the responsibility is on her head.
�
She hasn’t changed the science at all.

Burn her. She turned Tb into a newt! But he didn’t get better…

Suggest? 

I’m not sure tb could have said it more clearly. 

OTOH, we shouldn’t interrupt tb while he’s taking the test – i think there’s a time limit.

Dean @ 122: Dr. Curry’s blog functions at several levels — scientific, social and political. Odds are that JC and her Denizans are not going to determine “the facts of how nature works” any more than Keith Kloor’s  blog or even RealClimate.

Blogs are not scientific journals. Blog discussions are not mechanisms for “coming up with the correct result.” If that’s what you have in mind, I would say you are looking for a climate catechism class, and you are welcome to it.

But that’s not what I am looking for. I want to read articles, ask questions, make mistakes, rethink my positions, ask more questions, learn what others think, watch who gives the best answers, rethink my positions again, etc.

In other words I want to make up my own mind. And that seems to be a very large problem for the climate orthodox unless they can make sure I “come up with the correct result.” I don’t appreciate that approach anymore than I did in my real catechism classes as a child.

I am talking about democracy. Climate issues are now part of our political campaigns. I am doing my due diligence as a citizen. I am not a supplicant for the approved climate wisdom. I suggest that the climate orthodox make their peace with people like me, especially if they want our votes for their policies.

TB,

Are we still talking about Lemke or you have changed the subject already? I was asking about why Lemke’s post is “crankery” above.

Frank Lemke: “The primary question is not whether CO2 ““ or any other single factor ““ drives global warming, but first of all, whether the modeling approach is adequate to describe the system under research.”

Thingsbreak: “Promoting the ludicrous suggestion that humans aren’t responsible for the rise in CO2… doesn’t exactly amount to extraordinary evidence.”

 The man is talking about models. You accuse him of promoting an idea that he doesn’t even mention.

Truly vile. 

@TF

“ The man is talking about models. You accuse him of promoting an idea that he doesn’t even mention.”

And yet if you follow the link that Frank Lemke provides in his post at JC’s you get this:

“To say it upfront: It is NOT CO2. Not necessarily and not exclusively. Looking at observational data by high-performance self-organizing predictive knowledge mining, it is not confirmed that atmospheric CO2 is the major force of global warming. In fact, no direct influence of CO2 on global temperature has been identified for the best models. This is what the data are seriously telling us. If we believe them, it is the sun, ozone, aerosols, and clouds – and possibly other forces not considered in this model – that drive global temperature in an interdependent and complex way.”

Help me understand, because I don’t get it. 

@134 Tom Fuller:
The man is talking about models. You accuse him of promoting an idea that he doesn’t even mention.
Truly vile. 
�
You’re conflating (unintentionally, I hope) two complaints.
�
A) The non-anthro-CO2-rise garbage that Curry was promoting was Salby.
�
B) Lemke is promoting a model of drivers of surface temperature that ostensibly exculpates CO2 (which we know is wrong), and explains the actual temperature record less well than the mainstream (e.g. Lean and Rind 2008).
�
Two different complaints. If B at least did as good or a better job of explaining the surface record, I might somewhat understand why Curry would entertain something that goes against everything we know about CO2 and climate.

@139 Tom Fuller:
This is Curry’s promoting?
�
No, this is:�
I just finished listening to Murry Salby’s podcast on Climate Change and Carbon.  Wow.
…
If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science.  Salby and I were both at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the 1990″²s, but I don’t know him well personally.  He is the author of a popular introductory graduate text Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics.  He is an excellent lecturer and teacher, which comes across in his podcast.  He has the reputation of a thorough and careful researcher.  While all this is frustratingly preliminary without publication, slides, etc., it is sufficiently important that we should start talking about these issues.
�
Tom Fuller:
Lemke is not promoting a model of drivers of surface temperature.
�
What else would you call something that tries to predict the surface temperature behavior using a limited number of inputs?
�
I have read that post three times. He does not promote a model anywhere in there.
�
Perhaps you skipped over this part?
A recent post in our Global Warming Prediction Project discusses the question “What Drives Global Warming?”
�
The “What Drives Global Warming?” is the same material referenced @136.
�
To say it upfront: It is NOT CO2. Not necessarily and not exclusively. Looking at observational data by high-performance self-organizing predictive knowledge mining, it is not confirmed that atmospheric CO2 is the major force of global warming. In fact, no direct influence of CO2 on global temperature has been identified for the best models. This is what the data are seriously telling us. If we believe them, it is the sun, ozone, aerosols, and clouds – and possibly other forces not considered in this model – that drive global temperature in an interdependent and complex way.
�
Tom Fuller:
So: You don’t tell the truth about Salby. You don’t tell the truth about Lemke.
�
Tom, your apparently abysmal reading comprehension != me not telling the truth.
�
as a basis for condemning Curry. Because she gave them space on her blog.
�
This thread is about Curry’s legacy. People are pointing out why it’s becoming associated with crankery. If she doesn’t want to be associated with crankery, it might be a good idea for her to stop promoting it on her blog. Just a thought!
�
You’re just making a fool of yourself here
�
Uh huh.

TB,

It’s who is conflating two issues, clearly intentionally. In 113 you accused JC in “promoting” “crankery” with link to Lemke, not to Salby.

>which we know is wrong

When you say “know” you mean based on the models that you like or something else? And you like those models because …?

@141 Tom Fuller:
Lemke is obviously talking about what can be gleaned from the current generation of models.
�
What part of:
To say it upfront: It is NOT CO2. Not necessarily and not exclusively. Looking at observational data by high-performance self-organizing predictive knowledge mining, it is not confirmed that atmospheric CO2 is the major force of global warming. In fact, no direct influence of CO2 on global temperature has been identified for the best models. This is what the data are seriously telling us. If we believe them, it is the sun, ozone, aerosols, and clouds ““ and possibly other forces not considered in this model ““ that drive global temperature in an interdependent and complex way.
�
do you not understand? He’s talking about his own models of drivers of the surface temperature record there. Which, not incidentally, have less explanatory power than the mainstream.
�
Tom Fuller:
As for Salby, if he were right it would be revolutionary. Why wouldn’t Curry give him space?
�
If vaccines caused autism, it would be revolutionary. Why shouldn’t pediatricians promote it? If carrot juice enemas cured colo-rectal cancer, it would be revolutionary. Why shouldn’t oncologists promote it? If life was intelligently designed, it would be revolutionary. Why shouldn’t biologists promote it? Etc.
�
@142 Sashka:
When you say “know” you mean based on the models that you like or something else? And you like those models because “¦?
�
Radiative transfer, paleoclimatic data, obs+ theoretical calculation, etc. Sure, modern GCMs are an additional line of evidence.

TB,
You continue bandying about the word “promote”.  What exactly do you mean?

@146 kdk33:
You continue bandying about the word “promote”.  What exactly do you mean?
�
Highlight, present, raise visibility of, focus attention on, etc.
�
Although I realize that fixating on word choice in order to derail discussion is a favorite sport at some blogs, I’d rather avoid it. Please feel free to substitute any synonym that you find acceptable as long as my meaning is left intact, so that we keep the forest (vs. any given tree) in sight.

