Today’s Posts Are At Breitbart

Keep the perpetrators on defense. Demand an investigation of the smear campaign at the NY Times and pressure tactics used on the Smithsonian. Opportunities like this don’t come along frequently.

Now, that is great. I’m sure that Breitbart is “supportive”. You will certainly find a big enough audience at Breitbart, which will be pleased that someone is telling them what they want to hear. What can you prove with this? Nothing.

Breitbart is an extremely biased news outlet. They remove comments and ban commenters that argue against AGW rejectionism, regardless whether or even particularly when the commenters are knowledgeable, because they work in the field. Facts and science are just a disturbance to the ideologically motivated science rejectionism and conspiracy fantasy mongering that is prevalent among the right-wing audience, which is being nourished over there.

“Our finding is only that the risk has been wildly exaggerated and that human contributions are modest at best. And that, dear reader, is real science.”

Since when do the asserted conclusions of a paper determine whether the paper was “real science” or not?

Your paper is fatally flawed because of unscientific assumptions and false methodology plus other mistakes and even plain falsehoods in it. In short, your paper is bad science.

Since I’m at it, perhaps, you can provide an answer to following question? What is the heat capacity that you assumed for your model climate system, which is supposed to be represented by the “climate model” in the paper? I asked Monckton this question here:

http://climateconomysociety.blogspot.com/2015/01/monckton-soon-legates-and-briggs.html#comment-1815108463

I’ve never got any answer from him, though.

Gary writes:

“Demand an investigation of the smear campaign at the NY Times and pressure tactics used on the Smithsonian.”

I guess smear campaigns against scientists and pressure tactics against scientific institutions are only allowed when AGW rejectionists do those, like in the case of Michael Mann (not saying that it was a smear campaign against Soon. That depends on whether it’s evidence based or not.) And the “right of the public” to obtain information about scientists, their funding and possible conflict of interests only exists when “the public” are AGW rejectionists.

Again, I am curious why the huge amount attention to this when it’s been going on for years, starting in maybe 2009 and definately 2011. Soon has been attacked over and over, yet this time everyone is rallying the troops. I guess my question is why no outcry in the past 5 years? Why now?

Jan P: If the right of public is to know the data and methods and funding, why is Michael Mann involved in lawsuits concerning either losing the data (hard to believe unless he IS totally incompetent) or refusing to release it from his infamous hockey stick? I suppose the answer to your inquiry would be most skeptics publish ALL the data. Funding sources are irrelevant. So FOIA are not necessary to find out what skeptics did. No one asks about Mann’s funding unless he brings up theirs—or they shouldn’t. Data is Mann’s problem.

Also, I really hope you are not implying that Breitbart is not balanced and somehow the NYT is. There is not a balanced news source out there on any side. None. News people cover what they believe in and want to be true. Journalism died decades ago, if it ever existed. The difference now is the internet and access to so many sources, that one learns just how much is left out by each outlet and how biased each report is. (I say “never” existed due to the FDR press marriage.)

There is not a balanced news source out there on any side. None. News people cover what they believe in and want to be true. Journalism died decades ago, if it ever existed.

It’s not clear there ever was unbiased news. In one of Mark Twain’s essays — the one about the funny things kids say at school — one youngster when asked to define “Republican” said, “A sinner mentioned in the bible”. Twain dryly added “Also in Democratic newspapers.”

Why now

Soon, Briggs and Monckton (list not any particular order) publish a paper resulting in much fuss in the green tin foil hat (snazzy! gotta get me one . Clashes with the alien space suit though — see photo above) community. My guess is that is why.

Could be, DAV. I also realized it may be the political climate (new congress, etc). What probably will have the most effect on AGW is the bitter cold winters in the US—”warm makes cold” just isn’t cutting it under 8 feet of snow and if people make the connection, the bust in oil and gas. I suspect this bust will be as big as the one in 1980. Sadly, unlike in the 80’s, there no place to go for a different job. Unemployment numbers are going soar. Not just the oil and gas employees, but all the businesses founded around them. It will be people’s reminder that fossil fuels are what put food on the table and keep the lights on—if they pay attention, that is.

I don’t have access to Sirius, but I’ve heard rumors past shows can be found for subscribers. Can anybody confirm that?

I have a SiriusXM account but for radio only. It may be available to internet subscribers. As a general rule though the demand for previous broadcasts of most of SiriusXM content likely is nil as it wouldn’t be much different than wanting to hear what was on Classic Rock 99FM last Thursday. If the Patriot channel doesn’t do it or can’t tell you who would then it likely doesn’t exist. I went to the Patriot channel website and, if previous programs are available it isn’t obvious.

Post over at Watts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/23/greenpeace-enlists-justin-gillis-john-schwartz-of-the-ny-times-in-journalistic-terrorist-attack-on-willie-soon-miss-target-hit-smithsonian-instead/

C’mon, Jan P, try the red pill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill). Reality, though more difficult than fantasy, is better in the long run. Until you can acknowledge that bad behavior wherever it occurs should be discouraged, you don’t really have standing. Nor understanding, for that matter.

Sheri writes:

“Jan P: If the right of public is to know the data and methods and funding, why is Michael Mann involved in lawsuits concerning either losing the data (hard to believe unless he IS totally incompetent) or refusing to release it from his infamous hockey stick?”

What lawsuits are you talking about?

The data on which the famous “hockey stick” was based are all public. And the results have been reproduced.

“Funding sources are irrelevant.”

Potential conflict of interests are irrelevant? I wonder why scientific journals have a disclosure policy with respect to this then. Are you saying we shouldn’t disclose our sources of funding anymore, when we publish our papers?

But you don’t seem to care much about scientific integrity and ethics, I had noticed before already, when you defended cherry-picking of favorable data that support the conclusions of a scientific study, as a legitimate approach in science.

“Also, I really hope you are not implying that Breitbart is not balanced and somehow the NYT is.”

I doubt that you “really hope” that.

I don’t care much about the NYT. I wasn’t talking about the NYT. I was commenting on Breitbart, the support Breitbart gives to science rejectionism and conspiracy fantasy mongering, and their suppression of informed opinion that contradicts those. Thus, I don’t really know about what William Briggs thinks has been accomplished by the publication of his and his friends’ articles on Breitbart. Perhaps he seeks comfort from being confirmed by the supportive crowd there.

I also was commenting on the “skeptic” hypocrisy regarding the alleged “smear campaign” against Soon. Smearing of scientists has been one of the main tools of the fake skeptic crowd against the findings in climate science on the role of human activities as a major cause of climate change since the last century. Exactly because they haven’t been able to refute these findings on the grounds of science. How often has William Briggs himself claimed that the scientific findings on AGW had been published by corrupt scientists?

Then I would like to remind that William Briggs’ friend Monckton demanded the dismissal from their employment and criminal prosecution of those scientists who criticized the flawed science in the Monckton et al. paper. I haven’t seen any word by William Briggs about Monckton’s demands. So who are really the ones who aren’t able to “stomach disagreement”.

I personally find it more important to point out the flawed science in the Monckton et al. paper. Investigating the conflict of interest issue with Soon is legitimate, but I consider this a sideshow. If Soon has committed ethics violations then his employer needs to deal with it according to their institution policy. I do not support any pressure to dismiss Soon for what he has scientifically published, even if it is bad science. That would go against the freedom of science.

What lawsuits are you talking about?

You really don’t much grip on what’s happening around you, do you?

Exactly because they haven’t been able to refute these findings on the grounds of science.

And not much up keeping up either.

Someone finally managed to get a peer reviewed article past the climate censors pointing toward the failing models but THAT’S not refuting anything,,eh? Sheesh!

Jan P. said:

“Your paper is fatally flawed because of unscientific assumptions and false methodology plus other mistakes and even plain falsehoods in it. In short, your paper is bad science.”

Talk about “asserted conclusions.”

The connections to conflicted interests and secret donations have to be addressed. It looks unethical on the face of it. Put your work up and let it be tested, avoid conflicted interest money. It’s not too much to ask. It seems like you are trying to do that, or at least to keep the two aspects apart, but you can’t claim any credibility if you’re getting money from interests who are directly opposed to pollution regulation.

JMJ

Gary wrote:

“Until you can acknowledge that bad behavior wherever it occurs should be discouraged,”

And now show me where I said or suggested that bad behaviour wherever it occurred shouldn’t be discouraged.

Please also tell me what you think the bad behavior was.

a) Not disclosing funding sources or conflicts of interest

or

b) Demanding disclosure of funding sources and conflicts of interest, if there are some, and demanding an investigation by the employing institution, if there is initial evidence that an employee committed ethics violations with respect to that.

Put your work up and let it be tested, avoid conflicted interest money.

Well, which is it? Are you going to test the work or not? If so why should it matter how it got there? If you aren’t going to test it what’s your point?

Truth be told the warmists are running scared. Otherwise, why all the handwaving?

DAV wrote on February 24, 2015 at 11:31 am:

“You really don’t much grip on what’s happening around you, do you?”

So, after commenting about me as a person, what about you answer my question?

DAV wrote on February 24, 2015 at 11:35 am:

“Someone finally managed to get a peer reviewed article past the climate censors pointing toward the failing models but THAT’S not refuting anything,,eh? Sheesh!”

Just the fact that someone managed to place an article in a peer-reviewed journal, is not sufficient to refute anything in science. If it was then all the many articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, which come to different conclusions would equally refute the mentioned paper. You have this all the time in science that different papers come to different conclusions, even if the applied scientific methods aren’t obviously flawed. Thus, the assumption that just placing a paper was sufficient for the conclusion that it refutes something can lead to a logical contradiction, since mutually contradicting conclusions in scientific papers can’t all be true at the same time. Thus, it is not sufficient.

That the mentioned article could be placed is only conceivable to me, if there was a breakdown of the peer-review process at Science Bulletin, the Chinese journal where the article was published. The reviewers can’t have been from the scientific field, since the flaws in the paper are just so obvious. How can anyone who works in the fields have missed those? Or the paper was published against the recommendations of the reviewers at the end, for other than scientific reasons.

Do you know anyone who works in the field, who has endorsed the Monckton et al. paper as one that presents proper science?

So, after commenting about me as a person, what about you answer my question?

I think you already know the answer and are hand waving.

Just the fact that someone managed to place an article in a peer-reviewed journal, is not sufficient to refute anything in science.

Yet the reaction to it is both violent an quick. Why is that?

Jan P:
“And now show me where I said or suggested that bad behaviour wherever it occurred shouldn’t be discouraged.”
– In your first comment: “Facts and science are just a disturbance to the ideologically motivated science rejectionism and conspiracy fantasy mongering that is prevalent among the right-wing audience…” Accusing one side only suggests the other is faultless unless you acknowledge otherwise.

“Please also tell me what you think the bad behavior was.
– Option C: creating a smear campaign in the press despite verified evidence plainly and openly provided; threatening someone’s employment because you fear the conclusions of their research; refusing to hold yourself to the standards you demand of others.

Let me be quite clear that anyone who behaves in such ways is wrong. This isn’t about disputing the science; it’s about unethical behavior on the part of journalists and partisans.

Jan P: Yes, I am saying funding sources do not need to be reported. If a scientist is bought, then they are bought. I certainly care about the integrity of science–though I do severely and angrily HATE the term “cherry-picking” which is code-speak for “I don’t like your answer so I’ll accuse you of cherry-picking.” No one ever uses all of the data. Everyone makes choices. To accuse someone of cherry picking is to say “I know nothing of the scientific method”. (Yes, even when skeptics do it.)

You say the paper was not science, but you never explain why. I would like to know why it’s wrong, in your own words, please.

Actually, I do really hope that. Briggs may claim corrupt scientists publish AGW rhetoric, but I do not. I claim the science has problems and state why. I do say the behaviour of scientists in AGW is often problematic–refusing to release information, name calling, attacking the speaker and not the science, etc. Whether or not they are corrupt, stupid, incompetent, really believe what they did, made an honest mistake, fear competition–who knows? The problem is the behaviour makes the scientists look bad. AGW recognizes that or they would not do studies on how to sell the science.

I made clear my position on Monckton, here and elsewhere. Check comments in the last couple of posts.

I totally agree with your last statement–the paper is all that matters and whether or not it does what it is claimed to do.

JMJ: You can’t have credibility if you have government funding and want pollution regulation, either. The government has a vested interest in regulating industry and using pollution abatement to do it. Which does in every public university out there. No more research funded by the government. Actually, I’m okay with that.

Steve E wrote:

“Talk about ‘asserted conclusions.'”

Here is an example from the paper:

“In Fig. 5, a regime of temperature stability is represented
by g_? smaller/equal 0.1, the maximum value allowed by process engineers designing electronic circuits intended not to oscillate under any operating conditions.”
(In subsection 8.3.2 “The feedback sum f”. I had to replace the mathematical smaller/equal sign in the quote. I don’t know how to quote this w/o conflict with the html)

Monckton et al. postulate a low value of 0.1 for the upper limit of the loop gain, i.e., only small positive feedbacks at maximum were allowed in the climate system, because “process engineers” would use this value to avoid oscillations, i.e., positive feedbacks that lead to instabilities in electronic circuits.

How does anything follow about the climate system from what process engineers do, because they wanted to avoid oscillations in electronic circuits? Because process engineers want to prevent oscillations in electronic circuits, the climate systems can’t display oscillating behavior or instabilities? This doesn’t make any sense at all. Unless the authors believe that there was something like a chief process engineer for everything who would forbid oscillations or instabilities in the real world climate system. Which would be a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific one.

How is this postulated maximum value of 0.1 for the loop gain a scientific assumptions? How can the reviewers have let such nonsense pass in a scientific paper? Even if they weren’t from the field. They should have noticed that.

And then there is the question about the heat capacity of their model climate system. The e-folding time with which the climate system adjusts to a perturbation in the radiation fluxes depends on the heat capacity. However, their model climate system adjusts immediately to a radiative perturbation. Any perturbation in the energy balance is immediately redistributed throughout their whole model climate system w/o any significant delay. The whole system is basically always in equilibrium. This is extremely unphysical considering that the real world climate system with its oceans has a huge heat capacity. This is why I have asked them what they have assumed for the heat capacity. It’s not mentioned anywhere in the paper, although it seems to be a hidden parameter in the model.

Central conclusions in the paper rest on these assumptions. The assumptions are scientifically invalid. The conclusions as derived from these assumptions are scientifically invalid as well.

Or what about an example for a plain falsehood. One doesn’t need to look further than to the second sentence in the abstract:

“In 1990, the First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expressed ‘substantial confidence’ that near-term global warming would occur twice as fast as subsequent observation.”

There isn’t any such statement in the IPCC report 1990, according to which there was “substantial confidence” about the rate of the projected near-term global warming. And this isn’t the only misrepresentation of that IPCC report in the paper.

Here is a link to the 1990 IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Quoting directly: “… we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad scale features of climate change.”