@147 huxley:
I think the analogy with The Lancet would be comporable if Salby’s presentation and Curry’s subsequent highlighting on her blog took place decades ago when Callender and later Keeling were trying to suss out what was going on, rather than in 2011.
�
Would you agree that pediatricians, or the CDC, or similar would be doing something incredibly irresponsible by promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism now?

@149 BBD:
�
I think you raise a good point:
�
You hear a lot of “skeptics” raise issues of “democracy”, “being heard”, “having a seat at the table”, etc. It’s an understandable desire. It’s not one that the sociology of science handles well, for many good reasons, and a few bad ones. Science is a meritocracy, not a democracy. However, in order for us to avoid the outcome we’re hoping to avoid, we have to somehow translate the non-science but understandable desire to be a part of the process into something positive.
�
Climate “skeptics” sites have taken advantage of that desire, in a big way. They are letting Joe and Jane Doe (and admittedly some Joe and Jane Engineers) feel like they have a say in the science, through “auditing”, the surface stations project etc.
�
Mainstream science has tried to do that, but with much less success, with distributed computing, citizen science projects about tracking phenology, etc. I think there are pushes to have citizen-science projects digitize historical meteorological data as well.
�
I sympathize completely from an emotional standpoint with the people who feel like they’re just becoming aware of the issue, and are being railroaded by groups who have already “decided” things. Likewise, I sympathize with those in relevant fields who have been participating in or learned the history of the long, drawn out process of building evidence that has been going on in some sense since the 1800s and in earnest since the 1970s.

thingsbreak: But The Lancet did promote the vaccine-autism link even when there was a substantial, if not majority, medical opinion against that thesis at the time. Yet The Lancet is not a freewheeling blog.

Climate Etc. is a freewheeling blog with looser standards and no doubt opinions you don’t like. I’m not terribly upset.

Dr. Curry sometimes presents material that she will turn into papers or presentations, but for the most part the articles are whatever is on her mind — just this week there was a women-in-academia piece written by a man — but it’s not set in stone, it’s not wisdom for the ages or peer review. If that’s not your cup of tea, fine.

Curry’s long-term strategy is to bring people to a greater knowledge and acceptance of orthodox climate science. One can argue whether that strategy will work or not, but the way so many of the climate orthodox jump on her with hobnailed boots reinforces my impression that they don’t have the facts and reason to make their case and that deep down they are authoritarians.

That’s a terrible impression to make if you want my vote.

Yeah, TB, you’re better off changing the subject, given your tawdry behavior. But Wakefield had been the subject of numerous articles prior to the Lancet piece.

So where’s your condemnation of the Lancet? They were clearly promoting anti-vax, anti-science claptrap. I’m sure you’ve got enough firewood for them too. 

BBD @ 153: Science is a meritocracy…

That must be why climate scientists so often base their arguments on consensus.

That must be why the Climategate scientists were so busy deleting or threatening to delete emails and data, losing data, rigging peer review, censoring, deleting, and banning skeptics in blog discussions, fudging data presentations, running PR campaigns with docile journalists etc.

That must be why the IPCC contains unchecked claims from the World Wildlife Fund or a politically motivated phone conversation.

That must be why the previous generation of doom-and-gloom scientists made all sorts of false claims about the imminent demise of the oceans and deaths of billions of people and enjoyed healthy careers at premier universities or even made it to the White House.

Whatever the case for science may be, the United States is a democracy, or more accurately a constitutional republic. If scientists want their  climate policies carried out, they will have to persuade the citizenry that they are honest and competent and that they’ve got the real goods on climate change.

So far climate scientists don’t look all that honest or competent, much less meritocratic. Go ahead and blame Judith Curry or the skeptics. That will fix it.

huxley

Imagine the opposite. Imagine that you did bad things for a good reason. It’s not unusual.

Thingsbreak, your attacks on Judith Curry are scurrilous. I’m not going to ‘knock off’ pointing out behavior that is in my opinion reprehensible. You want to talk about climate? Talk about climate. You want to discredit someone’s scientific capabilities based on who she allows to contribute to a weblog? Go find out where Tobis is hanging out and have a grumble session with him.

@BBD:  Science and Exxon/Mobil are seekers after different things.
So what?  We are talking about meritocracies.  Hw are scientic merits awarded?

@162 Tom Fuller:
You want to discredit someone’s scientific capabilities based on who she allows to contribute to a weblog?
�
The topic isn’t Judith’s “scientific capabilities”.
�
Keith asked: “What do you think Curry’s impact has been since she’s become a self-described radical?”
�
It’s unfortunate that you think my comments amount to “scurrilous attacks” on Judith. I am expressing my opinion of what a large part of her impact has been- promoting nonsense. It’s unfortunate, and I hope her legacy ends up being something much different.
�
I’ll thank you to stop putting words in my mouth, especially those indicating that I want to burn Curry as some sort of heretic/witch, for merely expressing my answer to Keith’s topic.

@154 huxley:
the way so many of the climate orthodox jump on her with hobnailed boots reinforces my impression that they don’t have the facts and reason to make their case and that deep down they are authoritarians.
That’s a terrible impression to make if you want my vote.
�
Can I ask how someone could discriminate between criticizing someone they see as giving credibility to nonsense (again, compare this to a biologist promoting ID on a personal blog) and a given discipline’s “orthodox jump[ing] on someone with hobnailed boots” in way that “reinforces your impression that they don’t have the facts and reason to make their case and that deep down they are authoritarians”?

Tom,

enough already.  and I like you.

TB, BBD,

You guys need to decide what you are trying to accomplish.  Do you want to be part of cliimate science club? do you want to do science? do you want to promote (in the sell sense) certain energy policy.

If you want to be part of the club, then you’re on the right track – don’t talk about, or appear to entertain, anything to… well unorthodox.

If you want to do science, then it should not bother you one wit that wacky, silly ideas are out there.  Debunking them would be good excercise and many would contain a kernal of something interesting. 

If you want to promote policy, then you’ll need to come to terrms with how badly your current approach does not work – and I think the evidence here is clear.

it’s up to you.

Whoops! Sorry kdk33, thought that was tb. But I like you too.

Didn’t mean to steal any joy. Carry on!

TB,

I appreciate your response.  What I see JC saying with regards to Lemke is this:

quote 1:  I think this is a fascinating methodology

quote 2:  Conclusions regarding AGW and the role of CO2 cannot be drawn from 23 years of data

She is “promoting” a kernal of something interesting.  She clearly is not ceding any conclusions from this work.  Lemke may be “out there”.  He may get somewhere; maybe not.  Who cares?  It’s science, let him try.

Regarding the disinformation campaign – and I assume you mean intentional – why do you think otherwise intelligent, succesfull people (big oil, etc) want to intentionally destroy the planet for the grandkids?  I realize you aren’t the only one, but I find the idea bizarre, so I’m genuinely curious to know what you think might motivate these folks.

“I asked Curry point blank many times to state simply what scientifically (not “he is a former colleague, not “it’s contrarian”) she found to be worthwhile in Salby’s presentation. She has yet to do so.”

I asked the same (specifically how a “revolution” of that type could possibly be integrated with existing knowledge) and she saw fit to delete the comment. Given what she allowed stand on that thread it says a lot. Many claims are made about not having time to moderate properly, which is fair enough, but where moderation does happen it reveals clearly the purpose of the blog.

KK,

It very much depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

What harm do you see?

Sharper 00, your statement is almost certaintly incorrect, i 99.99% doubt I have deleted any of your comments, the only comments that I delete are comments that are way off topic on a thread that is declared to be a technical thread.

With regards to TB’s question:  I wrote an entire post on Salby’s presentation, then get asked a question what I think is worthwhile, which begs the issue of the original post.

I get about 11,000 comments a month at Climate Etc., almost 400 per day.  I personally answer very few of them.  Comments are only deleted on technical threads if they are way of topic.  On occasion, i have deleted duplicative posts (after the same person saying the same thing about 10 times).

I get the impression that you do not have much contact with corporate executives.

@184
IOW no comment on TB’s questions?  

@ KK  (181)

If you are looking for pitbulls there are much better candidates here.

BBD

it’s a fairly simple question.  You say Science is a different meritocracy than the corporate exmples I gave.  I asked, “how are scientific merits awarded”.  This helps me understand why you think it is different.

I’ll answer your question as follows:  The climate is not reacting to changes in total insolation, it is reacting to the distribution.  Changing distribution allows ice sheets to advance/retreat changing albedo and cooling/warming the planet.   The planets sensitivity to Milankovitch cycles doesn’t speak to climate sensitivity to CO2.

The ff industry is in reality a collection of people.  Relative to the general population they are intelligent, educated, and technically literate.  They love their children and grand kids; they enjoy the outdoors; many are environmentalists; some are even democrats.  I assure you that they very much “care”.  Your belief that there is an evil ff effort to trick people into destroying the planet, is perhaps one you should re-examine.

kdk33

it’s a fairly simple question.  You say Science is a different meritocracy than the corporate exmples I gave.  I asked, “how are scientific merits awarded”.  This helps me understand why you think it is different.
�
This is still unintelligible.

The planets sensitivity to Milankovitch cycles doesn’t speak to climate sensitivity to CO2.
�
Ah. I see. RF from CO2 is special. Different. Except that it isn’t. It’s just RF.
�
I have tried to explain this on the other thread and clearly failed. Can someone else attempt to show kdk33 why he has not understood the following:
�
Small push = big change = high climate sensitivity.

Your belief that there is an evil ff effort to trick people into destroying the planet, is perhaps one you should re-examine.

I think what you should re-examine is my comment. The word ‘evil’ seems to have appeared out of nowhere. I repeat: you don’t understand the corporate mind-set. You don’t appear to be familiar with it. I’d be wary of defending it if I were you. 

Forget the FF industry for a minute and think generally about the probity and responsibility that characterises so much of corporate activity.

BBD – At 65N, the summer solstice insolation changes by over seeveral 10s of W/m2 through the Milankovitch cycles.  Seems to me that this could have drastic impact on the ability (or inability) of accumulated snow and ice to melt or vice-versa, leading to albedo feedbacks, as well as potentially altering global atmospheric circulation patterns and cloud formation.  All without much of a change in net radiation.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InsolationSummerSolstice65N.png

thingsbreak 168:

“Can I ask how someone could discriminate between criticizing someone they see as giving credibility to nonsense…”

You make two assumptions, that Dr Curry is ‘giving credibility’ and that the posts she hosts are ‘nonsense’.

WRT the Lemke thread, if you think it is nonsense, then you should state clearly why. If your case is sound you can extend it further to legitimately opine to Dr Curry that posts like that undermine the credibility of her blog. She may well disagree and argue that in pointing out the flaws many things were learnt or seen in a new light.

I suggest having another close look at the Lemke post and putting aside your preconceptions for a while. Have a look at some of the more worthy comments and consider them. If you still think it is nonsense, I think there would be a lot of people interested in your reasons why.

It is to Dr Curry’s credit that she is not so closed minded as to disallow the possibility of ‘black swans’. if you don’t know what it is I mean by this, there is an extremely interesting post and discussion on Judith’s site about it and I highly commend it to you.

There are some highly knowledgable people who are denizens at Climate Etc who have some pretty interesting questions about the orthodox view of climate science. They are not rabid right-wing polticos (although you will find those as well – on both sides), but genuinely intrigued scientists and engineers who make extremely interesting challenges to the standard view.

If you are sincere in your search for ‘truth’ or a ‘truer’ understanding of the science those questions need to be addressed – and no they haven’t really been yet – not satisfactorily. But if you think you have the answers we would love to hear them.

For those keeping track, I’m calling +1 drink for ‘dittoheads’ as he didn’t put ‘climate’ in front

kdk33
�
You are being obtuse.
�
From Hansen & Sato (2011) Earth’s energy imbalance and implications:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/…/20110826_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf

Now let us turn to a more general discussion of climate feedbacks, which determine climate sensitivity. Feedbacks do not come into play coincident with a forcing. Instead they occur in response to global temperature change.

‘Fast feedbacks’ appear almost immediately in response to global temperature change. For example, as Earth becomes warmer the atmosphere holds more water vapor. Water vapor is an amplifying fast feedback, because water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas. Other fast feedbacks include clouds, natural aerosols, snow cover and sea ice.

‘Slow feedbacks’ may lag global temperature change by decades, centuries, millennia, or longer time scales. Principal slow feedbacks are surface albedo and long-lived GHGs. These feedbacks are the reason huge climate oscillations occur on millennial time scales in response to seemingly minor perturbations of Earth’s orbit that alter the geographical and seasonal distribution of sunlight on Earth.

Surface albedo refers to the reflectivity of continents. Ice sheet area, continental area, and vegetation cover affect surface albedo and temperature, and hydrologic effects associated with vegetation change also contribute to global temperature change. Numerical experiments (Hansen et al., 1984) indicate that ice sheet area is the dominant surface feedback in glacial to interglacial climate change, so ice sheet area is a useful proxy for the entire slow surface feedback in Pleistocene climate variations. Surface albedo is an amplifying feedback, because the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth increases when ice and snow area decreases.

GHGs are also an amplifying feedback on millennial time scales, as warming ocean and soils drive more CO2, CH4 and N2O into the air. This amplifying GHG feedback occurs because the atmosphere exchanges carbon and nitrogen with other surface reservoirs (ocean, soil, biosphere).

kdk33

Once you’ve had a proper think about that, continue:

2.1. Fast-feedback climate sensitivity

Climate sensitivity including all fast-feedback processes is especially important. Climate change on the time scale of a century or less is determined by the fast-feedback sensitivity, with moderate correction for slow feedback effects. A singular merit of the (all) fast-feedback climate sensitivity is that it can be evaluated empirically from paleoclimate data with an accuracy far exceeding the potential accuracy of climate models in any foreseeable time frame.