Jan P., You miss the point of the paper which is to demonstrate that climate models used by climate scientists and the IPCC have made bad predictions/projections and are wrong. The authors of the paper reinforce the point by demonstrating how a much simpler model can arrive at a closer correlation to observations. They do not claim that it is therefore THE one and only climate model. They make this demonstration in much the same way stock market prognosticators in the 80s and 90s said the price of butter in Bangladesh was an accurate predictor of the S&P 500. It was an accurate predictor for many years and outperformed the average mutual fund but correlation is not causation.

You can choose to argue the workings of their model and you may be right. It does not change the conclusion of the paper. They could come to the same conclusion without offering the toy model.

Steve E: The point of the paper seems to missed entirely by most people.

Jan, the answer to your question regarding the heat content is: mu.

A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have the Buddha nature?” Joshu retorted, “Mu!”

As Hamming famously said, “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.” If you evaluate models (computing) based on the numbers used, rather than the insight gained, you are doing something wrong.

Briggs,
Congratulations for causing such panic in the AGW camp.
I would like to listen to your radio broadcast . Perhaps someone can get a hold of
the recording and post it to YouTube.

Jan P.,
Perhaps if you had read Brigg’s post: Response To Trenberth Over “Why Models Run Hot”-Feb 21, you would not have actually commented (Feb 24 1:43pm) your quaint questions, which, articulate as they are, actually come across as rather, well, cognitively dense.
In an earlier comment you stated:
“Your paper is fatally flawed because of unscientific assumptions and false methodology plus other mistakes and even plain falsehoods in it. In short, your paper is bad science.”
And,
“I personally find it more important to point out the flawed science in the Monckton et al. paper. ”
Yet so far you have failed to supply any evidence in support of either of your statements.
Please, to allay further embarrassment for yourself concerning your personal revelation of your lack of analytic ability, read and consider the above referenced posting by Briggs before making any further frivolous comments. If you still have questions on the maths of feedback systems then ask, but only after doing due diligent study. There are some excellent resources on the internet.

JMJ said: …Put your work up and let it be tested…

I believe Briggs, et al did that.

Please make that recommendation to Mann and company

“Breitbart is an extremely biased news outlet. They remove comments and ban commenters that argue against AGW rejectionism, regardless whether or even particularly when the commenters are knowledgeable, because they work in the field. ”

Hilarious. I think what Jan is saying is that when The Guardian censors all comments counter to its views that’s fine. Because those views are “denier” views even if some of them are from researchers who have worked on the IPCC report. I don’t know if Breitbart moderates comments, but my observations are that conservative media is less inclined to do so, as they have evidence on their side.

RE: “Dastardly distractors are … malevolent menaces ”

THAT kind of phrasing appears to be plagarized from the old Batman series…not that that’s a bad thing at all…just saying….

As far as the stats goes & so on–really outstanding. Could’ve put some more mention the real issue, which is to contrive a reason for government intervention & control–socialism. It’s not too hard to find references to this effect, including some endorsing this explicitly. It wouldn’t hurt to call’m on it.

Alston Chase put it, “when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”

That applies to the Climate Change Alarmism Crowd…and this is a good time & place to recall Michael Crichton’s observations, which remain applicable as ever:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html

What’s interesting about this media exchange is that journalists are essentially declaring war with each other in alternate journals. It will be interesting to see if this becomes more common in the future.

Will: Will the journals end-up in a free-for-all over who published what? That could interesting to watch.

Also, Jan P has a google doc out there that covers her objections (perhaps not in full, of course) to the paper under discussion. You can “google” it. 🙂
(I am not intending to move the discussion over to what Jan wrote, but rather to allow people to read what her position is. Maybe then we won’t need to ask as many questions, etc of her.)

Will Nitschke wrote:

“Hilarious. I think what Jan is saying is that when The Guardian censors all comments counter to its views that’s fine.”

No, I’m saying, “Breitbart is an extremely biased news outlet. They remove comments and ban commenters that argue against AGW rejectionism, regardless whether or even particularly when the commenters are knowledgeable, because they work in the field.”

How you think that I was saying something about The Guardian when I was talking about Breitbart escapes me. And what exactly is “hilarious”?

“I don’t know if Breitbart moderates comments, but my observations are that conservative media is less inclined to do so, as they have evidence on their side.”

Why am I banned from Breitbart then, if this was true?[*] If the evidence was on their side, they didn’t need to do that, did they? Then “conservatives” could easily refute what I say by presenting the scientific evidence. It rather seems to me they are afraid of informed opinion that is backed up with scientific evidence. They are allowed, of course, to do what they want as owners of a private news network.

[*] Case in point:
http://climateconomysociety.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-comment-on-crucifixion-of-dr-willie.html

Sheri,

I saw Jan’s comment here, where she wrote:

“Central conclusions in the paper rest on these assumptions. The assumptions are scientifically invalid. ”

The actual point of the paper is that if a simpler model is better than a more sophisticated model, yet still superior at forecasting, this is telling you the more sophisticated model has some very serious short comings. Attacking the simple model misses the point of the exercise entirely. The problem is, one can completely agree with every one of Jan’s technical points, but even if one does so, it’s irrelevant anyway. Because the criticism are over issues that aren’t relevant to the conclusions or even in dispute, irrespective of what Jan wishes the paper to be about. Criticism is fine, but your criticism needs to fit the argument. If you’re trying to change the argument to fit your criticism, people will just roll their eyes.

Recall Feynman’s ‘key to science’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY

Jan,

“No, I’m saying, “Breitbart is an extremely biased news outlet. They remove comments and ban commenters that argue…”

That’s not the definition of ‘bias’. Please look that up in a dictionary for your own sake. For example, the BBC doesn’t let anyone comment at all on any of their new stories; that would make them totally biased on all their news reporting by virtue of “censorship”.

Nobody has automatic right of reply on someone else’s media. But you can start your own blog and reply to it there. There is no censorship. All the alarmist media heavily censor comments. For example, Richard Toll, an IPCC researcher, was even recently blocked from defending himself on alarmist media.

“And what exactly is “hilarious”?”

The expectation that conservative media must air all the views of their ideological opponents, but that left or progressive media has the automatic right block counter arguments. This is based on the belief that one ideology is completely true and one ideology is completely false. That’s what makes it hilarious.

Will Nitschke,

When the conclusions of a paper rest on unscientific assumptions and flawed methodology then the conclusions are not defendable, and the paper is pointless. Conclusions can’t stand for themselves. The essence of a scientific study is to draw conclusions based on sound scientific assumptions and methodology. This is also one of the essentials of peer review to evaluate whether this is the case for a study.

One may speculate that the conclusions may be validly derived from different assumptions and using proper methodology, but this is non-consequential for the specific study that doesn’t do this.

Jan,

Completely absurd conclusion drawn from an absurd argument.

For example: I have built a cosmological model, based on Ptolemy’s crystal spheres. The interesting thing about Ptolemy’s model was that it while it was physically “unreal” it did make useful predictions for its time. Someone else comes along with a candidate replacement for Ptolemy’s model. But this model can’t predict anything. It can’t even match Ptolemy’s model’s predictions.

The reasoned conclusion is that the new candidate is garbage. Your completely and utterly ludicrous claim is that because Ptolemy’s model is “scientifically unreal” – the replacement model cannot be judged.

This is such a foolish argument Jan, you embarrass yourself. Please cease and desist.

Censoring comments again, Briggs?

Briggs wrote:
“Briggs emphasized that “if you don’t remember anything else from this radio program listen to this: If you have a theory and that theory makes bad predictions, that theory is in error…Climate forecasters have made, for decades, lousy predictions. They are therefore in error…”

You never defined “lousy” — a glaring error for a mathematician. What does it mean?

Your confusion about “predict” versus “project” is still evident. Climate models don’t — and can’t – -predict. Why do you have so much trouble understanding this? I suspect you do understand it, but want to criticize climate models anyway, for some contrarian reason.

Jan says “The essence of a scientific study is to draw conclusions based on sound scientific assumptions and methodology.”

It’s not really. A journal article is an argument for or against some position in science, idea, theory, ideology, ECT. The journal accepted the study (replace the word study with argument if it reads better).

So since the journal accepted and published the study; who’s at fault? The people who wrote the study? The people who accepted and published the study? Or yourself, who dares to define what a study is or isn’t.

Will: I agree that many seemed to miss the major point of the paper. I do understand that the validity of the simple model really isn’t the issue, but rather can the model predict more accurately than the complex ones. This did not come across in the paper, or it did and there’s an attempt to take away from the conclusion because it’s uncomfortable for the AGW modelers. Hard to say.

Also, Jan does have a blog. She’s linked to it the same way you’re linked to a page. You might want to mouse over someone’s name before telling them they can start their own blog.

Sheri wrote:
“…but rather can the model predict more accurately than the complex ones.”

Does the model correctly back-predict the 20th century?
DId it predict the pause?

Q3: Does the model predict the warming hiatus of 1945-1975?

Regarding the claim that climate models cannot predict–that’s exactly what’s being pointed out. Finally, took a few decades but we’re all in happy agreement now.

Although that still leaves a lot of confusion in the climate model community that needs to be straightened out…

The first three hits in Google Scholar –

“An Efficient Stochastic Bayesian Approach to Optimal Parameter and Uncertainty Estimation for Climate Model Predictions
Charles Jackson, Mrinal K. Sen, and Paul L. Stoffa”

“Regional climate-model predictions of extreme rainfall for a changing climate”

and

“Stable Isotopes as Validation Tools for Global Climate Model Predictions of the Impact of Amazonian Deforestation
A. Henderson-Sellers
K. McGuffie
H. Zhang”

There are too many to count, but looks like thousands of published research papers on climate model predictions with the researchers specifically using the word “predict” in their article title or abstract.

Sheri,

I didn’t know if Jan had her own blog, and didn’t care, nor was that the point. The point was the confusion over the meaning of the word ‘censorship’. When I write a comment and I’m dealing with a partisan I never – repeat never – write that comment with the intent of ‘conversion’ of the partisan. But I’ll note your criticism for future reference and try to write ‘People can’ or ‘We can’ rather than ‘You can’ to minimize confusion.

Anyway, people who claim they are being censored who can publish their own writings that others can freely access, aren’t being censored.

Climate modelers never said they could predict, only project.

No model can ever predict climate. Ever. That’s just the nature of the situation.

Will:
The first paper is a study of historial data.
So is the second.
So is the third.

You should learn to read abstracts.

No doubt it’s a wasted of pixels, but I submitted the following letter to the NY Times Public Editor

Re: Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher
By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZFEB. 21, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0

Many things wrong with this article.
1. Headline. It’s no secret that Dr. Soon’s research is supported by corporate money. Nor is there anything wrong with corporations supporting scientific research
2. Why the adjective “Doubtful”? What does it even mean?
3. The one mistake committed by Dr. Soon was to fail to list some sponsors on some research papers. According to my wife, a researcher with over 100 publications, this type of mistake is not that uncommon. Surely no other researcher has had a front page report of his failure to list all sources of support for a particular paper.
4. Unduly prominent placement. Dr. Soon is not an important public figure. His sins here are trivial. Not accused of a crime. Not accused of falsified research. Not accused of incorrect research. Yet, the headline appeared just above the fold in my Sunday paper copy.
5. Misleading mention of the word “deliverable”. The article implies that this word is evidence of something nefarious.. In fact, this is a standard word which was used in a contract between a corporation and the Smithsonian.
6. Comparison — Kid gloves treatment of Rajendra K. Pachauri. Pachauri is much more important than Soon. The Times did not report the accusations of sexual harassment that were made against him several days ago. Now that he has resigned, the Times is finally covering the story. IMHO accusations of sexual harassment by the head of the IPCC should be a far more important story than accusations that an obscure climate researcher failed to list all sources of financial support on some papers.

IMHO Dr. Soon was smeared by Greenpeace simply because they didn’t like the results of his research. It’s shameful that the Times enthusiastically participated in this tawdry endeavor.

David in Cal wrote:
“3. The one mistake committed by Dr. Soon was to fail to list some sponsors on some research papers. According to my wife, a researcher with over 100 publications, this type of mistake is not that uncommon.”

So you admit it’s a mistake.
How, then, should Soon rectify his mistake?

“4. Unduly prominent placement. Dr. Soon is not an important public figure.”

He testified before Congress. Does that make him an important public figure?
He’s talked at many conferences, and to reporters. Does that make him an important public figure?

“6. Comparison — Kid gloves treatment of Rajendra K. Pachauri. Pachauri is much more important than Soon.”

Why? Pachauri has resigned. Will Soon?
Pachauri’s personal mistakes do not equate to Soon’s professional mistakes. Soon’s science is really very bad.

Briggs wrote:
“The editors really went all out for us, posting another article by Bob Carter (who did most of the writing on this one)”

So the editors gave you favorable treatment, yes?
Wonder if they’d do that for the other side. Yes? No. They’re biased.

That’s not surprising. Did you even begin to think that Breitbart is a real news organization, somehow conveying truth onto what they cover, trying their best to be objective?
Or that they’re anything beyond ideological hacks?
Ha!

If you are really looking for a job, this kind of publication won’t get you one. Not with the obsure journal (where else did you submit?) Not with Monckton (of all people) pulling your sled.

Nor will all the name calling here on your blog. Ever hear of Lubos Motl, ex-Harvard researcher?

David in Cal,

Most of your points are off topic or wrong. Pachauri molesting women has no bearing on the issue. The claim as I understand it is that Soon received no corporate money for the current paper, so you saying he forgot to mention non-existent corporate monies doesn’t make sense. There seems to be a separate situation where Soon did work for the Smithsonian and the Smithsonian received a corporate grant. I’m not under the impression that indirect sources of financing have to be listed. Hansen received $250,000 from Kerry’s wife, and Kerry at the same time received $6 million from Al Gore, and at the same time Al Gore had started a financial business to trade in carbon credits, offsets, etc… That might be morally corrupt, as Gore would have benefited fabulously by Kerry winning office, but I don’t think that these twice or three times removed arrangements are covered in ethics disclosures.

Of course, what makes this absurd is that these monies don’t seem to be ‘tainting’ the research. Hansen got indirectly funded by Gore, not so that Hansen would change his views on global warming. Rather, it was reward money so that Hansen would continue to be encouraged to produce more of the sort of research he was inclined to produce anyway. Which was of course, conveniently in Al Gore’s financial interest.

David Appell, I’ve been thinking about your above assertion that Briggs still confuses “project” and “predict” with respect to models. There certainly are various contextual situations where these words have decidedly different applicability, e.g. one dictionary defined “project” as, “b: a large usually government-supported undertaking”. That definition I’m sure you’ll agree would never relate to the word “predict”—well, at least most of the time it wouldn’t. But, today I noticed the following headline on the front page of today’s UCLA Newsroom which suggests a question you should be well equipped to answer.

“ Environment + Climate
With NSF grant, UCLA scientists to PREDICT climate change in key coastal regions around the world
First-of-its-kind MODEL to forecast how oceans will react throughout 21st century”. (emphasis added)

Dave, the obvious question is, do you think Briggs might be a Bruin?

Thanks Ron, for pointing out a press release that uses language that isn’t scientifically accurate.

I hope you write to the UCLA Newsroom…. Yes?

Will N wrote:
“The claim as I understand it is that Soon received no corporate money for the current paper”

Maybe, maybe not, but he did receive corporate money for many years prior — as least as far back as 2001, from the American Petroleum Institute — and did not (always) declare that on his publications. That’s a big no-no in science.

Briggs wrote:
“And it’s not finished. Dastardly distractors are still going after Willie Soon. Why? Because these malevolent menaces can’t stomach disagreement.”

Not at all — it’s because Soon’s science is bad and extremely amateurish. For the detailed specifics of how bad his science is, try reading this:

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2015/02/willie-soons-bad-science.html

Then let’s see you try to defend him after this.

Sheri wrote:
“Jan P: If the right of public is to know the data and methods and funding, why is Michael Mann involved in lawsuits concerning either losing the data (hard to believe unless he IS totally incompetent) or refusing to release it from his infamous hockey stick?”

Wow, are you out of touch. Wow. Mann et al’s data has been available for well over a decade:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/research/res_pages/reconstructions.php

Now that you know where his data is, i look forward to your detailed scientific critique.

I have a blog. I’ve never censored anyone, ever. I’ll try to respond here in one comment, but IMO it’s a pretty lousy method of communicating, because tl;dr.

Why do you care, anyway, whether I respond in one comment or 6? Are you paying by the byte?

Are you ever going to address your misunderstanding of climate models? Perhaps you could start by giving a time series of the Nino3.4 index, monthly, for the next 20 years.

David Appell — I have a warm feeling toward you, because I worked with a researcher who had the same name as yours, for whom I had respect. Anyhow, your points are forced. I wonder if you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing, or if you really believe all your arguments.

Probably hundreds of thousands of people have testified before some committee of Congress. Not to mention all those who have testified before state legislative bodies. When one of these hundreds of thousands is discovered to have made a trivial omission some years ago, that’s not news. And, certainly not front page news. I imagine you know this. And, you must know that Pachauri is a much more important public figure than Soon.

I wonder if you understand just how minor an offense Soon committed. Scientific journals now ask submitting authors to list all those who provided funding for the research. The requirement varies by journal. It didn’t exist traditionally, but came into being around 20 or 25 years ago Sometimes a researcher submitting a paper omits a funder. That’s a breech of ethics, but a tiny one. It doesn’t remotely equate to any kind of dishonesty or to bad or biased research or to incorrect research. It’s ludicrous to imagine someone resigning over something so trivial.

The problem you’re ignoring is that the Times (presumably at the bidding of Greenpeace) falsely made it appear that Soon had done some horrible things. Yes, he took money from corporations including oil related. Lots of researchers do, including warmists. There’s nothing wrong or uncommon from accepting these donations. Regardless of your POV on climate change, you should be upset that an essentially blameless researcher could be smeared on the front page of our leading newspaper.

Briggs wrote:
“And how about your understanding of the scientific truth that lousy forecasts imply busted theories?”

Where is your monthly times series for the Nino3.4 Index for the next 20 years?
Also, for volcanic eruptions.
And changes in solar irradiance.

How is it you cannot understand the difference between a prediction (“forecast”) and a projection? You are clearly too smart not to understand this, which leads me to the only other option: you are pretending to not understand it, for some reason.

What’s that reason?

You wrote: “Climate models have no skill. ”

Manabe and Wetherald’s 1967 climate model was the first to correctly calculate the average global surface temperature of the planet.

Can your little model do that?
Can your model hindcast the 20th century?
Did your model predict the slowdown starting in 2000?
Does your model back-predict the 1945-1975 hiatus?

Stop avoiding these questions.

Climate models have no skill.

One wonders if the Climate Prediction Centre or The Hadley Centre
for Climate Prediction and Research (UK Met Office), and all the papers on climate model predictions — extensively cited in, say chapter 8 of working group I’s IPCC report — are all doing these things that Trenberth categorically states climate modelers don’t do.

https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf

Manabe and Wetherald’s 1967 climate model was the first to correctly calculate the average global surface temperature of the planet.

How do you know that calculation was correct?

Briggs wrote:
‘There is no difference between a prediction, projection, scenario, forecast, or pronostication.”

You are completely wrong.

And you avoid answering the questions that you know prove you wrong.

Answer this: how is a climate modeler to know the volcanic eruptions for the next 30 years.?

Stop avoiding the obvious. You’re not fooling those who know the science.

Briggs wrote:
“And because I cannot forecast (or have no interest in forecasting) El Nino does not mean climate models are suddenly without error.”

Thanks for finally admitting the obvious.

Next question: how big is the influence of ENSOs on 20-yr trends for the GMST?

WillN: Why are you referring to the AR4, and not AR5?

So answer your own question: how many papers in the AR5 are predicting, and not projecting?

You asked the question — so what’s the answer?

Then explain how models can predict anything, if they don’t know the future natural variability for the next 10-20-30-60 years?

Or is it your claim that natural variability doesn’t matter?

The problem with letting cranks run free on a blog is that they overload the comments section with topics which are usually 99% off topic. Every post becomes a personal conversation with the crank and everyone else, and every comment compels the crank to educate the readership with his brilliant insights. Cranks are only focused on a very small number of topics, which they always circle around. Cranks actually have very few things to talk about and when their arguments are rebutted, their responses are silly and trivial. Then they degenerate further into thinly disguised ad hominems or just plain old fashioned ad hominems. I don’t like using the word “Troll” because I’ve seen it used too casually to disenfranchise alternate points of view. Alternative points of view are interesting (provided the premise is not too silly). Good alternatives even get people to modify their views. It’s called learning. But cranks just bring the general tone of an entire blog down to sheer silliness.

Briggs wrote:
“I have extensively written on why “natural variability” cannot be used as an excuse to explain climate model failure. See the response to Trenberth and the links therein.”

And when are you ever going to provide the daily Nino3.4 Index for the next 20 years, which modelers need as input??

Also, the volcanic eruptions. And the sun, the poor sun….

Prediction versus projection: So, the 97% consensus aren’t predicting an AGW catastrophe, but instead are merely projecting an AGW catastrophe? So the projection can be put aside until it becomes a prediction?

What? No, it can’t be ignored?

Then what the heck are you talking about? What’s the practical difference between a prediction that demands action and a projection that demands action?

Some sort of double-speak, depending on the audience?

That may fly in other forums, but here, not so much.

Unless your model is 100% endogenous, there will always be independent or exogenous variables. Even if your model is “100% correct” (let’s say model meaning a set of equations with all relevant variables included and with all the correct mathematical relationships”), the validity of its “forecasts” will still depend on how able you are to “predict” the outcomes of those exogenous variables. Does a bad forecast, because you weren’t able to correctly predict one or more of the exogenous variables, make the model wrong ?

The distinction without a distinction is not double-speak. It’s not Kafkaesque. It’s just gibbering. But this does present one the opportunity, assuming the pause continues, to observe an interesting social experiment into madness. How deep can the alarmist rabbit hole go?

David Apell blustered:
“Maybe, maybe not, but he did receive corporate money for many years prior — as least as far back as 2001, from the American Petroleum Institute — and did not (always) declare that on his publications. That’s a big no-no in science.”
So, applying your logic, everyone else who received grant money from BP and Shell and the like directly or indirectly is also guilty?
groups like greenpeace, who placed their employees on the staff of the IPCC?

It’s been demonstrated more than once that the “oil companies” contribute to meetings of groups, such as the AGU (American Geophysical Union) whose members are Earth and space scientists. http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2014/general-information/thank-you-to-our-sponsors/

Where’s the conflict? Where’s the smoke?

Here is a Big Oil connection with CRU, oil companies, carbon trading and fortunes to be made.. and they wanted to direct (in a limited way) research
———————–
Mick Kelly UEA-Tyndall

Shell International would give serious consideration to what I referred to in the meeting as a ‘strategic partnership’ with the TC, broadly equivalent to a ‘flagship alliance’ in the TC proposal. A strategic partnership would involve not only the provision of funding but some (limited but genuine) role in setting the research agenda etc.

Shell’s interest is not in basic science. Any work they support must have a clear and immediate relevance to ‘real-world’ activities. They are particularly interested in emissions trading and CDM.[Clean Development Mechanism]

source uea-tyndall-shell-memo.doc 11 September 2000

download here

http://www.libertyandpeace.org/wiki/climategate/uea-tyndall-shell-memo.doc

One problem with the “climate change” discourse, is that one side (side A) endlessly repeats their slogans (“the science is settled”; “the oil companies paid for research”; “Keystone pipeline”) in such a way that that view settles into the American psyche. The other side (side B), such as it were, can state the science, and issue reasoned and logical refutations. But the weakness of this approach is that side A is poorly informed, sometimes not completely rational, and operates primarily on emotion.

While side B thinks the matter has been dealt with handily, side A lifts up its collective head to utter: “the science is settled.” In effect, side B has very little influence, and the only way to gain influence is to learn a lesson from side A, and endlessly repeat one’s position. It is a thankless task, and not a lot of side B-ers are naturally suited to engaging in endless, boring repetition. However, I believe that with dedication and perseverance, the echo chamber of side A can be penetrated if side B takes up the challenge to repeat, repeat, repeat.

oops not CRU, TC – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change

Will: Agreed that there is no censorship if you can write your own blog. It just looks tacky and uniformed when you tell someone with a blog they can write their own blog if they don’t like being cut from comments. If you had said “Jan, you have your own blog where your opinion is out there and not censored in any way”, then you’d have made a much stronger point.

Briggs: The natural variability excuse was always flimsy since the early claims were always that “CO2 cannot be overcome by natural variability”. Never was it said that this could occur even short term, until the temperatures leveled and the models did not. It always smacked of falsity from the first person who uttered it–or an admission that the models and theories were extremely inaccurate.

Johan: Yes and no. It either means your model is wrong or you input data is wrong. You can check the input data and if it’s all accurate, then the model is wrong. If the data is inaccurate or unavailable, you stop using the model and correct the data problems.

Katie: Repeating one’s position over and over is exactly how you convince people. And doing it without hysterics and drama. It applies to most things–as long as you are honest. The lies eventually catch up. It’s freezing in the US right now. You can bet people are starting to say “global warming? warm makes cold?” and the arguments they heard from skeptics are starting to seep into their minds. In the end, the side that told the truth and used reason usually wins out, though it may take a very long time with some rough going in the middle. There really is no other way to actually convince people long-term. Slogans are just a temporary hold. When another slogan/story comes along, people jump to that one. Which is what is happening to AGW right now. Too many differing slogans/stories and people are starting to figure out there’s nothing behind the slogans.

Briggs wrote:

“It is then still true that climate models have no skill.”

The models that allegedly don’t have any skills are able to do that:

http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2009/Fig9-08.jpg

They can reproduce the general features of the global mean temperature variability over the last century that have been observed. The path of the observed temperature variability could be mistaken as one of the model simulations. Each individual model simulation is on the same footing as the one realization provided by Nature. Nature only provides one chaotic realization of the climate among all possible realizations that are allowed within the physical bounds of the energy and masses fluxes which themselves vary due to the variability in the external climate drivers. The variations in the climate drivers largely determine the lower frequency variations of the temperature variability, whereas the year to year variability is mostly ruled by unforced chaotic dynamics.

The calculations in your paper with the model that you applied are solely based on fitting parameters to emulate a linear trend, making assumptions about the parameters in the process, which are unphysical and not reconcilable with data from the real world (e.g., with paleoclimate data). Then your toy model is still not able to reproduce those features of the temperature variability over the last century, which the complex models can reproduce. And massaging parameters of a model, using parameter values, which are unphysical, until the model makes the appearance that it produces a linear trend similar to what has been observed doesn’t contribute anything to our understanding of the physics of the climate system.

Will Nitschke wrote on February 24, 2015 at 10:42 pm:

“I didn’t know if Jan had her own blog, and didn’t care, nor was that the point. The point was the confusion over the meaning of the word ‘censorship’.”

You are the only one who must have got confused about this, since you have been the only one in the exchange between you and me who talked about “censorship”. I made a comment about Breitbart’s bias, and their removing of comments and banning people who are informed, because of this bias. The meaning of the word “bias” is not the same as the one of “censorship”.

I also didn’t state anything like you attribute to me in following quote:
“The expectation that conservative media must air all the views of their ideological opponents, but that left or progressive media has the automatic right block counter arguments. This is based on the belief that one ideology is completely true and one ideology is completely false. That’s what makes it hilarious.” (Will Nitschke on February 24, 2015 at 8:07 pm).

On the contrary, I explicitly said that Breitbart can do what they want, since they are a private network. I agree that there isn’t a right to free speech on private news networks or on private blogs. Thus, you just have been beating a strawman with this whole line of your argument in reply to what I said.

re: David Appell: “Soon’s science is really very bad.” so if really very bad science is sufficient for the NYT to go after a scientist, they are going to need to order some truckloads of ink. Likewise, Congress is going to need to send letters out for about half the scientists in the country, because “really bad” papers are the average product.
Also Appell: if climate models don’t make predictions, just forecasts (or whatever) then why should policy and carbon taxes be based on them? this is just an effort to have one’s cake and eat it. If the models do poorly, it is just a forecast, but when in talking to politicians and the press, we must act urgently and drastically. heh

jan wrote:
“They can reproduce the general features of the global mean temperature variability over the last century that have been observed. The path of the observed temperature variability could be mistaken as one of the model simulations. Each individual model simulation is on the same footing as the one realization provided by Nature.”
yes, but they have no skill…
that is they cannot forecast, predict, or project anything informative about data not used in their development.
In short, hey are useless at explaining anything.
That these models can be tortured to emulate an existing data set means nothing more than they can predict the past.
really, this is tedious and uninformative.

davideisenstadt wrote:

“yes, but they have no skill…
that is they cannot forecast, predict, or project anything informative about data not used in their development.”

So tell me. Where in the development process of the models have the observed data on the surface temperature variability over the last century been used, which is being reproduced with the models? Obviously, this is what you claim. That there was some circular reasoning, that the observed temperature variability was used to get the calculated results for the temperature variability in the models.

Are the Congressional hearings on manipulation of the temp record “the same”? No. NASA is a gov agency and Congress has oversight. The harassment of 7 scientists by a congressman is intimidation pure and simple. Failure to list all prior support is a pretext for this harassment.
David Appell seems to think it is ok to go after Willie because his science is lousy. It is in fact ok to do so on Appell’s blog or in a publication. But it is a very unfair fight when a congressman comes after you. Many institutions will simply dump a scientist under these circumstances. Administrators have not been showing a lot of backbone on such issues recently.