Fast-feedback climate sensitivity can be derived from paleoclimate data because averaged over sufficient time Earth must be in quasi-equilibrium with its ‘boundary forcings’. By boundary forcings we mean factors such as solar irradiance, continental locations, ice sheet distribution, and long-lived GHGs such as CO2, CH4 and N2O that affect the planet’s energy balance. By quasi-equilibrium we mean that the planet is in radiation balance with space within a small fraction of 1 W/m2. For example, averaged over several millennia of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, which peaked about 20,000 years ago) and averaged over the Holocene (prior to the time of large human-made changes) the mean planetary energy imbalance was small. This assertion is proven by considering the contrary: a sustained imbalance of 1 W/m2 would melt all ice on Earth or change ocean temperature a large amount, neither of which occurred.

Boundary forcings causing the LGM to be colder than the Holocene were larger ice sheet area and lesser amounts of GHGs. Solar irradiance and continental locations differed negligibly between the Holocene and LGM. Earth orbital parameters (2) differed, but the effect of orbital perturbations per se on planetary radiation balance is only of the order of 0.1 W/m2. (Fig. S3 of Hansen et al., 2008). Change of GHG amount and ice sheet size are known with good accuracy.

Calculation of the climate forcings due to the GHG and ice sheet changes is a radiative calculation; it does not require use of a global climate model. Clouds may differ in the LGM, but those changes are part of the fast-feedback being evaluated. The forcing calculation uses a climatologic distribution of clouds (obtained from observations, but the calculated forcing differs insignificantly if clouds instead are taken from a general circulation model; Hansen et al., 1984).

Hansen and Sato (2011) discuss the empirically-derived fast-feedback climate sensitivity further. The important point is that the fast-feedback sensitivity requires knowledge of only the global temperature change, GHG change, and surface albedo change. Estimated changes of these three quantities between the Holocene and LGM imply a fast feedback climate sensitivity of about ¾°C per W/m2 or 3°C for doubled CO2.

——

(2) Other planets perturb Earth’s orbit, altering the tilt of Earth’s spin axis relative to Earth’s orbital plane, the eccentricity of the orbit, and the day of year when Earth is closest to the sun. These three orbital parameters vary slowly, the dominant time scales being close to 40,000, 100,000 and 20,000 years, respectively.

Hansen & Sato (2011) Earth’s energy imbalance and implications:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/…/20110826_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf

huxley
If the case for climate science is so strong, we do we keep seeing all this dodgy behavior, as well as hearing these mob-like howls against Dr. Curry?

I do not think TB’s commentary here was a ‘mob-like howl’. Let’s settle down.
�
Too many people seem to think adding to the confusion is a good idea. At the very least, this is mystifying.

Some commenters are angered by it; some merely baffled.

How important is Climategate? Did it overturn the work of Ramanathan, or Hansen, or Charney?

Did any change, however slight, in the hypothesis that RF from CO2 heats the atmosphere happen?

So why does it remain such a hot topic in the blogosphere?

I find this puzzling.

hunter

I really dislike it when this happens:

See my comment @ 194:

I think what you should re-examine is my comment. The word “˜evil’ seems to have appeared out of nowhere. I repeat: you don’t understand the corporate mind-set. You don’t appear to be familiar with it. I’d be wary of defending it if I were you.

You will note that kdk33 introduced the word ‘evil’. In fact he pretty much put it into my mouth and I objected.

Now, at a remove, you are doing it. Tiresome.

You sound as unfamiliar with the typical corporate mindset as kdk33 is. Short-term, shareholder-beholden, absolute self-interest and relentless are words that spring to mind.

Tom
�
It’s still a hot topic because the ‘sceptics’ keep it that way.

@ BBD (204)

Back to square one.

“Hansen and Sato (2011) discuss the empirically-derived fast-feedback climate sensitivity further. The important point is that the fast-feedback sensitivity requires knowledge of only the global temperature change, GHG change, and surface albedo change. Estimated changes of these three quantities between the Holocene and LGM imply a fast feedback climate sensitivity of about ¾°C per W/m2 or 3°C for doubled CO2.”

Empirically-derived: how good is that?
Estimated changes: how exact?
What is assumed?

@210
In case you weren’t aware, you may find it interesting that Tom Fuller and Steve Mosher wrote a book about ClimateGate — they literally do profit the longer it remains topical in the blogosphere.  Perhaps this helps to understand your earlier question to Mosher as to why he wants to focus on supposed transgressions by climate scientists rather than the policy implications of the science itself.  Just a thought.

Sashka

Why don’t you read the paper?
�
Door stays shut. Door opens – it’s up to you.

Sashka
Really? But I’ve read both the H&S11 papers and you have read neither (and refuse to).
�
So you must simply be being gratuitously offensive.

TF
�
I did. Are you also suggesting that I have not read either of the H&S (2011) papers? Because if you are, then you should be less oblique about it.

I do not think TB’s commentary here was a “˜mob-like howl’. Let’s settle down.

BBD @ 206: I’m not just talking about TB. How about Tobis’s “But I can hardly read a paragraph from Curry about an actual scientific question without finding gobsmackingly sophomoric mistakes,” or Scientific American callng her a heretic, or any number of vicious orthodox commets on Curry to be found on the web.

And it’s not just Climategate but the whole rancid history of the Hockey Stick, the constant censoring, deleting and banning of skeptics, and the overall silence or downplaying of these abuses by the orthodox community including yourself.

I understand that it doesn’t matter much to you. Fine, but it does matter to me, and your telling me that it shouldn’t matter, that we should just ignore it all and get back to your favorite passages from the orthodox literature doesn’t cut it.

Much of my support for Dr. Curry is because she does stand up against the abuses and she is trying to pry open a more open dialog. She thought other scientists would join her. I would have thought so too, but aside from a few retired physicists, few did.

So I don’t trust climate scientists. I buy that the planet is warming and that there is something to the CO2 greenhouse effect,  but after that it’s tough to assess how much of an effect, how certain we can be and what we can do about it.

However, when I listen to climate scientists and their supporters rail against Dr. Curry and against fossil fuel and Fox News conspiracies — those I can assess and I conclude these scientists are sloppy biased thinkers with axes to grind, and I do not trust them.

Tom Fuller: I couldn’t find an email address for you, not surprisingly. I thank your for your efforts. I’ve paid prices in my personal life too, which is why I post anonymously. I enjoyed your SF Examiner column and wish you well.

224, thanks. 225

�
My tumblog reminded me of this reception of Salby:

http://theclimatescum.blogspot.com/2011/08/salby-demolishes-agw-theory.

Wow.

Wohohow!

Yippiyayayayay!

Wobedobedoboo!

�
 

The tenor of some of the comments here are indicative of why I do not trust AGW consensus blogs and their regular  commenters. There can be no deviation from orthodoxy. Peer-reviewed is synonomous as being without error. Mathematical blunders and mathematical ignorance do not mattter. Science is different than anything else. it does not need certainty to make certain pronouncements

Tom,
Your book and its careful documentation of the climategate e-mails is one of the important works that documents the social madness of AGW.
That the NYT, WaPo, NPR or any of the other media bothered to even review your work seriously on a timely basis is a self-indictment of their ethics. Instead, they doubled down and let the BBD’s of the world pretend there was nothing there.�
Your blog was fantastic. I also have paid a personal price in the form of lost business when AGW believers decide that their faith is more important than good price and good service. Good riddance to them.
�
BBD,
You could say that the most gullible kid themselves into thinking that they are witnessing a cliamte crisis, and then you would actually be correct.
 