Jan P Perlwitz,
Where in the development process of the models have the observed data on the surface temperature variability over the last century been used, which is being reproduced with the models?

You DO understand what a model is and how it is built, yes? If not, it’s the construction of some function such that Y=F(X) where X is often a vector of values. To form the function, some manipulation of the components of X is determined.

Regardless of whether it was temperature variability or just temperature or whatever that was used, some process was followed to determine how to manipulate the inputs. Unless these were pulled out of thin air without any previous observations. you have built the answer when encountering the same conditions as those used in training your model.

If your model can’t do well on training observations it most likely is quite poor. But if it does well, it does not imply the model is useful as it is much like passing out sample questions and answers to a class then testing them using the same questions. All they need to do is memorize the answers to them but that hardly means they can answer related but never-before-seen questions.

So, yes, judging your model’s future performance based on its performance with training observations is circular reasoning.

DAV,

All you have done now is telling me about what you are assuming is done with climate models. I’m not interested in your mere assumptions. I asked where in the climate model development process the observed temperature data of the past century are actually used so that the claim was correct, according to which the models only circularly calculate something that is the same as what has been put in, when they calculate the temperature variability since 1870/1880, as shown in the graphic. Merely claiming that it is being done is not an answer to my question. It’s just a repetition of the previous assertion.

So, take any complex climate model and show where it is done, what you claim, in the development process of the model. You can take GISS ModelE, if you like. Or any other of the models. What evidence do you have for that your assertion was true?

Or you alternatively can just admit that you actually don’t have a clue what’s in the Earth system models, how they are developed and how they work. No shame in that.

It’s like with the Bode-system gain equation, with respect to which Monckton, Soon, Legates, and Briggs declare that it was the wrong equation in the complex climate models, and that this equation shouldn’t be used in those climate models. Right?

Jan P wrote:
“So tell me. Where in the development process of the models have the observed data on the surface temperature variability over the last century been used, which is being reproduced with the models? Obviously, this is what you claim. ”
no, this is what you claim, and it is an unsurprising, and uninformative claim..anyone can create a model to fir existing data. The host of this site along with some others created a much simplified model that not only does this, but did a better job of emulating new data, information not used in the construction of the model itself, than did the =GCMs that are in use today.
Sorry to ask, but what background in statistical analysis do you have?
Your protestations seem to indicate a lack of familiarity with the process of constructing, “tuning” (or parameterization, or whatever term you wish to use),
and then applying the model to a data set not used in the construction of the model.
That all of these models are capable of emulating the data used to construct them,should not surprise you at all. Now, the fact that briggs’ model does this as well, or better than models costing orders of magnitude more money to construct and run, and which also make no claim of actually capturing the physics responsible for climatic behavior is perhaps more interesting.

DAV wrote:
“If your model can’t do well on training observations it most likely is quite poor. But if it does well, it does not imply the model is useful as it is much like passing out sample questions and answers to a class then testing them using the same questions. All they need to do is memorize the answers to them but that hardly means they can answer related but never-before-seen questions.”

Good luck with that line of reasoning.
pearls before swine, an whatnot….

davideisenstadt wrote:

“‘So tell me. Where in the development process of the models have the observed data on the surface temperature variability over the last century been used, which is being reproduced with the models? Obviously, this is what you claim.’

no, this is what you claim,…”

Where did I claim this? I didn’t claim this. Perhaps, you didn’t claim this either, but then I don’t know what exactly you claimed when you said about the climate models,

“that is they cannot forecast, predict, or project anything informative about data not used in their development.”

I read this that you are saying in this quote that the observed temperature data since 1870/1880, to which the calculated model data are compared in the graphic to which I linked, had been used in the development process of the models. If this is not what you are claiming, what are you claiming?

“anyone can create a model to fir existing data.”

Well, that is good for anyone. The complex climate models have not been developed by fitting them to the observed temperature variability since 1970/1880 to that they reproduce those data, though. Can “anyone” do that?

“The host of this site along with some others created a much simplified model that not only does this, but did a better job of emulating new data,”

No, they didn’t. There is nothing in their paper that shows that the model they used with their unphysical assumptions reproduces the observed temperature variability better than the complex climate models.

“Sorry to ask, but what background in statistical analysis do you have?”

Nothing to be sorry about. Just the usual statistic courses in the context of math and physics based studies of meteorology and climate science at the university plus some additional readings afterward. I am not a statistician.

Your protestations seem to indicate a lack of familiarity with the process of constructing, “tuning” (or parameterization, or whatever term you wish to use),”

Also this question shows that you very likely don’t have any background in theoretical climate modeling. You believe that the development of complex climate models and their ability to reproduce the observed temperature variability are based on statistical parameter fitting to this temperature as you also had revealed above already. But they aren’t.

I very likely am much more familiar with how parameterizations are done in physics based climate models than you do.

“That all of these models are capable of emulating the data used to construct them,”

The observed temperature data are not used to construct the models. Well, at least we don’t use those data to speak about the model with which I’m most familiar.

All you have done now is telling me about what you are assuming is done with climate models.

How silly. How about you showing how the models are built then if they do so without using previous observations? Bet you can’t.

From Real Science:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/barack-obama-goes-full-stalin/
It’s not just Willie Soon anymore. The climate nazis are in full attack mode it seems (nazi is the only appropriate term here—it’s not an insult, it’s accurate).

Jan wrote:
“Just the usual statistic courses in the context of math and physics based studies of meteorology and climate science at the university plus some additional readings afterward. I am not a statistician.”

Maybe you should go back and take a few more statistics classes, jan.
If you did, you would be able to comprehend the inanity of the entire enterprise from the concept of an ensemble of model means, to grand ensembles to the horrible realization that GCMs dont outperform the naive model of pure persistence. that is betting there will be no change at all is a more accurate proposition than the current crop of models are.
hindcasting isnt a particularly impressive feat, and the GCMs have a horrible record of forecasting.
Emulating recorded variance is not different than emulating any other recorded data set.
A few quick questions for you:
Please evaluate the GCM’s record for making accurate “projections” over the last three decades; do you think they exhibit any skill?
Just what features of climatic variance do you think the current iteration of GCMs do a good job of capturing?
ENSO?
Decadal variance?
warming in the early 20th century?
cooling in the 50’s 60’s and 70’s?
the recent (to be kind to advocates of these models) diminution in the rate of warming we are experiencing?
Do you not concede that the scale of the models is at least a few orders of magnitude to coarse to capture any of the emergent climate phenomena, like cloud formation, or rain?
Do you, with your background in mathematics and physics, seriously maintain that we have the ability to solve the coupled nonlinear differential equations that grossly describe climatic variance?
really?

Sheri,

The climate nuts are experiencing loss of control. Obama is clueless about many things and not just climate. The latest missive from his site (if it’s real) is no surprise. Could be it’s the one area where he thinks he still has support. Why the Democrats even give him the appearance of any is a puzzle. You’d think they’d be doing their best to distance themselves. It’s as if the last two elections were merely outliers.

davideisenstadt wrote:

Actually nothing specific in reply to what I wrote. Just ad hominem, fait-accompli assertions disguised as rhetorical questions, ranting, diversion. What else is new in fake skeptic land, when the argument is lost? I guess that’s it between us then.

Anyone who is not just looking for pretexts for rejecting the findings of climate science and who is really interested in what skill climate models have, or what deficiencies, and who is willing to learn about all the many scientific studies about these things, chapter 9 of the WG I volume, The Physical Science Basis, of the recent IPCC report is a good starting point.

Anyone who is not just looking for pretexts for rejecting the findings of climate science

As opposed to model supporters just looking for pretexts to proclaim the sand in their ears is a comfortable experience?

Amazing how one paper has upset so many in LaLa Land. Why is that? Could it be they recognize its truth and so must lash out in denial while simultaneously crying the paper shows nothing and is of no importance? Hmmm….

Jan:
just because you label questions rhetorical, dont make them so…whats your view on GCMs? Im betting that we are all interested in your answers to the pretty simple questions I posed.
Also, there is nothing ad hominem about suggesting that you would benefit from some more exposure to statistics…thats an observation of your educational background, based on the arguments you choose to run with. There isn’t a scintilla of anything personal in that observation. You seem like a fine person, despite your seeming unwillingness or inability to engage on point here.
So, to be clear, one of the things you would learn in your first rhetoric class is critiquing one’s arguments, or views is the antithesis of an ad hominem attack. Now, labeling someone a denier because that individual doesn’t see the data the way one does, well….pot meet kettle.
Now, another critique of your comments and again this is not an ad hominem attack, its a critique of what you write, not who you are as a person….
Im betting that you are not the product of a Jesuit educational process…if you were you would have a rudimentary understanding of rhetoric…that is the process of argument, and you would know that the questions I posed to you, as well as my observations about your familiarity with basic concepts that form the foundation for meaningful statistical analysis aren’t rhetorical (meaning that I pose them for rhetorical effect, not wanting an actual answer to them) nor do the constitute an ad hominem attack.
now…why dont you indulge us all and give a shot at addressing my questions.

davideisenstadt,

I’m sure you at least suspect if not quite certain that Jan P, who hasn’t actually said anything at all of substance in support of his position, is here to lead the discussion in circles. The editors at Briebart obviously have come to this conclusion and have put a stop to it. I’m willing to bet that Jan’s next post amount to “You are full of it. ” Hopefully, I’m quite wrong but I’m not betting on it.

Stop feeding him and force him to make his case assuming he actually has one. In any event, stop allowing him to lead you in circles.

davideisenstadt wrote:

“just because you label questions rhetorical, dont make them so”

So, are you saying you haven’t got any preconceived answers to them already?

“Im betting that we are all interested in your answers to the pretty simple questions I posed.”

I’m not going to play your game. Either you stay on topic and reply to the specific points of my comment on February 25, 2015 at 4:35 pm, or there won’t be any discussion. None of your questions are “simple” and can be answered quickly. I rather would say you are trying to divert from the specific topic, whether complex climate models are fitted to the observed temperature data, which was your assertion. One that you can’t back up, because it seems to have been based on mere assumptions on your side. You are trying to do this by applying something I would call a variation of what is named gish gallop, in the form of a list of allegedly “simple” questions (even though it’s not a “myriad”).

“The Gish Gallop is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of small arguments that their opponent cannot possibly answer or address each one in real time. More often than not, these myriad arguments are full of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments — the only condition is that there be many of them, not that they be particularly compelling on their own. They may be escape hatches or “gotcha” arguments that are specifically designed to be brief, but take a long time to unravel. Thus, galloping is frequently used in timed debates (especially by creationists) to overwhelm one’s opponent.”
(http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop)

“Also, there is nothing ad hominem about suggesting that you would benefit from some more exposure to statistics…thats an observation of your educational background,…”

Commenting on my education, together with the suggestion that it needed improvement so I would finally understand why I was wrong is an ad hominem argument. What else is it supposed to be? It’s not a critique of my arguments. And, BTW, what is your background in statistical analysis? Or in climate science?

DAV write:

“I’m sure you at least suspect if not quite certain that Jan P, who hasn’t actually said anything at all of substance in support of his position, is here to lead the discussion in circles. The editors at Briebart obviously have come to this conclusion and have put a stop to it.”

Yeah, that must have been it. The moderators at Breitbart surely wanted to save the high quality discussions that are going on in the comment sections over there, from my destructive influence.

DAV: The site exists. I cannot say if it’s official Obama, but I would not be surprised. Yes, they are definitely losing it.

I agree that it is interesting how upset global warming advocates were at one paper and how they cried out to fire Willie Soon (like that helps–gives him more free time to write papers). It does seem a bit overblown.

It is interesting that those who comment here and claim to have more knowledge than most commenters here often resort to belittling or ignoring everyone. Why is it that people who work in this field cannot answer questions? Briggs seems okay with answering statistics questions. Others answer physics. Why do climate researchers not answer questions? It’s a golden opportunity to educate people.

Sheri,

It’s likely because they realize how weak their positions are and want no light shined on them.

Jan P,

Sadly your latest non-response was more than predictable. I win my bet. Too bad you can’t summarize your reasoning behind your predictions but then we all know why.

Your posts at Breitbart were of the same quality as here. No actual discussion or presentation of your position — just evasive babbling. Surely, you don’t think that would convince anyone. Your opinion of yourself and how your present yourself is much better than the reality. Hopefully, your side of the argument has people far more capable than you as your evasiveness does nothing more than confirm the notion your side has no substance.

As Sheri pointed out, you have been given the opportunity to present your side but you insist on squandering it. And seeing this, somehow we should think you’re smart? Really? Pathetic.
If you want us to think you smart then dazzle us with the brilliance of your reasoning behind your position. Otherwise, don’t be surprised at our opinion of you which will be: just another mindless sock puppet.

Too bad you can’t summarize your reasoning behind your predictions but then we all know why.

Sheesh! Where did that come from? Should have been:

Too bad you can’t summarize your reasoning behind your position but then we all know why.

Briggs,

Soon, and Lord Monckton, David Legates and I, based upon our many years of scientific research, also agree that human activities are a cause of climate change.

Your conservative readers must have been gravely disappointed.

You once denied global warming, then later admitted there was a trend. You once rejected the idea of human impact on the environment, now you agree and conclude the following.

Once those discrepancies are taken into account, the impact of anthropogenic global warming over the next century, and even as far as equilibrium many millennia hence, may be no more than one-third to one-half of IPCC’s current projections.

(Yep, I commented before that the words may be are telling to ignore the conclusion. I still think so. )

I see improvement, and there is hope for you!

Jim F: Wow, who knew Bush 2 opened up markets for the first time. I missed so much of history.

JH: I haven’t seen Obama do anything right since his first campaign. Of course, during the first campaign, the fact that he’s a narcissist and pathological liar was harder to spot. Six years have made that glaringly obvious.
As for literacy, if you can’t see any difference, I guess you can’t.
Not all conservatives believe humans have no effect on the climate, just as all progressives do not believe they do.

“You once denied global warming, then later admitted there was a trend. You once rejected the idea of human impact on the environment…”

This is presumably the cartoon villain version of skepticism that true believers embrace.

Jan:
sorry, I dont have to do anything. I posed some questions to you about the utility and skill of GCMs, which you refuse to answwer.
I educated you regarding just what an ad hominem argument was, and is, and corrected your assertions.
deal with it.
there no evasion, no ad hominem attacks, none of what you allege going on.
Now, heres a response to you thats closer to an ad hominem attack.
Your behavior on this blog is that of a liar a shill and a chronic dissembler.
Everyone reading this exchange knows what youre attempting to do. Its a sad, weak gambit, one that is beneath a decent person.
Answer the questions put to you in good faith. Im betting that you can’t, because I dont think you understand them.

Jan wrote:
“Commenting on my education, together with the suggestion that it needed improvement so I would finally understand why I was wrong is an ad hominem argument. What else is it supposed to be? It’s not a critique of my arguments. And, BTW, what is your background in statistical analysis? Or in climate science?”
okay heres my background in statistics…in the 80’s I worked developing econometric models for DRI, the precursor to Wharton econometrics…Ive got about 60 or so credits under my belt in statistics, mathematical statistics and Ive taught stat for over a decade at the college level. Two years of physics, along with three semesters of calculus, two of differential equations, a semester of linear algebra, numerical analysis and number theory. Two years of chemistry, the standard 4 semester premed bio sequence. You?
BTW…a critique of you education and competence is not an attack on your person…it is an attack on your education and knowledge…this simply isn’t an ad hominem attack.
Your ignorance is telling. If you would stop posting no one would know just what an ignorant arrogant person you are.
Now…thats an ad hominem attack.
See the difference?

While there is a lot of bluster in Jan’s ramblings – e.g., complex GCM’s are better because they are more complex, etc. And some misdirection, GCM’s aren’t “tuned”. Well they are not, not directly. There aren’t nobs you can twirl or variables whose values you can reassign at the start of the run… the specifics of the parameterizations, the various weightings that are selected for all types of internal processes, and so on. They do ultimately tune the model in a very indirect way: but in a way that seems to be fooling the modelers into thinking they are achieving results which they aren’t. That they are tuning without being aware of it themselves. (Bad sign if you’re outsmarting yourself.)

But let me try to tease from Jan’s tortured communications a point being made, or if not a point made, a point that Jan should be making.

According to Jan, Dr Brigg’s simple model isn’t a “real” model because various assumptions in the model are “unreasonable.” This is a debatable. It may or may not be true. But grant Jan this part of the argument.

If the simple model is not “reasonable” but has been tuned/curve fitted, it’s not a fair test on the historical data. Dr Brigg’s et. al, have “cheated” or fooled themselves also.

Therefore the comparison of the simple model versus the GCM ensemble is not a “fair test”. And if the test isn’t fair, this can’t tell us anything (or much) on how useless GCM’s actually are. Which is sort of the point of Dr Brigg’s paper.

The problem as it currently stands is that the simple model is also based on hindcasting data. We don’t know if the simple model will outperform the GCM when it comes to predictions. If it does, Jan’s claims are wrong, as the simple model does empirically better than the complex model. But if it doesn’t do better; if the simple model is just as bad as the GCM, we’re all back to square one. The only way to answer this question is to wait and see what the climate does.

So I do think Jan has a point to be made. It’s not an unreasonable point. But Jan tosses in so much rubbish as well – the simple model isn’t compatible with paleoclimate data – well you can interpret paleoclimate data a million different ways. Let’s just talk about the last 30, 50 or 100 years please. I think if you don’t toss far fetched rubbish into the exchange, the reasonable points you’re trying to make, have a better chance of making it across the divide.

Will:
you make excellent, reasoned points…I would only add to what you have wisely written:
1) whatever one wants to call it…training, parameterization, or indirect tuning, the models are tweaked to fit historical data, and even then, misestimate decadal variance; this is not an encouraging sign,
2) since almost all GCMs dont exhibit ANY skill at forecasting, one can, and should be able to observe that a far simpler model seems to emulate the historical record better than they do. Which certainly leads one to infer that the billions of dollars sunk into the development of GCMs has been largely wasted, as poor people die in the winter in northern europe every year, and poor people throughout the world cook indoors using dried dung to fire their ovens. Maybe the Briggs et al model will do a better job of predicting…no projecting into the future than the GCMs did….maybe not, its hard to imagine they will exhibit LESS skill they do the GCMs, no?
3) One could look at Callender’s 1938 model, which had cooked into it a much smaller TCR, along with no positive feedbacks, and note that it did a better job FORECASTING future variance in temperature than the vast majority of the GCMs now under study. This is a one variable model, created at a time when calculations were done with analog computers…i.e.: slide rules. really?
4) to be lectured on what is and isn’t an ad hominem argument by someone who doesn’t even know what the term means is grating, to say the least.
One should be able to note that a commenter seems to lack the basic understanding of a discipline, in this case statistical analysis, without being labeled as one who engages in ad hominem attacks…
I presented to Jan a list of question regarding the skill and degree of robustness of the current generation of GCMs…Jan didn’t like the questions, because they forced one to examine the failures of this group of models. My queries weren’t rhetorical, they weren’t evasive, they weren’t rambling…they go to the heart of the debate.
After a series of non responsive posts, it is clear to me the Jan will not, or can not, respond to my questions.
You exhibit far greater patience than do I, and this isn’t a bad trait on your part.

Maybe you good folks would understand GCMs a little better, if you were more versed in the arcane art of financial economics ?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/finance-why-economic-models-are-always-wrong/

“When you have to keep recalibrating a model, something is wrong with it,” he says. “If you had to readjust the constant in Newton’s law of gravity every time you got out of bed in the morning in order for it to agree with your scale, it wouldn’t be much of a law But in finance they just keep on recalibrating and pretending that the models work.”

Just substitute ‘climate science” for “finance”.

Will Nitschke wrote:

“e.g., complex GCM’s are better because they are more complex, etc.”

Did I make this statement? Where?

“And some misdirection, GCM’s aren’t “tuned”.”

Where did I say that? I didn’t say that. Yes, tuning is done in the models. The tuning is process specific for individual parameterization. For instance, we calibrate the amount of globally integrated emitted dust from deserts and semi-arid regions. We do this for present day climate conditions by optimizing the RMSE between a set of observed variables, like aerosol optical depth downstream of dust sources, dust surface concentration at some stations and the dust size distribution at some stations, and the same set of model variables in the grid boxes where those stations are located. What we don’t do, however, is tuning how much the dust emission will change, when the climate conditions change. That is all calculated with the model, and the model produces as output whatever it produces. We don’t know that beforehand, and we don’t determine beforehand by applying any statistical fitting procedures that would pre-determine the dust response, in what direction or by what magnitude dust emissions will respond in the model under changed climate conditions.

Or, before we do climate change simulations, we tune the atmospheric model to be in radiative equilibrium at the top of the atmosphere for pre-industrial conditions. Then the Earth system model, where all components are coupled with each other is run in a long spin-off simulation with climate drivers held stationary for pre-industrial conditions to get the whole system into a near equilibrium state. This takes up to thousands of model years. Then, from there a control simulation is started for those pre-industrial conditions, which in principle can go on forever, since there isn’t any externally forced climate change in the control simulation. The historical climate change simulations, for which the historically varying climate drivers are prescribed, are then branched off from various points of the control simulation, so that the individual runs are uncorrelated with respect to their year-to-year variability. Then the model numerically integrates for each simulation of the simulation ensemble how the model climate changes in response to the change in the external climate driver.

What we don’t do in this whole process is any statistical fitting of the model response of the various variables to the change of the observed variables over the time period that is being simulated. davideisenstadt’s assertions with respect to that are plain wrong. They are without any merits, and he doesn’t have any evidence for the correctness of his assertions. He also obviously doesn’t have any qualification or competence in the field of climate science in general, or in the area of theoretical climate modeling in particular. So what are his assertions worth?

“the specifics of the parameterizations, the various weightings that are selected for all types of internal processes, and so on. They do ultimately tune the model in a very indirect way:”

The physics in the model “tune” the model “in a very indirect way”. Principles like energy conservation, mass conservation, the physics of radiative transfer, the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, they all “tune” the model. Everything in the model “tunes” the model, if this is the meaning of tuning, which you want to apply.

If you have parameters in your equations that describe your model physics, and if those parameters are poorly constraint, then the proper way is to test the range of possible outcomes of the model response for the whole range of physically plausible values of these parameters. So you get an estimate of the range of uncertainty in your model response due to the uncertainty in these parameter. This is what sensitivity experiments are for.

But Jan tosses in so much rubbish as well – the simple model isn’t compatible with paleoclimate data – well you can interpret paleoclimate data a million different ways.”

Why is this rubbish?

1. Monckton et al. themselves are making claims in the paper referring to palaeoclimatic data. They postulate that their assumption of small positive or even net negative feedbacks was justified because of the magnitude of the temperature change between glacials and interglacials.

2. If you suspect that your model calculated climate change since pre-industrial times was contaminated by tuning with observation data over the same time period, testing your model for different climate conditions, like for the Last Glacial Maximum, would be a way to go to test the capabilities of the model using independent data. A problem here is that we don’t have as much data for these time periods, and there is more uncertainty in the data we have. But since we can’t wait a few hundred years to see whether the largest part of planet Earth has become uninhabitable for Homo sapiens sapiens, or whether everything turned out just fine, and we also don’t have a time machine to jump into the future, looking in the past is a possibility.

Jan writes:
” He also obviously doesn’t have any qualification or competence in the field of climate science in general, or in the area of theoretical climate modeling in particular. So what are his assertions worth?”
Weel, I know that the ex posts election of data is a cardinal sin in statistical analysis, something you guys dont seem to grasp.
I know when a model exhibits absolutely no skill and dont mind admitting it, unlike you.

When the field one is involved with accepts and endorses ex post selection of data, the computation of statistically meaningless memes as an “ensemble mean” I dont think its unreasonable to question the use of a tool of analysis like statistics
When one puts forth the proposition that ones models aren’t tuned… that they are the product of this activity:
“Yes, tuning is done in the models. The tuning is process specific for individual parameterization.”
So you tune the models to get value for specific parameters that you subsequently use in you model runs.
Now, one can honestly question the reasonableness of this application of statistical analysis.
Does one have to spend five years studying phrenology to know that its a fraud?
The examples of statistical malfeasance in the field you claim to be involved in are so ubiquitous that they defy a quick summary.
Look Jan..if you knew your ass from a hole in the ground you could have responded to my set of questions in a lot less time and electrons you have expended evading and hand waving, simply by engaging on point.
Also…just what is the discipline of “climate science”? Guys like Richard Lindzen, with hundreds of articles, tens of thousands of cites, the guy who almost single handedly created your field, a guy who was tenured faculty in the department of physics at MIT, is labeled a crank because he doesn’t drink the flavor-ade you serve.
Your models depend on some rather complex statistical analysis, yet the field you are immersed in doesn’t seem to consider some basic concepts central to honest statistical analysis…issues like autocorrelation, and heteroskedasticity; even the most elementary concepts like propagated error, precision versus accuracy, and confidence intervals seem to be beyond your discipline’s ken.
Now, that your bleating complaints about what is and what isnt an ad hominem attacks have been dealt with and shown to be rubbish, why dont you engage the points I raised in good faith, points which you refuse to deal with.
For example, you dont seem to grasp that the granularity, or scale of your models is at least two or three orders of magnitude to coarse to pick up any emergent climate phenomena, like cloud formation, or rain. you can blather on about grid cells, but for those who have even a superficial grasp of the fluid dynamics involved in emergent phenomena, it is clear that a grid of, say 1 Km by 1 Km is still too coarse by a factor of ten thousand or so to capture the acute physics involved.
Now, thats a specific critique, one that I have made previously,do you deny this?
If you did in fact, have the background in physics and math you claim to have you would accept this, because, unfortunately for your team, its true.
That you choose this ground to defend says much about you, and none of it is good.

Jan P: We shouldn’t jump into wealth redistribution and shutting down the only practical energy sources we have based on models that “might” predict the future. The precautionary principle is evoked when the science is inadequate, yet you seem to be arguing for said principle and claiming the science is on you’re side. You can’t have it both ways.
(You personally may not have claimed wealth redistribution and shutting down fossil fuels are needed, but basically the entire solution to global warming is always no oil, no gas, and we are taking rich nations money and giving to poor nations. That’s what the IPCC and virtually every climate conference out there wants. So I consider it part and parcel of the AGW meme.)

All: An interesting look at natural factors and the leveling of temperatures. Seems nature can overcome AGW after all, at least for a couple of decades (the authors made sure to note that AGW will return with a vengeance—that sounds more and more like a religion every time I type it. Or a psychic prediction….) http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2531.html

davideisenstadt:

Yawn. More pointless ranting from you about how all those climate scientists who work and actually publish in the field did it all wrong (well, except for his eminence Lindzen). Write a (or more than one) paper with sound scientific arguments, analysis and evidence to disprove the applied assumptions, methodologies and conclusions of this field of science in general, or what is done in theoretical climate modeling, in particular, or in specific published papers, get it through the proper peer-review process of a journal of the field so it will be published. Then I can take you seriously. Otherwise you are just an incompetent roisterer and crank who doesn’t have any qualification, whose only outlet for his rants and fringe views are some “skeptic” blogs in the internet, where he can find some confirmation from others.

BTW: I also recommend that you make yourself knowledgeable about the difference between mere insults and ad hominem arguments. You are severely confused about this.

Jan writes:
“Yawn”
Look Jan. if you can’t deal with the questions, dont post. You’ve spent more energy evading my simple set of questions than you would have expended answering them.
Its obvious to any who read this colloquy what your strategy is.
Now, having identified specific issues with GCMs, specific cases of misapplication (to be generous) of the tools of statistical analysis by people in your field, and the obvious shortcomings of the models currently employed, your response is “Yawn”.
If you had a shred of integrity you would stay something like, “Of course, ex post selection of data is to be avoided”, and “Yes, its foolishness, nothing more, to assert that we can ascertain GMT to a resolution of a fraction of a degree celsius hundreds of years in the past”, and “yes, its true that the confidence intervals for historical reproductions exceed variance observed for many proxies”, and “Yes its true that the current generation of GCMs doesn’t do a very good job of emulating climatic phenomena like temperature, or ENSO, or the PDO over the past few decades”
That you dont do so, that you engage in sneering,obtuse responses says more about your “field” than anyone else could.
Really, your posts aren’t made in good faith, or at least it seems that they aren’t.
Now, why dont you spent ten minutes rereading my original set of questions, and deal with them.
I have a background in statistical analysis at least the equal of yours… probably about a major in statistics more exposure than you have had, along with having to construct models that actually had predictive…. no, sorry “projective” skill.
I can see the game you guys are running, and Im calling you on it. The set of questions I asked you are uncomfortable for you to engage in, I understand that…but they are salient points, ones that any who are involved in the field should be able to deal with.
Really. You waste all of our time.
the world waits jan.

davideisenstadt wrote:

“You waste all of our time.”

No, if someone is wasting your time, it’s you yourself. I’m not responsible for what you are doing.

What you have in mind is not an exchange of arguments, specific on a topic and backed up with evidence. Instead, you seem to imagine yourself as some chair person of an inquisitional tribunal that is sitting over someone, in this case the accused climate modeler, who is demanded to answer a load of loaded questions, i.e., a load of assertions in disguise, which are presented as “truth”, but w/o any shred of evidence for it. The expected answer to the questions is the admission of all sins. And if the accused one refuses to acknowledge such an approach and refuses to answer then it is interpreted as an admission of the sins anyhow, and, additionally, as proof of the failure of character of the accused one.