Oh, and let’s have an equitable peer-review process.
Not re-defined©.

following on #233 – and my (our) cash-flow/accounts/whatever – dispel the myth!

Or you could say that those who know most, are most concerned.

BBD @ 231: You are the master of the one-line fallacy.

Those who are most concerned are liberal/green types who have been frightened by Al Gore and climate scientists as in this Gallup poll in which 55% of Democrats worry that because of global warming risks, “Human life will cease to exist on earth.”

Of course, among scientists there is a range of concerns about global warming, so unless you define “those who know most” as being the same set as “those who are most concerned” your one-liner doesn’t hold up either.

You don’t seem to be offering reason so much as attitude.

Dave H, we were among those who explained what Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline actually meant. I’m sorry it took us a month to get the truth out. Sorrier that the networks didn’t read it. But I published on that subject on Examiner.com within a week of the leak. So I don’t know why you’re blaming me. (Hey–blame Mosher! He’s not here to defend himself…)

The story of Copenhagen was limos running in the parking lot, private jets, Obama getting dissed, stuff like that. The Saudi nonsense was pretty much a sideshow. 

We all create our own narrative at the end of the day. I was reading the same stories you were and I came away with the conviction that Climategate didn’t make much of a difference in the media, at Copenhagen, anywhere outside this little corner of the blogosphere.

But I guess we make handy scapegoats. But it was all MOSHER. It wuz him. He’s the guy! 

Yup. Get ye out and acquire ye one. Make haste before the electrons become unstocked.

Tom.
I am honored that you have read my fevered bytes for a long time, and I hope they have at least entertained some, if not actually given some for for thought. You and Steve being ignored in this by journalists (and I am in touch with some pretty good ones on a first name basis) was a real tell to me that the social mania of AGW had compromised the alleged job of journalists to gather and report facts.
AGW is such a corruption of legitimate that normal reasonable standards simply do not apply and it pollutes more and more areas.
As to our disagreements, so what? Look at what the people who work for the guy you support did regarding the book you wrote that is basically a straight up analysis of climategate. My kids went to Ivy League schools and my son lives in your very own SF. When you are a conservative, you learn real tolerance, lol.
�
�
�
 

I ask the orthodox here again: What is your strategy?

If you believe the risks of global warming are so threatening that you unleash the Precautionary Principle on the rest of us, do you apply it to yourselves?

Are you willing to clean the climate change house, so skeptics can’t keep tagging you on one issue after another? Are you willing to make your data and methods transparent? Are you willing to get rid of the old Climategate faces tainted by corruption? Are you willing to try new approaches — like Dr. Curry has — to reach, teach and persuade ordinary citizens of climate issues?

Or are you going to continue just as you have, climate business as usual even if it looks corrupt, attacking skeptics and heretics with a vengeance, and hoping that it all comes down to who has the most cites in peer-reviewed journals?

The latter approaches aren’t working. All political and economic indications are that it will become even harder for you to press your agenda in the future, especially after the 2012 elections.

What is your strategy?

> Lies about my military service [...]
I’ve heard that before.  But where?
Ah, not at Keith’s.  At Bart’s:
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/there-are-at-least-as-many-walks-as-talks/#comment-12660

In that thread, one can find other trails, e.g. on the March 25, 2011 at 20:01.

huxley @ 238
�
Of course, among scientists there is a range of concerns about global warming, so unless you define “those who know most” as being the same set as “those who are most concerned” your one-liner doesn’t hold up either.

Waffle.

Find me anyone apart from Lindzen and Spencer who claim CS is low enough that there’s nothing to worry about. Everyone who understands the implications is concerned.
�
And yes, I am saying that you know not whereof you speak.

�
 

#250, 

By reading the thread at Bart’s, people will judge by themselves if these non-identified lies outweight Tom Fuller’s proven habit of derailing threads by portraying himself as a victim.
 

I may perhaps indicate for the benefit of the many readers a thread with more than 250 comments can attract by pointing at this specific comment:

http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/there-are-at-least-as-many-walks-as-talks/#comment-12604 

Readers will no doubt see why Tom Fuller comes out a bit short there. 

willard
�
I read your links when you posted them upthread. Forgive me if I refrain from comment but, for now, I will just keep reading and let you and TF do the talking.

@ willard,

Thanks for posting the link to the fascinating pissing match at Bart’s. I was pretty sure that absolutely nothing that Bloom or Rabett could do would increase my contempt towards them but I was dead wrong. These guys hit the bottom long ago and they are digging hard. I’m not sure why Tom chooses to even acknowledge them, much less respond.

…those who know most, are most concerned.

BBD: That’s not a factual statement, as you claim,  but a cheap bit of rhetoric fraught with exceptions. I see no point in further interaction with you.

re: 259
Since  this thread was supposed to be about Dr. Curry, it may be worth revisiting “the beginning” here at Collide-a-scape, and look at a well-bounded issue easy to assess.  See  new comment at old thread:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-81597
 

Bart (#14): The quote about her big personal impact the last year may provide a glimpse of her motivation. There may be an addictive element to those spotlights.

Exactly.  Being contrarian is rewarding.  The “radical” and “heretic” labels are part of her own narrative, one that (as Bart notes) critically involves her background as a respected published scientist.  There are extremely few in her position (most contrarians started off that way) so she fulfills a rather unique contrarian niche that she emphasizes every chance she gets, but by doing so, she comes across as insincere and her narrative is perceived as hollow.

Thanks for the link to that post at Eli’s Willard.  It’s a real gem.  Having gone over Tom’s contrabutions there, I’m inclined to add the following to the Tom Fuller Drinking Game &trade; :

- gutless (1 drink)
- fool (1 drink)
- idiot (1 drink)
- Potemkin (chug)

@ willard

The short answer is yes, despite the highly selective quoting. I’d be even happier if you didn’t remind me that these people exist. Life is too short to spend time on their kind.

I have not gone into details of the discussion of the quality of ocean temperature measurements. From what I know, other countries continued using buckets for until 70-s or even longer. The quality of these measurements couldn’t be good even with the best effort. In addition, the military and merchant marine personnel involved in taking the probes couldn’t care less. Sorry if your trust in SST data quality is shaken.

A few more for the TF drinking game (assign drinking portions as you see fit)…

- stupid pills
- dirty little book
- fact free fear frenzy
- skinheads
- troll
- STFU

Good to see the gang’s all here. The fact that you have to resort to this just shows how empty the rest of your arguments are.

You can’t make sense so you just lie about those who oppose you. No wonder you drink so heavily.

@ huxley (273)

I’m not sure what you mean by settled. I’ll bet that it won’t be settled in any meaningful sense within 20 years. The uncertainty in CS won’t be reduced and neither side will concede the argument no matter the facts.

Sashka @ 274: You could be right. I agree that whatever happens there will be holdouts from one side or the other or both.