There have been historical periods or there are some countries where people like you were or have been in demand. As I already said I’m not going to play your game. Perhaps you should think about emigrating to one of those countries. You may be able to get on a power trip over there.

And right now there is defininately a call for people like those in global warming science—bullies who try to get people fired, refuse to discuss science and assume no one has any qualifications outside of themselves. You’re right about historical ages—AGW tactics worked very well for McCarthy. So why not use them now? Since the science is so poor it can’t be discussed, bully and intimidate until you “win”. Not science, not at all. But you really don’t care, do you? This is about “winning” and being top dog and king of the hill. No concern for truth, no concern for future generations, nothing. King of the hill and bully pulpits. How truly sad for science that it was turned into this farce.

Sheri,

You are projecting.

My degree in Psychology says you are absolutely wrong, though your response was 99.999% predictable. Thank you for once again verifying global warming advocates are very, very predictable. 🙂

Jan
I asked you a series of question regarding the skill and degree of robustness of the current generation of GCMs. you refused ot deal with it.
So, no, you are wasting my time. From an abject lack of knowledge of rhetoric (not knowing or being able to identify an ad hominem attack) to a refusal to engage on the issues presented to you, you have shown to all that your posts are in bad faith,.
Called to account for your readily apparent lack of knowledge regarding issues fundamental to statistics, you chose to double down on your own obsufaction and diversionary tactics,, and now, hours after the original questions were presented to you refuse to engage on the issues presented for your commentary.
Im done with you. I rarely use this term with other posters, but youre nothing more than troll.
You can respond to this, I won’t engage any further with you.

davideisenstadt:

“You can respond to this, I won’t engage any further with you.”

Fine with me, since you haven’t produced anything else than endless drivel. Nothing with substance, and no evidence for the correctness of any of your assertions whatsoever.

Sheri:

“My degree in Psychology says you are absolutely wrong,”

Am I? So tell me, who are the scientists who allegedly try to get some other scientist (I guess you mean Willie Soon) fired, because these scientists didn’t have any scientific arguments? This is what you are asserting, isn’t it? Names and evidence, please.

On the other hand, it is documented that Monckton demands the firing and criminal prosecution of all those scientists who dared to criticize the Monckton, Soon, Legates, and Briggs paper (in his drivel at Climate Depot in response to the criticism).

“Thank you for once again verifying global warming advocates are very, very predictable.”

“This is about ‘winning’ and being top dog and king of the hill.”
(Sheri on February 26, 2015 at 12:09 pm)

But Sheri is not projecting.

Correct, Jan, Sheri is not projecting. Glad you understand.

Actually, it’s the government going after deniers now, so no scientist needs to get involved.

I don’t approve of Monckton trying to get people fired either. Never said I did or in any way indicated that. Must be projecting on your part, you think?

Sheri:

“Actually, it’s the government going after deniers now, so no scientist needs to get involved.”

In what way? What branch of the government?

“I don’t approve of Monckton trying to get people fired either.”

Good to hear. You are the first one of the “skeptics” from whom I’ve heard this explicitly. More often I’m confronted with demands coming from “skeptics” to fire me. Or worse, coming with accusations, e.g., that I had committed “murder, fraud, and theft”.

“Never said I did or in any way indicated that.”

But you insinuated that I did regarding Willie Soon, since you made your comments in response to what I wrote, didn’t you?

geez briggs…
I think we should let Jan get back to his day job, apparently his job at Goddard leaves him free to joust, dishonestly, with those on the web, while still earning a living…most of those who pay taxes dont have that liberty.
To think that this is was NASA has sunk to, its no wonder that one of its core missions today is to affirm the self worth of our islamic brothers around the world.
As for you Jan:
I think the branch of government that is now investigating Soon is called the legislative branch; unless your knowledge of government in the States is similar to your grasp of statistics, you should know what that means…there are only three branches of government so it should be easy for you to read up on it.
As for the rest of your assertions, you know enough to know better- that makes the game youre running even more reprehensible.
I do know Im not the only member of the statistical community who thinks your enterprise is full of effluvia.
Of course, my pension and paycheck doesn’t depend on peddling it, so my view may differ from yours.
As for the correctness of my assertions:
1) the fact that you dont know what an ad hominem attack is is obvious to all,
2) the fact that an ensemble mean of model runs is a bankrupt, meaningless and fraudulent concept is readily apparent to any who have an undergraduate’s knowledge of statistics is, again obvious,
3) the lack of skill demonstrated by the current generation of CGMs is clear to any who bothered to read their predictions…no projections…no scenarios, and
4) the fact that you refuse to engage on the questions I posed regarding the skill and robustness of the models your team is paid to create is clear to all.
I dont have to prove that, you and your models’ output did it for me.
I do hope that before we try to put people past shallow orbit again, we go back to some sort of meritocracy at NASA, god forbid more should die.

Jan:
your arrogance is astounding.
Sucking on the government teat, proclaiming that any question regarding the validity and utilty of the models your industry gets billions of dollars to produce is in effect the act of some inquisitor, you refuse to address the simple set of questions put to you.
Any self respecting researcher should be able to address the points I raised, in much less time on the job than you have spent avoiding them
Go ahead, assume whatever enables you to continue to live off the taxes of poor working people with a clear conscience. Read your blogs when others work.
Your behavior on this site is beneath contempt.
N.B. thats a critique of your behavior, not an ad hominem attack, BTW.

Jan:
is this representative of you work?
Jan P Perlwitz says:
“If you are dreaming about pitchforks and torches, tar and feathers against climate scientists, bring it on. I shoot you dead.”
wow…jesus christ on earth for us all you are jan.

Really? Skeptics demanding your firing? Do you have any actual names and examples? It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s not often I hear skeptics calling for firings (except Monckton) and would love to see actual examples. Okay, some commenters on skeptic blogs may go there and some people just like to stir things up, but I don’t count these as actual demands, since they are just “venting”. Also, if one hates everyone, it’s not really personal if they don’t like you or me. If people are saying you committed murder, fraud and theft, then that’s definately wrong (unless they can back that up and I’m sure the murder one is figurative.) I also disapprove of global warming advocates saying people’s children should kill them because Daddy doesn’t believe in global warming (Daily Mail Jan 26, 2015). Neither side needs to be behaving like this.

As for Soon: No, I insinuated nothing about you and Willie Soon. I commented that trying to get people fired because you disagree is not science, but bullying. I asked why the current attack on Soon was significant, since it has been ongoing (I guess the government attack kind of answers that, in a way), but there was no insinuation at all. It was a straightforward statement about me, nothing about you.

Links:
http://democrats.naturalresources.house.gov/sites/democrats.naturalresources.house.gov/files/Judith%20Curry%2C%20Georgia%20Tech_0.pdf
http://democrats.naturalresources.house.gov/sites/democrats.naturalresources.house.gov/files/Roger%20Pielke%2C%20Colorado.pdf

https://www.barackobama.com/stand-with-science/

“Im done with you. I rarely use this term with other posters, but youre nothing more than troll.
You can respond to this, I won’t engage any further with you.”

(davideisenstadt on February 26, 2015 at 12:30 pm)

And he just can’t keep control of himself. How pathetic. ROTFL

To the audience: I’m not employed with NASA. I often work from home. And I don’t have regular working hours. Just to prevent that any misinformation is standing in the room uncorrected.

Jan’s LinkIn profile says: Scientist at Columbia University, Bronx New York

From the NASA GISS page:
GISS Personnel Directory

Dr. Jan P. Perlwitz
Affiliation: Columbia University

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
2880 Broadway
New York, NY 10025 USA

E-mail: jan.p.perlwitz@nasa.gov

Looks like Jan needs to contact NASA and have that pesky listing removed.

Jan:
i guess being a troll is something that you excel at…applied statistics? thats another thing.
I think we already know that you have little knowledge or skill in rhetoric.
BTW, NASA has you listed as an employee.
Your intemperate remarks are to be found everywhere one looks, if one has the stomach to read your musings.
Really, you may wish to go back and learn a bit about the tool you misuse…applied statistics.
It ill suits a person of your educational background to torture data and the english language as you do.
ROTLF?
I guess thats how you feel when you cash your checks?
Try reading the questions I put to you earlier…if you were on your game, i think you could have dealt with them in a few minutes…You might not have liked the answers you gave…i might not have either, but you would have put your cards on the table, and actually had a discussion on the merits…something which, apparently scares you.
Jan Perlitz: hillary has bigger balls than you do.

Sheri and david,

FYI: ” I’m not employed with NASA” can be factually true if what was really meant was “I am not [directly] employed by NASA.” I, too, had a nasa.gov email address ; had both on-site and off-site offices; often worked from home; and, considering flex-tine, had no regular hours. That doesn’t mean I didn’t work on NASA projects or wasn’t listed as personnel or even that those projects weren’t my bread and butter.

From his list of publications with GISS, it’s apparent he only works on a small part of the GCM’s, specifically, dust aerosol. He may even be a junior member of the GCM team. It’s quite possible he is not really in a position to answer David’s questions at all. If he CAN answer them though, he is squandering the opportunity to explain why GCM funding isn’t a waste of money. One would think it is in his interest to do so.

Instead, sadly, he wants to don the maroon hat and assume the roll of clueless troll. It should be obvious that Jan is being disingenuous. Why encourage him? We should applaud his performance and stop being punked but it.

DAV:
I salute you sir.
BTW: I wasnt aware that one couldn’t be an employee if one didn’t physically go into “the office”…
anyway, you’re correct.
BTW: anyone with a passing familiarity with the construction and testing of statistical models could answer my questions. As Ive said, i might not like the answers, or accept them, and Jan might not like them, or he might feel that they may embarrass him, but they aren’t all that difficult.
They weren’t rhetorical, and until Jan revealed that he behaved like an ass, i didn’t engage in ad hominem attacks.
dude should have gone to a Jesuit school, and I’m a jew.

davideisenstadt:

Sir,

It amuses me how you had announced before,

“Im done with you. I rarely use this term with other posters, but youre nothing more than troll.
You can respond to this, I won’t engage any further with you.”

(davideisenstadt on February 26, 2015 at 12:30 pm),

and now you just can’t stop with begging for my attention.

This will be the last time that I am repeating this, and, in contrast to you, I’m going to stick to my announcement: I’m not going to play your game of diversion that you tried by changing the subject with a gish gallop of so called “questions”, which you presented after you had been cornered, since you couldn’t back up any of your assertions, which you had stated before that, with anything. My conditions for a discussion still stand: Staying on the specific topic, which was 1. your assertion that the model from the Monckton et al. paper performed better than the complex Earth system models, and, subsequently, the assertion that the calculated model response in the historic simulations with the Earth system models was obtained by statistical fitting to the observations, and 2. that you provide evidence to back up your assertions.

So, now you can go back to exchanging mutual confirmation with your buddies in your internet niche, how you, without having any qualification in climate science or provided any scientific contribution to the field, knew it all better than thousands of scientists all over the world, who actually work and publish in the field and who have something to show for. About whom you apparently think that they were all just a bunch of idiots who just had been doing nonsense for decades with all this climate modeling stuff.

What astonishes me again and again is how extremely distorted the self-perception of many of the so-called “skeptics” is. The degree of overestimation of their own knowledge, qualification, and competence, the self-delusion of being experts in a field where they are actually only laymen.

Jan,

I think you’re going about this completely the wrong way. The appeal to authority approach just doesn’t work. Let me explain why. When I was studying psychology in university, any mention of the words “psychoanalytics” met with rolled eyes by my teachers. This is because psychologists almost exclusively (well, 97% anyway…) thought psychoanalytical practitioners were peddling junk science. As one professor once said to me, what does any of that stuff even mean?

Now here’s the problem. Pick any of these groups: The International Psychoanalytical Association is as good as any. You’ve got 12,000 psychoanalysts working in around 70 institutions or organisations. A huge number of these guys are not just doctors, but have PhD level qualifications. They have their own journals, publications, conferences, events… But none of this distracts from the fact that their theories are based on the original works of Freud and Jung. We’re talking about the “unconscious mind” here, Oedipus Complex’s, penis envy, the whole gamut of nutty ideas. As I said, academic psychologists almost unanimously view these practitioners as bonkers.

I really don’t want someone to tell me I want to kill my father and have sex with my mother and that half the population secretly crave penises and what not, because… well because, I have no qualifications whatsoever in psychoanalytics, haven’t made any scientific contribution to the field, know it all better than thousands of psychoanalysts all over the world, who actually work and publish in the field and who have something to show for it. About whom you apparently think that they were all just a bunch of idiots who just had been doing nonsense for decades with all this study of the unconsciousness stuff.

See why claiming you’re smart because you claim you’re smart doesn’t impress?

Will Nitschke:

“I think you’re going about this completely the wrong way. The appeal to authority approach just doesn’t work.”

Stating the observation that laymen believe to know it all better than the experts in a specialized field of science is not appeal to authority.

Jan,

Well you just went off on mad rant. Doesn’t give the readers confidence in anything smart you have to say, so why not just focus on communicating smart things?

What you just wrote is exactly an appeal to authority. If an economist told me he can predict what the economy will be like next year, *because* he knows more than laymen, well he is appealing to authority. That’s because nobody knows how to predict the economy a year ahead. (No one can predict the timing of when a bubble will burst. All the experts always fail this test. Some don’t even recognise the bubble to begin with.) The specialist doesn’t do any better than the lay person who uses the blind folded dart board approach.

It comes down to what you’re asking the expert. If I ask an economist, what’s the likely impact of a new regulation (what taxes will it raise, what costs will it put on business), the economist should be able to give me a reasonable answer, although it may not be 100% perfect. So yes, in this case the expert is more knowledgeable than the lay person. Therefore it depends on the questions being asked, doesn’t it?

Will Nitschke:

“What you just wrote is exactly an appeal to authority. If an economist told me he can predict what the economy will be like next year, *because* he knows more than laymen, well he is appealing to authority.”

Now, you are just making things up (again). I didn’t say such a thing. It’s what you claimed what I allegedly said with respect to “The Guardian” or about “censorship” all over. I see a pattern.

Jan,

You wrote:

“Stating the observation that laymen believe to know it all better than the experts in a specialized field of science is not appeal to authority.”

And I responded to that by offering an example of when we can be confident in the authority of experts and when we can’t be. This is not difficult to grasp. If I have cancer and the doctors tells me he can cure my cancer and there is a cure for that cancer, I can expect the doctor has the requisite expertise. But if the doctor tells me he can cure my cancer — for which there is no known cure — because of the proven track record of medicine or other such nonsense arguments, then that is an appeal to authority. So it always comes down to the evidence.

In life all of us deal with experts who claim to have knowledge and abilities they don’t possess. When I question them and they get angry, that’s always a bad sign I’m dealing with someone out of their depth. My most recent experience was with an expert who was promoting a stem cell treatment. I looked at the evidence (for which there was ultimately none) and asked some pointed questions, and the expert got rather upset and angry. I gave up on that expert and went to other experts who concurred that there was no evidence to support the cost of the expensive treatment. (Nothing to do with cancer, only repair of elbow for someone in my life). Following your logic I should not have questioned the first expert by seeking out the opinions of other knowledgeable experts because I wasn’t “qualified”.

Will Nitschke:

“So it always comes down to the evidence.”

I very much agree with that. This is for what I have kept asking. For the evidence to back up made assertions. I would add that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For instance, the claim that the scientists basically of a whole field of science didn’t know what they were doing and that many thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies were all wrong is quite an extraordinary claim. However, when I asked for the evidence to back up the made assertions I wasn’t provided any. Instead, my education level in statistics was questioned, and I was told that once I have improved my education level I will understand that I was wrong and the other side was right. I was told to accept the assertions that were made as true w/o any evidence. The other side used argumentum ad hominem (instead of providing the evidence to support their assertions, my education level was questioned) and appeal to (their own alleged) authority.

“For instance, the claim that the scientists basically of a whole field of science didn’t know what they were doing and that many thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies were all wrong is quite an extraordinary claim. ”

So do you believe that half the planet suffer penis envy? They want one of their own in place of a vaginia? That you secretly want to have sex with your mother? That an “unconscious” world exists where you plot and scheme but have no conscious awareness of?

Do you accept all these claims as true, because otherwise a whole field of science didn’t know what it was doing and many thousands of peer reviewed studies would have to be wrong, correct?

I’m having trouble grasping how you cannot recognise how utterly stupid this type of argument is.

Jan:
just because you assert that a critique is an ad hominem attack doesn’t make it so.
Your refusal now, for countless posts to address reasonable questions regarding the robustness and skill of GCMs is simply astounding.
Because I let an arrogant, evasive and nonresponsive poster like you piss me off is no reason for you not to respond to reasonable questions about the enterprise that the public funds, one from which you derive income.
Your knowledge and use of rhetoric is simply juvenile, and that of an ass. Its got to suck to have that shown to you in public.
Now, i questioned you background in statistics, because your failure to address questions that any responsible researcher vaguely experienced with multiple regression analysis and applied statistics should be able to handle in five or so minutes is telling. You asked my background, I gave it to you. I’m not attempting to tell you about how to model the propagation of dust…i telling you that GCMs as they currently exist exhibit no skill, are incapable of predicting, or projecting, or providing accurate scenarios about data not in their training period, i.e. the future. In short they dont perform the task that mostusers would consider to be essential to their utility; that is, they dont accurately model climatic variance.
Deal with it Jan.
Numerous people on this thread have explained to you just why you come off as an arrogant ass, a person who refuses to grasp the fundamental of statistics, and does not possess even a passing knowledge of rhetoric.
Its clear that youre in denial, and have a rigid intellect, one that doesn’t allow for the intrusion of any thought that is viewed as challenging your weltenshauung. Now, I know it must be grating you to be shown to have the rhetorical skill of a sixth grader,and that youre really uncomfortable discussing the robustness and skill of GCMs
Any who read this colloquy can readily see that your not willing to answer simple questions.
They weren’t rhetorical; they werent a “myriad” of them. They were a simple set of questions, ones that now scores of posts later, you still refuse to answer.
You’ve spent hours bleating, hand waving, and engaging in obfuscation.
Really, your schtick is tired. Go read an intro to rhetoric, and bone up on your fundamental grasp of statistics…its clear that neither is your strong suit.

David,

I think you need to cool down. Jan may not be intentionally evasive. He simply may not have the knowledge or ability to answer your questions. He may not even be aware he lacks this ability.

During my university education I found different disciplines grossly (and depressingly) ignorant of each other. I still recall the course I did in computational psychology. It was–stupid. The people teaching the course didn’t have a clue. By the time I did that course I was reasonably adapt in the history and philosophy of science, and before I’d entered university I’d already written two books on microprocessor programming. I assure you the lecturer did not want to know why his course made no sense and was highly defensive and antagonistic towards criticism. He suggested I should get in front of the class and teach in his place. Of course, that was an impossible request. I didn’t know anything about computational psychology, hence why I was there. The problem was, I was an expert in computation (nobody else there, including the lecturer, understood the topic properly) and I understood enough about science to know that you had to construct a theory first and then test it. A theory wouldn’t pop magically out of your model. After 30 years of reflection I’m still baffled today on what they thought they were teaching. Although it’s easy enough in my mind to swap the lecturer with someone like Jan.

Will:
You are a more patient and a wiser person than am I.
Jan’s childish, incorrect use of rhetoric, along with his sneering condescension is irritating, to say the least.
BTW, Im not sure one could call me a “layman”, and I resent being clumped in with a bunch of people who communicate about how they make “experts” look stupid on some secret boards (I think we all know who those are).
I do have a pretty extensive background in statistical analysis. I taught statistics, primarily analysis of variance and econometrics, and have sufficient knowledge of the issues that arise when one wants to get more information out of a noisy autocorrelated data set than one can reasonably expect to get, so I think I understand the frustrations inherent in working with historical temperature records as well as proxies for temperature.
Of course one can’t support a multi billion dollar industry by saying something like “Right now, the signal we are trying pull of of our data is swamped by unexplained variance. While our knowledge of physics tells us that increased CO2 levels should tend to cause temperatures to increase, we can’t really pick that out of the data yet, and we are unsure just how much of an increase in temperatures we can accurately ascribe to that increase in CO2”
That doesn’t get anyone a grant.
The level of malfeascence that pervades the climate science community is from my perspective, simply astounding. I have difficulty accepting criticism from a member of a community that endorses such bizarre concepts as a “multi model mean” and an “ensemble of ensembles” as well as the ex post selection of data. These are simply indefensible practices. That Jan doesn’t see this fact, and is unwilling to learn enough to see it is enough to make one’s blood boil.
Geez…a doctorate and he can’t understand what an ad hominem attack is?
Columbia?
Really?

Will Nitschke,

“So do you believe that half the planet suffer penis envy? They want one of their own in place of a vaginia? That you secretly want to have sex with your mother? That an “unconscious” world exists where you plot and scheme but have no conscious awareness of?”

There is no logic whatsoever behind your reply here to my statement, which could make this a valid argument against my statement.

Do you know what burden of proof means? When you are asserting that the scientists of a whole field of science didn’t know what they were doing and that thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies published by them were all wrong, then you have the burden to provide the evidence for the correctness of your assertion. And since this is an extraordinary assertion, it requires extraordinary evidence. davideisenstadt is obviously asserting that this was the case for the field of climate science (while you are still beating around the bush somewhat in this thread here using insinuation, this is why you are talking about “penis envy” etc., although I dare to opine that this view on climate science is the general view of the fake skeptic crowd). The burden of proof is on the side of the ones who are making such an assertion about climate science.

DAV: Oh, you mean like Willie Soon, who is working for a university that received funding from oil and gas? Yet, in the case of Willie Soon, it is assumed by all that the funding went directly to Willie. Interesting if Jan P has the same arrangement and failed to disclose that fact, don’t you think?
And yes, he is squandering an opportunity IF he really does understand climate science theory.

Jan P: What surprises no one here is how warmists cut and run, fail to answer questions and display no knowledge of actual climate science. Okay, you believe in the models, yet you don’t take this opportunity to show up Briggs, Soon et al by explaining why they are wrong. No, you do the usual evade and retreat. I believe the paper explained why the models works better–that was the topic of the paper. You are asserting the paper is wrong. It is fascinating that those “in the know” never, ever answer questions directly nor follow the same rules they have for others. You are the one disputing the paper. You are the one required to show evidence that it is wrong. So, put up or shut up. (As for delusional experts, only a delusional person would hide behind “I’m sooooo smart you mere mortals can never understand” and haughtily walk off. You, sir, are the epitome of bad science and arrogance at a godlike level. You and JH should get together and write a bible for the rest of the world to marvel at.)
Yes, Jan P, unless you address the data and not the author, you are appealing to authority. This appeal generally only applies to scientism and never anything else. Psychics cannot be authorities because scientism said so. That’s another clue that “authority” being used to cover the reality of failed idea in the science field.
Now—”the I said no such thing” retort. Do you have a play book you all read from and follow for internet commenting or what?
Step four (or maybe five): Change the subject to a general one and claim the whole field is being picked on. Avoid addressing the actual paper in question at all costs. Yes, the playbook continues to be followed.
And, last but not least, again trying to pass the buck. YOU made the assertion the paper is wrong. YOU prove why. Obviously, you cannot. It’s quite obvious many people here are far more qualified in statistics and modeling than you are. You really cannot answer why it’s wrong and we could make something up and you could not tell us WHY it’s wrong, only that you believe it is. A devote follower of the faith, yes indeed.

Will: Great comments.

Sheri,

Really? You are claiming that I was the one who were refusing to talk about the Monckton et al. paper? Really?

You know exactly that I have published my criticism. This criticism also contains my arguments why the comparisons between models and observations in the Moncktion et al. paper were methodologically flawed. You yourself were the one who mentioned the google-doc that can be found on the web. And I also have addressed some selected points from my criticism of the paper here in the thread. I haven’t seen anything from you where you provide any specific argument why you think my criticism was wrong and in what points. Or from anyone else.

You are stating your accusations about my alleged misbehavior in bad faith, or I am doubting your cognitive capabilities.

So, since you are claiming that you are interested in discussing the Monckton et al.-paper, why aren’t you telling me what you think is the evidence in the Monckton et al.-paper, which shows that the model from that paper was better performing than the complex climate models. Be specific. Where in the paper, specifically? What analysis? Or what figure?

Jan wrote:
“The burden of proof is on the side of the ones who are making such an assertion about climate science.”
Yeah Jan, thats what the whole concept of rejecting the Null hypothesis comes into play…Since your field doesn’t believe in the necessity of doing that, the burden of proof is still on you guys.
Construct a reasonable Null hypothesis…present or propose a reasonable Alternative hypothesis, apply your analysis to a non cherry picked data set, reject the Null hypothesis, let people then decide if your Alternative hypothesis is the only reasonable, or best explanation. Thats typicaly how applied statistical analysis works, Jan.
Its now going on two days of your misstatements regarding just what is an ad hominem attack, hopelessly ignorant and pissy appeals to authority, and a pattern of absolute refusal to engage on reasonable and substantive questions over the robustness, skill and utility of the current generation of GCMs. Your game is tired.
No, I’m not a “climate scientist”. However, I have enough training in statistical analysis to know when a group of models suck. And I’m wagering that I’ve taken, and taught more stats classes than you have. Its interesting that in every other field, principal researchers employ trained, professional statisticians to help them with the design of their research, and the interpretations of their results…every field that is, except yours. Why?
Now that you’ve totally misstated and misapprehended just what the burden of proof in statistical analysis is, and who it falls on, and have been corrected, please go ahead and answer the questions I posted above yesterday.
You’ve spent more time fulminating and complaining, and engaging in the most sophomoric rants than most would believe possible. If you can’t answer the questions I put to you, then you’re a sad excuse for any kind of modeler.
Really Jan, the practices I outlined that are endemic in your field are known and accepted to be bogus by every discipline that applies statistical analysis in the world…every discipline that is, except “climate science”
2 sigma levels of significance aren’t really seen as proof of anything in Physics (5-sigma at a minimum is typically required, as you know). 2-sigma levels of significance won’t do the trick in pharmaceutical research, and neither will throwing out parts of your data base that ruin your desired result, in fact in that industry that practice gets you into jail. In your field, cherry picking is celebrated, and done so publicly, without shame: “If you want to bake a cherry pie, you have to pick cherries” really?
Now, that the recent diminution in the rate of warming (again to be charitable) draws the vast majority of models used by the IPCC into question at the 95% confidence level, what defense can you possibly have?
You may not like Briggs, or his politics, or his take on AGW, but I think that even you will concede that his knowledge of statistical analysis is more advanced than is yours…why not ask him some time why he thinks the current generation of GCMs is so poor? If you don’t understand his explanation, ask someone for help.
You guys are like the cadre of East German designers and engineers whose efforts brought the Trabant to the world…the collective work of tens of thousands of educated people, and yet, the end product sucked.
Please answer the questions Jan.

Jan seems to be trying to imply that if you question some specific technical claim, I.e., climate models haven’t shown predictive skill, or quantum loop gravity isn’t cut out to be all its claimed to be, or that the latest nutrional guidelines (which have already changed many times since I’ve been paying attention to them) might not be the be all and end all, then you’re really questioning all of, and everything in, that research field and also therefore questioning every scientific paper ever written in those fields. How his muddled thinking processes concocted such a confused argument leaves me baffled.

Will you have nailed it.
as for Jan:
Answer the questions Jan.

Jan P “Comment on Monckton et al., (2015) “Why models run hot: Results from an irreducibly simple climate model” – Dr Jan Perlwitz – Climate scientist at Columbia University, working at NASA GISS” but I don’t work at NASA:
I’m going to say that claim that you do not work for NASA is wrong by your own admission. DAV may be right and you skirted the issue, though your own paper does says you work there. Anyway, if no one ever put together a model with the EXACT variables, then it’s a new model. Maybe not a new type of model, but a new model.

“The feedbacks and climate sensitivity are inherent in the features of the models, like they are in nature.” Except they are not nature. They are a model. The objection is that the feedbacks and sensitivity in the model are over-estimated and the models don’t predict as well as the simple model. (Monckton made the claim about climate sensitivity in the past in peer-reviewed articles.)

The entire reason for the paper was to show the simple model worked better. I unfortunately do not have the time at the moment to go through each objection you had—due to medical tests, etc, in case you decide to label my leaving as “ducking out” or whatever. I will go through your objections when I can and go post my conclusions on your blog (or here, if you prefer). I would encourage other commenters here to go to your blog or to post specifics there. I realize part of the problem is Jan does not want to, nor need to, repost his entire blog and paper here. It would have been a well-behaved scientist who respectfully asked commenters to go to his blog, or posted one point at a time for readers here to comment on, but that’s not what we’ve gotten here.

davideisenstadt:

“Yeah Jan, thats what the whole concept of rejecting the Null hypothesis comes into play…Since your field doesn’t believe in the necessity of doing that, the burden of proof is still on you guys.”

This is yet another assertion by you for which you have the burden of proof.

“However, I have enough training in statistical analysis to know when a group of models suck.”

You are keeping touting your alleged great expertise in statistical analysis, which allegedly was superior compared to the one of most climate scientist. Am I supposed to believe your self-display at face value? I don’t see any reason to believe in your honesty, that you really are who you claim you are. Do you have any evidence for your qualification and competence in statistics? Do you have anything to show for? Any publications which demonstrate that?