But over the next two decades the climate is going to warm, cool or go sideways as humanity emits increasingly large amounts of carbon each year. Climate science will improve its data and sharpen its models. There may even be breakthroughs via new theories or computing techniques.

Out of all this I believe the current questions will resolve. Climate science will improve its understanding of climate and likely its ability to predict. We will also have a better understanding of our energy possibilities.

@277 Sashka:
For 13 years the climate goes sideways but the alarmists are as loud as ever.
�
You need ~20 years (and preferably more) of data to make meaningful statements about the global mean. This can be shown any number of ways, statistically with synthetic data, with forced GCMs, etc.�
�
You say, “For 13 years”. Surely you realize that you’re simply cherry picking the 1998 monster El Niño to make that claim. What about the last 14 years? The last 15, or 20? What about the last 12?
�
Claims like “For 13 years the climate goes sideways” are completely meaningless. Unfortunately, they’re incredibly persuasive to people who have no fundamental understanding of the systems in question.
�
This goes back to the issues of science as a democracy, and “skeptics” getting “a seat at the table”.

Sashka @ 277: It’s going to take more than 13 years of sideways temperatures for the orthodox to change their views. I don’t blame them any more than those who remained skeptical during the temperature run up during the 80s and 90s. CO2 may or may not be the principal control knob of climate, but there are other factors.

However, we are in the vicinity of some interesting make-or-break points according to Gavin Schmidt:

Daniel Klein says:
29 Dec 2007 at 11:40 AM
OK, simply to clarify what I’ve heard from you.
(1) If 1998 is not exceeded in all global temperature indices by 2013, you’ll be worried about state of understanding
(2) In general, any year’s global temperature that is “on trend” should be exceeded within 5 years (when size of trend exceeds “weather noise”)…

[Response: 1) yes, 2) probably, I'd need to do some checking, ... - gavin.]

If we get twenty years of sideways or cooling, the orthodox are going to have to do some dancing. If the temperatures take off again like in the 80s and 90s, I’m going to be reassessing.

@ TB (278)

“You need ~20 years (and preferably more) of data to make meaningful statements about the global mean.”

Is this a commitment to cease and desist in 7 years if a new global high is reached in the meantime?
�
“Surely you realize that you’re simply cherry picking the 1998 monster El Niño to make that claim.”

This is not the first monster El-Nino in history. Yet the temps never stopped setting records for so long. Why? The answer for 12, 13, 14, 15 years is the same: sideways.
�
“Claims like “For 13 years the climate goes sideways” are completely meaningless.”

Is that so? How much of a warming did Hansen have when he started making noise in 1987? Were you among those who told him to wait a few? If claims involving 20 years record are meaningful then 13 years should be at least somewhat meaningful.

 “This goes back to the issues of science as a democracy, and “skeptics” getting “a seat at the table”.”

No it doesn’t. It goes back to alarmists ignoring the inconvenient facts.

thingsbreak @ 275: Again, I don’t think my communication is that unclear.

Within twenty years I doubt people will be debating the credibility of climate science as we are today. If temperatures go sideways or cool, current climate science will be discounted. If temperatures start climbing or soaring, current climate science will be validated. Presumably the theory and models will improve to account for whatever is happening.

Of course, I could be wrong.

As to polls on the public and global warming, the polls you favor say that the public still believes in climate science and climate scientists. I’m more interested in the pragmatic polls that show that global warming/climate change has drifted to the bottom of people’s concerns, as well as the political results that show that climate change is dead in the water in the US and not doing so well elsewhere.

As to the anecdotal stories, you may discount them but they include Judith Curry, her Denizens and myself. Climate Etc. is a heavily trafficked site. We are not the only “anecdotes.” Curry is giving congressional testimony. The skeptic viewpoint is now presented somewhat equally alongside the orthodox view, causing the orthodox to complain about false media equivalence. Something has changed in the last few years.

As to defining “combative” and “doctrinaire” — I feel like you are wtihin an eyelash of saying, “It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.” Look at orthodox slams at Dr. Curry and skeptics in this topic. Does anything more need to be said? Yes, I know that skeptics can be a handful too, but you are the ones supposedly carrying the banner of reason and science.

Sashka:  I’ll bet that it won’t be settled in any meaningful sense within 20 years. The uncertainty in CS won’t be reduced and neither side will concede the argument no matter the facts.

Following from this, we can deduce that if evidence reduces uncertainty in climate sensitivity further (from the 1.5 to 4.5 range), Sashka won’t concede no matter the evidence (although one might suspect “concession” if the long tail on the high end is reduced).
Sashka: This is not the first monster El-Nino in history. Yet the temps never stopped setting records for so long. Why? The answer for 12, 13, 14, 15 years is the same: sideways.

Sideways?

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1999/trend

For good measure, check UAH if you’d like.

As far as records go, 2005, 2007, and 2010 surpassed 1998 in 2 of the 3 surface records, including the one that captures the Arctic region, so careful with that.  All were during much weaker el Ninos.

Now we could go with HadCrut, where the Arctic region is neglected, and marvel at the lack of a 1998-beating record.  After all, Sashka tells us it’s never happened before – that we’ve gone this long after a huge el Nino without beating a record in all data sets.  Or wait…there was the 1940-1944 period of big el Ninos, which wasn’t really beaten for more than 30 years, although in part thanks to sulfates.

Now Sashka says Dr. Schmidt is going to be worried about his understanding, seeming to imply some concession to the rabid elements of the denialosphere that tend to focus on (for political/ideological reasons) the impact of CO2 and feedbacks.  But omitted here is his specific comments on the matter:

The expectation of any particular time period depends on the forcings that are going on.

1998 will likely be exceeded in all the indices within the next five years – the solar cycle upswing into the next solar max will help, and the next big El Nino will probably put it over the edge.

“Likely” isn’t a firm prediction, and “big el Nino” might be open to interpretation, but there’s been nothing resembling 1998 by SOI measures.  However, the solar cycle since then was clearly delayed for a few years and will likely hit a much weaker maximum than might have been expected a few years ago.  One should also consider other actual forcings during the recent few years.  How much did Chinese sulfates play a role?

Now I understand “skeptics”, like lawyers, are eager to prosecute their case, or as Judith Curry likes to say, play “gotcha”, but they might be taken more seriously if they didn’t play so loose with the evidence and quoting.

Congrats to Dr. Schmidt for winning the AGU Climate Communication Prize this week, an honor most deserving.  Many “skeptics” could learn from his science-minded approach, and careful nuanced discussion.

huxley,

You begin you’re comment in 2009 at Gavin’s with this sentence:

> For years now I’ve been following the AGW debate from both sides [...]  I buy the basic argument that CO2 is a GHG and increasing CO2 increases the earth’s temperature. But how much of the current warming is anthropogenic, I am not convinced and I remain agnostic.
Now, you just said this:

 > Actually it was a communication with Gavin Schmidt in which I was eventually censored and deleted, that tipped me over and persuaded me to put my shoulder to the skeptic wheel.

Since you said you were an agnostic already, I’m not sure how this exchange provides any evidence of a shifting in your own position.