“Its interesting that in every other field, principal researchers employ trained, professional statisticians to help them with the design of their research, and the interpretations of their results…every field that is, except yours. Why?”

Here we have the fallacy of applying a loaded question. Why are you beating your wife?

As if qualified statisticians weren’t involved in the research in the field of climate science.

The American Statistical Association endorses the IPCC conclusions on climate change:
http://www.amstat.org/news/climatechange.cfm

I guess this organization is also just composed of clueless idiots. In contrast to you. Do you know the story about the lone driver with his car on the highway, who was cursing at all the many other drivers in the cars that were driving in the opposite direction on the same lane? How those were all idiots?

“2 sigma levels of significance aren’t really seen as proof of anything”

So are you saying that a global surface warming trend estimate, which is statistically significant with a significance level of at least 95%, was not sufficient to state that there has been a global surface warming trend, with respect to which we have a confidence of more than 95% that the trend estimate isn’t just due to a spurious fluctuation? And conversely for stating that there was up to 5% probability of having wrongly rejected the Null-hypothesis of a Zero-trend?

What statistical significance level is seen as sufficient to be considered as evidence for something doesn’t arise from the statistical analysis itself. It depends on the scientific questions that are being asked in a field. Statistical analysis is just a methodological tool.

“Now, that the recent diminution in the rate of warming (again to be charitable)”

What “diminution”? Is this a fact? Has there been a “diminution in the rate of warming”? How would you know that? What is your statistical evidence on which you base this assertion?

“why not ask him some time why he thinks the current generation of GCMs is so poor?”

Been there done that. I’m still waiting.

If William Briggs really were able to show such a thing about the models he would present his arguments in a scientifically proper way, i.e., he would lay out his assumptions, methodology, analysis, and arguments in a scientific paper and publish it in a peer-reviewed specialist journal of the field. And if his arguments were as convincing as you claim they were, I’m sure many scientists would endorse the results from such a breakthrough study. Briggs would become famous. And you could become famous too, if you did the same.

Will Nitschke:

“Jan seems to be trying to imply that if you question some specific technical claim, I.e., climate models haven’t shown predictive skill,…then you’re really questioning all of, and everything in, that research field”

Wrong. Jan doesn’t imply it at all or doesn’t imply this because of that. Instead, Jan says this because it is explicitly stated over and over again, like here:

“Yeah Jan, thats what the whole concept of rejecting the Null hypothesis comes into play…Since your field doesn’t believe in the necessity of doing that,”
(davideistenstadt on February 27, 2015 at 9:21 am)

“The level of malfeascence that pervades the climate science community is from my perspective, simply astounding. I have difficulty accepting criticism from a member of a community that endorses such bizarre concepts as a “multi model mean” and an “ensemble of ensembles” as well as the ex post selection of data.”
(davideisenstadt on February 27, 2015 at 6:23 am)

And many more examples, not just from davideisenstadt, but from the so called “skeptics” in general, directed at the climate science community as a whole, examples where it is explicitly stated or it is implied that basically all the central research, which has been done in climate science for decades, in which thousands of scientists all over the world have been involved with thousands or even tens of thousands of papers written, needed to be dismissed. The IPCC report alone is based on thousands of scientific papers.

And after all his comments with these type of statements, he even applauds you that “you nailed it”. This only demonstrates how deluded this person is.

“How his muddled thinking processes concocted such a confused argument leaves me baffled.”

Your repeated failure to properly read and understand what is said in comments, your distorted perception, which displays itself by a pattern of reading something into comments, that is not said, is what leaves me baffled.

Jan P: An organization backing something is very, very different from the individual members backing it. The police organizations are often in favor of gun control laws while the individual officers are not. Besides, voting is not how science is decided. You surely know that.

Now you’ve added: “Peer reviewed specialist journal”. Now peer-review isn’t enough? Peer-review has nothing to do with the correctness of the paper. None. Papers that were computer generated made it into Nature. Not a guarantee of quality. I don’t know–maybe Nature is not special enough?

Do you know what burden of proof means? When you are asserting that the scientists of a whole field of science didn’t know what they were doing and that thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies published by them were all wrong, then you have the burden to provide the evidence for the correctness of your assertion.

You clearly don’t understand the burden of proof. The default assumption is that a person or group of people does not have special knowledge. The burden of proof is on them to prove that they do. When the claim is that they can predict the future, the burden is very high indeed.

That the group in question has sucked up billions of dollars proves merely that they are good at politics. Their science still has to be judged against nature. It isn’t going well so far, no matter how many times the group votes itself to be “correct”.

Oh, and some of us still know what epicycles are. Judging a climate model by the number of them (regardless of their clever names) included doesn’t impress us very much.

RE: That was AR4. Where does the word predict appear in AR5?

Many hits, complete with links.
http://google.com/search?q=predict*+ar5+site:www.ipcc.ch

The problem with DA moving goal posts, is that there are hundreds of people waiting with truth when he plants them.

Well the AR4/AR5 comment was so desperately stupid it didn’t require rebuttal… but I agree with the observation that Appell makes these ludicrous statements with the expectation that nobody will spend 15 seconds on Google required to refute them.

Jan P. Perlwitz wrote:

Well, that is good for anyone. The complex climate models have not been developed by fitting them to the observed temperature variability since 1970/1880 to that they reproduce those data, though. Can “anyone” do that?

Yes the models have been tuned, the aerosols are the fiddle factor. Hot CO2 models have large aerosol cooling build in; cool CO2 models have little aerosol cooling build in.

The famous Neumann quote applies:

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

Jan:
answer the questions please.

Jan:
I repost the originals set of questions I posed to you, so you can take another stab at them.
It would have taken you less time and effort to address them that you have expended on your misinterpretations of rhetorical techniques, your use of straw men, red herrings and appeals to authority.
Really, you behavior on this thread is an archetypal example of how to argue in bad faith.
Here are those horrible, unfair luddite questions I put forth for you to consider:

“Please evaluate the GCM’s record for making accurate “projections” over the last three decades; do you think they exhibit any skill?
Just what features of climatic variance do you think the current iteration of GCMs do a good job of capturing?
ENSO?
Decadal variance?
warming in the early 20th century?
cooling in the 50’s 60’s and 70’s?
the recent (to be kind to advocates of these models) diminution in the rate of warming we are experiencing?
Do you not concede that the scale of the models is at least a few orders of magnitude to coarse to capture any of the emergent climate phenomena, like cloud formation, or rain?
Do you, with your background in mathematics and physics, seriously maintain that we have the ability to solve the coupled nonlinear differential equations that grossly describe climatic variance?
really? ”

Those are 8 (eight) related questions, you should be able to answer them in less than ten minutes, probably give them a quick gloss in less than five minutes, if you had wished to do so.
That you haven’t, and dont, and probably won’t speaks volumes about you Jan.
Bleat all you want, squirm and twist away from looking at those questions…hope to bury them in your effluvia, it won’t work.
They remain.
Answer the questions Jan.

Answer the questions Jan.

answer the effing questions jan.

the silence of the troll.

Jan? the world waits….

?
Jan whats up?
dont want to answer?
thats okay.

The questions jan…
answer the questions please?

@davideisenstadt: the topic has disappeared from the radar, perhaps Briggs can make ik sticky?

Briggs:
Am I nuts?
Were the questions I posed so frigging hateful and wrong?
Really?
And WTF is a gish gallup?

David,
It is Jan who is doing the gish gallup here.
Dump a big post and disappear.

Thank you, Hans.
I really didn’t think the series of questions was all that hostile…I really did expect that Jan would just answer them, albeit differently than I would have; its very disappointing to see an educated guy display such ignorance about both rhetoric and applied statistics, since he engages in both, and works for Columbia and NASA.

Sheri, on February 27, 2015 at 11:43 am:

“I’m going to say that claim that you do not work for NASA is wrong by your own admission.”

I said I’m not employed with NASA, i.e., I’m not a federal employee. I don’t have all the restrictions federal employees have, but I also don’t get their benefits. I’m employed with a private university. (BTW: why is it that “skeptics” like to turn a discussion on a science topic into an examination of their opponents’ person, if they can find out something about them?)

“Anyway, if no one ever put together a model with the EXACT variables, then it’s a new model. Maybe not a new type of model, but a new model.”

For the sake of the argument let’s assume you are right, you still ought to properly attribute previous work on which your model is built.

“‘The feedbacks and climate sensitivity are inherent in the features of the models, like they are in nature.’ Except they are not nature. They are a model.”

This is correct, but you are totally missing the point of what I said there. I replied to the claim by Monckton, Soon, Legates, and Briggs that the complex climate models were using the “wrong equation” (explicitly stated like this in the press release), i.e., the Bode system-gain equation with a prescribed feedback parameter that supposedly was too high. The model shouldn’t use this equation, according to them. Monckton then insisted on this assertion in the exchange with him on my blog. He explicitly stated this for GISS ModelE. I challenged him to show me where exactly in the code this equation was allegedly used. The code is public. Nothing.

The claim by Monckton & Co. is nonsense. The Bode system-gain equation can’t be removed from the code of the complex climate models, because this equation isn’t been used in the first hand. Whether the net feedbacks are positive or negative and what strength they have isn’t calculated with a single equation or based on an externally prescribed feedback parameter. The feedbacks and their strength emerge from the interaction of all the components in the models and the simulated energy and mass fluxes between them. They are inherent features of the models.

“The objection is that the feedbacks and sensitivity in the model are over-estimated and the models don’t predict as well as the simple model.”

That is one of the assertions. Only the evidence is missing. I have been asking here repeatedly what supposedly the specific evidence was for the claim that the simple model provided better predictions than the complex models. No one has delivered so far. Figure 1 in the Monckton et al.-paper? Or which one, or which analysis?

And even if the assertion was true, then certainly not because of a Bode system-gain equation in the complex climate models. It isn’t used by them.

“(Monckton made the claim about climate sensitivity in the past in peer-reviewed articles.)”

That can’t objectively be the case, since the paper in Science Bulletin is his first peer-reviewed paper not just on climate sensitivity in particular, but on a climate science topic in general.

“The entire reason for the paper was to show the simple model worked better.”

Now, that is an interesting statement. If true, it would mean that Monckton et al. worked their way backward from preconceived conclusions, when they produced their paper.

“I will go through your objections when I can and go post my conclusions on your blog (or here, if you prefer).”

Feel free to do that at either place. You don’t need to feel committed, though. I just didn’t like your claim that I would try to avoid a discussion about the Monckton et al.-paper. Because nothing could be further from the truth.

“It would have been a well-behaved scientist who respectfully asked commenters to go to his blog, or posted one point at a time for readers here to comment on, but that’s not what we’ve gotten here.

What are you talking about? I already had posted not just one, but three points in https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/15399/#comment-137924

“Blonde” replied to the last of the three points by citing where the IPCC Report 1990 assigned “substantial confidence” to the statement that “models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change” (page XXVII). But this is non-consequential for the falsehood of the claim made by Monckton et al. about the “substantial confidence” allegedly assigned to the near-term warming rate.

Sheri on February 27, 2015 at 1:32 pm:

“Now you’ve added: ‘Peer reviewed specialist journal’. Now peer-review isn’t enough?”

Scientists usually submit their papers to the specialist journals of their field, which includes high-tier journals like Nature or Science that cover the field too. I wouldn’t see it as appropriate, however, if someone submitted a climate science paper to a sociology journal or another non-field journal, even if those are peer-reviewed as well. Things like this have happened, and when it happens it raises a red flag.

“Peer-review has nothing to do with the correctness of the paper.”

Peer-review has the function of a quality filter with respect to the adherence of a submitted paper to scientific standards, like soundness of the assumptions, proper methodology, the conclusions following from the assumptions (i.e., adherence to logic) and the data, backing up assertions with evidence or references, proper citation of other research, structure, readability.

“Papers that were computer generated made it into Nature. Not a guarantee of quality.”

No, there aren’t any guaranties, but mostly peer-review improves the quality of published papers and filters out the nonsense. Failures of peer-review have been observed. One recent paper comes to mind, where I strongly suspect a breakdown of the peer-review process.

kjj on February 27, 2015 at 1:40 pm:

You clearly don’t understand the burden of proof.

Burden of proof means that the ones who claim something also have the burden to provide the evidence for the correctness of the claim (except in the case of non-existence claims, because non-existence is logically not provable).

How is my understanding wrong?

“The default assumption is that a person or group of people does not have special knowledge. The burden of proof is on them to prove that they do. When the claim is that they can predict the future, the burden is very high indeed.”

Scientists, including climate scientists, surely have the burden to provide the evidence for their hypotheses and theories. Have I said anything else before?

How do scientists do that? By publishing scientific papers where the evidence is laid out. What else are they supposed to do? So, once they have published their papers, and someone else comes and claims that the papers were all wrong, then this someone, in turn, has the burden of proof for his/her claim.

How would you like to have it, instead? That the scientists didn’t just have the burden of proof for their own scientific theories, but that they additionally had the burden to disprove the assertions of the “skeptics” and rejectionists? And what burden do latter have? None whatsoever?

“Oh, and some of us still know what epicycles are.”

“There can be only one!”

Hans Erren on February 28, 2015 at 6:22 am:

“Yes the models have been tuned, the aerosols are the fiddle factor. Hot CO2 models have large aerosol cooling build in; cool CO2 models have little aerosol cooling build in.”

Please provide a source for your information.

All what your second sentence describes is a sensitivity of the magnitude of the temperature response to the strength of the (net negative) aerosol forcing. It doesn’t follow necessarily that this is used to tune the models to reproduce the observed temperature change.

What evidence do you have for your claim, according to which this was used to tune the models?

“The famous Neumann quote applies:”

Just because you know a quote to cite you haven’t necessarily made a convincing argument.

How does the von Neumann quote apply in this case? He spoke of four or five parameters, you have named only one. Or was your intended statement that it actually wouldn’t apply yet?

As for your claim. In the case of the CMIP5 models, neither a significant relationship between climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing, nor any indication that modeling groups may have used the aerosol forcing to tune the models have been found, according to following study:

“… We find no significant relationship between the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of a model and its 2003 AF, in contrast to that found in older models where higher ECS models generally had less forcing. Given the large present-day model spread, there is no indication of any tendency by modelling groups to adjust their aerosol forcing in order to produce observed trends. Instead, some CMIP5 models have a relatively large positive forcing and overestimate the observed temperature change.”
(Citation: Forster, P. M., T. Andrews, P. Good, J. M. Gregory, L. S. Jackson, and M. Zelinka (2013), Evaluating adjusted forcing and model spread for historical and future scenarios in the CMIP5 generation of climate models, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, 1139–1150, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50174.)

Please answer the questions Jan.

Briggs:
Youre an intemperate fool, a blowhard, a liar.
How dare you contrast the scenarios implied by models with reality.
Who funds you?
Merchants of death?
The devil?
If the models dont replicate reality, its because of random things, beyond our ken…