Perhaps it is better that way, since the basic argument that CO2 is a GHG and increasing CO2 increases the earth’s temperature and how much warming there currently are questions that might be quite remote to Gavin’s editorial practices.

In any case, it would be interesting to know how these shifts in position fit with the issue of honesty. 

Put another way, I’d rather take my chances with global warming than with people like Gavin Schmidt.

Here’s another example, my last comment to ClimateSight, deleted of course, like most of what I had to say in that thread.

Moderator: I’ll not bother any further here. Only a year ago I was defending global warming scientists to my more conservative friends.  No more. I can’t get straight answers or open debate from global warming advocates.

Keep in mind that if your side is genuinely concerned about the perils of global warming you need support from laymen such as myself. It’s easy to see why your side has lost this support.

At this point I’m convinced your side cannot make its case in the open. See you at the ballot box.

huxley,

I am not sure how your lukewarm defense of AGW  constitues evidence that your position changed.  If you admit that, after your layman research, you still believe that CO2 is a GHG and dumping CO2 is not a good idea, et cetera, then wouldn’t you try to argue with your friends that claim otherwise?  I’m not sure your position changed on this matter at all, since you said so.  You must have shifted to a matter unrelated to your lukewarm belief in AGW,  but a position that is not agnostic at all.  

This endorsement of AGW may be even lukewarmer than what you portrayed at first at Gavin’s since later in the thread you said:

>  I find skeptics such as Lindzen persuasive as well, so it’s a problem. 

I’m not sure what problem this is, but there sure is a problem with being persuaded by Lindzen’s argument.  Not that you said you were: you merely stated  that they were persuasive.  You might mean it as an objective assesment: you observe that they are persuasive, without being persuaded by them yourself.

But then, but then, you also say, again a bit later:

> A few years ago I listened to Gavin Schmidt and other AGW advocates defend AGW against Lindzen and other AGW skeptics. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9082151) The AGW advocates not only lost the debate, they lost when the majority of the audience pre-debate agreed with the AGW position. In other words, the AGW side would have been better off staying at home rather than arguing on their behalf.

We clearly see that your stand on AGW does seem to have been weakened at the time of this debate.  In fact, we clearly see that your position becomes lukewarmer and lukewarmer as the exchange with Gavin unfolds.  Your choice of themes (red tape, Feynman, Club of Rome, agenda, etc.) makes me doubt that “yes, but RC moderation” made you take this lukewarm position.  It honestly looks as if you were seeking confirmation there.

By the way, since you’re interested in Lindzen: does he also believe that dumping CO2 is not a good idea?  Doesn’t he believe in AGW?  Sometimes, it does seem that Lindzen was the first to embrace lukewarmism.  I honestly don’t know.

I have to take objection in huxley’s claim in #294 to the the effect that I personalize. I believe this is huxley that personalizes the debate when he claims in #286:

> Actually it was a communication with Gavin Schmidt in which I was eventually censored and deleted, that tipped me over and persuaded me to put my shoulder to the skeptic wheel.

There is evidence from his exchange with Gavin that huxley was already quite lukewarm about AGW, and that “yes, but RC moderation” only confirmed in his lukewarm position and that huxley’s tipping point is a rhetorical device that deserves due diligence.

There is also evidence from this exchange with Gavin, and also here, that huxley has been shifting from the AGW question to the agenda question by way of his personal account of “Yes, but RC moderation”.

All I did for now is to question huxley’s rationalization of the usual “Yes, but RC moderation”. While I don’t necessarily disagree with the fact that moderation sucks, I do doubt that this “tipping point” is nothing more than a personal confirmation, with all the bias this entails.

This testimony rests on huxley’s a personal experience. Appealing to ad hominem in that case also deserves due diligence. For instance, there is some relationship between this fallacy with the appeals to hypocrisy we explored earlier. That will wait for now, as we will have to wait for Sahska’s answer to the question raised in #280.

* * *

We now see the “free the data, free the code, free the debate” mantra, which has incidentally appeared in 1999, in the discussion at RC between Gavin and huxley. Gavin offered two arguments:

The first one is this:

> Your point is to insist on some impossible standard so that you can avoid paying any attention to the results. My point is that there are completely open projects that if you were really concerned with evaluating you would do so. That you don’t understand my point, simply underlines the issue.

The second one is this:

> [If] nothing short of 100% of everything is sufficient, then you are claiming that the remaining 0.1% of the data is somehow determining the whole answer (even though with even 80% of the data you get pretty much the same thing).

The answers from huxley deserve due diligence. So much to do, so little time. Interestingly, all this is not unrelated to the discussion between Judith and Gavin that huxley gladly recalled. This also deserves due diligence, and since it’s the topic of this post, it has priority.

@ willard

“That will wait for now, as we will have to wait for Sahska’s answer to the question raised in #280.”

I’m sorry, whats’ the question again? I don’t see any in 280.

@huxley
�
This isn’t a matter of opinion. If you do not agree that it can be demonstrated (through statistics, or GCMs) that a period of years below a certain threshold can’t tell you anything about the global mean, then you need to provide actual reasons for this.
�
Likewise, the multi-model esnemble mean in the IPCC AR4/CMIP3 projections is not meant to simulate the actual variability of the climate, but rather the forced component of climate over time- it’s averaged across models and without a single initialization so that it also in effect is smoothing out natural variability. This is intentional.
�
An apples to apples to comparison between the real world temperature and the multi-model ensemble mean would therefore require the kind of compensation for ENSO, volcanics, solar, etc. that Tamino and others have performed. When you do this, 1998 is not the warmest year, and the trends are in decent agreement with scenarios like A2.
�
If there’s something in my discussion that you do not agree with, can you please explain why?
�
A common problem in trying to bring “skeptics” “to the table” is that from the perspective of someone like myself, things that are completely uncontroversial are rejected without proper justification. It makes a productive dialog difficult to maintain.

require the kind of compensation for ENSO, volcanics, solar, etc. that Tamino and others have performed.

Which implies that all known “natural” varibles have been identified and properly quantified, which begs the question: why aren’t the models better.  If they can’t actually predict the future, why should be trust them to predict the future.

If the global mean drops 3C next year, would you consider that significant?

About a year ago, after similar comment kerfuffles about statistically significant time frames for evaluating climate, everybody pretty much settled on 30 years (which actually is a good number for statistical significance in this case). Whether the topic expired because of general exhaustion or the strength of the arguments in its favor, it’s been a while–but the discussions are out there on Bart’s blog and maybe here as well.

Sashka, you should be aware that time frames below 30 years are not really adequate for good analysis of climate trends. 150 is really much better. And I don’t want to be telling you stuff you already know, but just about everybody thinks of temperature rises as a simple sawtooth waveform on a rising trend–and the down tick of the sawtooth can last a decade or more. Which was my motivation for betting Romm a grand on temperatures in this decade. I believe temperatures are rising and I believe we play a big part in it. But I also can look at a sawtooth waveform and hope that I caught a peak while betting on a dip. 

If the global mean drops 3C next year, would you consider that significant?

Are you McLean?  He made a prediction equivalent to about 1/4 of that, 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/mclean-exaggerating-natural-cycles.html

which doesn’t seem too likely, unless the temperature anomaly drops over 10 C for the remaining 3 months.  But winter is coming.  There’s still hope!

Sashka at 305, 12 or 15 isn’t enough. You really need 30 (well, actually 33) for statistical signficance. 12 or 15 could just be a hiccup.

NewYorkJ @ 301: You are welcome to your judgment of my interaction with Gavin Schmidt. Obviously I disagree. Obviously I am not alone in my dislike of Schmidt and RC moderation.

However, returning to my democracy theme… There are quite a lot of skeptics now. The climate orthodoxy has not been overturned by any means, but its agenda has lost traction and is losing ground. The media affords skepticism more space and more serious coverage. President Obama, an advocate of climate change policies, will barely mention climate any more, and bills like cap-and-trade are not going to reach Congress for at least five years.

The climate change strategies of dismissing skeptics, ridiculing them, refusing to debate them, bullying them, censoring them, complaining about them, attacking them personally, etc. is not working. Perhaps more civil approaches like Dr. Curry’s might.

However, from what I can see in this topic, the climate orthodox will mostly continue as they have. My prediction is that their results will be the same — further erosion of support and no political success.

The only hope for the orthodox I can see is the climate turning seriously nasty. Of course, it might be too late to do much by then.

Sashka,

You do seem lukewarm to comment the appeal to “hypocrisy” I underlined above, which I think was fallacious, after conceding that this was a pissing contest.  

I’m sorry you won’t support your assertion that I was “very selective” in my quoting.  

Thank you for your answer regarding your selection of “13 years”: it could have been 12, or it could have been 15.  It just happened you picked up 13.  We can then presume that next time in this year you might very well pick 12, or 15.  I like that.  That makes Girmanian variation more interesting.  

* * *

This sentence of your last answer is interesting:

> Sorry but I have no time or interest in rehashing [this or that].

It is not unlike this other answer you gave to NewYorkJ in #296:

> You are in my ignore list. I’m not talking to trolls. You don’t need to bother replying to me.

This is not unlike the answer huxley provided in #294:

> But I’ve interacted enough with you as well and I will not continue.

It would be interesting to analyze the difference between these replies with the more general issue of moderation.  These replies might point toward a way to solve the PR problem AGW is facing.  They might also help articulate the honesty problem we’re having in blogland.

All this deserves due diligence.  So much to do, so little time.

The only hope for the orthodox I can see is the climate turning seriously nasty. Of course, it might be too late to do much by then.

I agree with Huxley.

Stu,

You have a link? 

Willard @ 310

kdk33 to me @ 209:

But, I think our discussion is over for now.

huxley to me @ 260:

I see no point in further interaction with you.

Stu at 311, Don’t you understand? McIntyre can’t do what he wants. He is required to do what the consensus people want him to do. Now. 

Deep, genuine concern. Deep, genuine concern.

It is said that the priests of the Inquisition prayed with deep and genuine concern for the souls of those they tortured.

Thank you, Stu, that’s good enough for me.

Do you have by any chance the minute where the relevant questioning starts?

If not, I’ll try to find the Round Tuit. 

***

Thank you for all the other examples of conversation closures.  

We could also collect justfications.  Let’s start with this one:

> The whole point of blogging is to talk to someone from whom you can learn, or whom you can teach or with whom you make an intelligent debate. It is clear that X* isn’t here for any of that so he’ll be talking to someone else and eventually to himself only. 

I really like the prediction at the end.  I hope it does not rely on GCMs. 

Tom,
Gavin tends to err on the other side.
It just occurred to me that J could stand for Jesuit.
 

Hiya Sashka,

Yeah, and he’s been as tough on me in moderation as with anyone. But you have to salute the guy for what he did right after Climategate. Everybody else was stone cold silent and he saved the day for the Team with what he did. It was over 2,000 comments in a couple of days and he was responding to everyone–he was polite, persistent and he didn’t let go.

 I can get all snarky about Gavin but what he did was special. Think back to Bart’s thread about unit roots. That unfolded over weeks, not hours, and Bart stayed at arm’s length through most of it–and you could still see it was getting to him. Gavin just stayed there and toughed it out. 

It was actually pretty heroic. 

It seems that BBD, willard and perhaps others don’t quite get the concept of free consensual online debate among equals.

With the usual disclaimers about posting threats or spam etc…

Participants read what they want to read,
Participants write what they want to write.
Participants respond to comments and other participants as they choose to.
Participants are not required to respond to comments and other participants if they choose not to.
Participants assess the behavior of participants as they will.

It’s not complicated and, pace willard, posting that you choose not to respond further to another participant is an entirely different dynamic from a moderator censoring your comments, deleting your coments or banning you as a participant altogether. The latter is not a transaction between equals.

When I say that I will not respond further to another participant, I am registering my strong disagreement with the content or methods of that participant, and saying that I consider further interaction a waste of my time and the group’s as well. Others are free, of course, to make that choice with me if they deem it necessary.

Life is short. I don’t like to be involved in prolonged unpleasant tit-for-tat interactions. I don’t like to read them either.

Judith Curry @118

“If you have serious criticisms or identify a technical error, send me an email or discuss it on my blog.”

What for? You would ignore it anyway.

http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/17/self-organizing-model-of-the-atmosphere/#comment-125240

http://judithcurry.com/2011/09/10/uncertainty-monster-paper-in-press/#comment-124677

http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/27/defending-the-uncertainty-monster-paper/#comment-128469

Stu,

I just listened to the audio again.  Nice quality sound.  One feels very close to the microphone and we do hear the crowd in the background.

The “elephant in the room” is at 84:30, starting with a question not by Monbiot, but by a lady.  Perhaps Monbiot’s pressings have been edited.  Paraphrasing, the question was about whether AGW was scientific or political.

In any case, we do hear some new stuff there.  Steve does seem to ask the same kind of question as Lindzen, to identify the feedback question as an important one, and to abstain from saying if AGW is a threat until we decide this question to know better about the importance of the C in AGW.  (Yes, I note a little shift in topics.)

But I do not hear anything about Steve taking position on Lindzen’s question.  Nothing of the sort of “I agree with Dick”.

Shtum, BBD. Shtum.

Tom
�
Thanks for the spelling correction. I had a feeling I’d got that wrong.
�
Why am I not permitted to point out that it is well out of order for huxley to say:
�
and saying that I consider further interaction a waste of my time and the group’s as well.
�
I am a part of the group in question. And I object.

> 33 years
For which data set?  What’s the source for this number?
I recommend Grumbine’s discussion:
“… I’m putting the data and programs on my personal web site and you can run the analysis yourself, and modify the programs to work on different assumptions, methods, data sets.

Let’s consider the first point — how long it takes to determine a climate trend in global mean temperature….  Rather than declare that ‘this is the right period’, we’ll determine it by looking at the data itself.

If it is meaningful to talk about climate as opposed to weather, there has to be a time span over which our result for describing climate does not depend much on how long a time span we choose. For average climate temperature, we found 20-30 years as the appropriate time span. I didn’t show the figures then, but it’s in the program and output you can pick up from my web site….”
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html