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Bloggers' Hall of Amnesia

By Stephan Lewandowsky
Winthrop Professor, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia
Posted on 10 September 2012
Filed under Cognition

The publication of my paper on conspiracist ideation was met with several nearly-instant accusations. First out of the gate was the claim that I did not contact 5 “skeptic” or “skeptic-leaning” blogs to link to the survey.

I initially did not release those names because I was concerned about the privacy issues involved, as I explained here. Because a release of names cannot be undone—whereas a delayed release harms no one—I decided to seek guidance from various institutions, foremost among them my own university, before deciding whether or not to release those names.

Shortly thereafter, the first of the 5 bloggers, Mr McIntyre, found his misplaced email.

This leaves us with 4 bloggers whose identity had to remain confidential until now.

I am pleased to report that I received advice from executives of the University of Western Australia earlier today, that no legal or privacy issues or matters of research ethics prevent publication of the names of those bloggers.

So here they are:

  • Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact)
  • Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact)
  • Dr Roy Spencer (no reply)
  • Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply)

It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted.

At this juncture one might consider a few intriguing questions:

1. When will an apology be forthcoming for the accusations launched against me? And how many individuals should now be issuing a public apology?

To explore the magnitude of this question we must take stock of public statements that have been made about my research. For example, one blogger considered it “highly suspect” whether I had contacted any "skeptic" sites.

Mr McIntyre expended time to locate and then publicize the name of the person within my university to whom complaints about my research should be addressed; time that we now know would have been better spent searching his inbox.

Another individual surmised that "the allegations will be widened to include a clear and deliberate intention to commit academic fraud." 

Finally, another individual opined that "the lack of evidence that he tried to contact skeptic blogs" warranted the inference that none had been contacted—we now know that the presumed lack of evidence was actually evidence for a measure of carelessness or shoddy record keeping among the individuals contacted.

In light of such massive, and massively false, allegations numerous apologies ought to be forthcoming.

However, the fact-free echo machines of the internet sit awkwardly with the notion of civility and conversation of which apologies are an integral part. I therefore doubt that any such apologies will be forthcoming.

Instead, I predict that attention will now focus on some of the other accusations and theories.

After all, what better way to avoid learning from one’s errors than by chasing down another rabbit hole.

2. Why would the people who were contacted publically fail to acknowledge this fact?

Several hypotheses could be entertained but I prefer to settle for the simplest explanation.

It's called “human error.” It simply means the 4 bloggers couldn’t find the email, didn’t know what to search for, or their inboxes were corrupted by a move into another building, to name but a few possibilities.

The only fly in the ointment in that hypothesis is that I provided search keys and exact dates and times of some correspondence.

3. Where do we go from here?

That’s easy. On to the next theory, of course.

 

 

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/9/3/the-plot-thickens.html

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130 Comments

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Comments 51 to 100 out of 131:

  1. Tyger,

    (Snip) you say

    "Now, the best estimate is near +3 C. That is a value that I agree with based on the preponderance of research and evidence."

    The data is available to you. Just find the rate of co2 50 years ago, what the increase is, what the temperate was in 50 years ago and what co2 and the temperature is now and you will see that it's less than 3 C. Try another year 30 years ago or whatever you want. Nothing long term gives as high as 3 C. Do the math yourself.
    Moderator Response: Inflammatory snipped.
  2. Pielke Jr blogs on his interaction with Lewandowsky's assistant. This is his version of events:

    Hi all-
    Perhaps this will help clarify. A few weeks ago I was emailed by Joanne Nova who asked if I had been contacted by a Stephen Lewandowsky about a climate survey.
    Here is my response to her:
    “Hi Joanne-
    Never heard of the guy, and a search of my email finds no contact from him.
    Hope this helps,
    Roger”
    When Steve McIntyre returned from a long time away I read his post (hoping it would be about his London talk). It was a post about this topic, with Nova’s email relatively fresh I put 2 + 2 together and searched my email for Hanich and found the exchange that Steve has now posted. I sent it to Joanne and Steve upon finding it.
    I am not following this issue (sorry) and have never heard of Lewandowsky. What I know does not whet my appetite for learning more.
    All best ….
  3. Tyger @51

    You start by quoting Doug @ 45. You then say this:

    “I agree Doug, human psychology is very complex, and we are still learning a lot. It is ridiculous to suggest that this is something that is simple and that anyone can speak to with authority.”

    Having established that no-one (I’m assuming you mean laypersons) can speak with authority on the subject, you then go on to say this:

    “It is becoming more clear by the day that the reason that some people remain unconvinced or indifferent about the reality and risks associated with human-caused global warming is that their "skepticism" or denial has more to do with psychological barriers than it does about science and facts.”

    See what you did there?
  4. Why not publish the questions that were asked? Let people decide for themselves if it was a fair survey. They are already on other blogs.
  5. Carrick @ 61

    Lol :)
  6. Carrick at #54,

    "I've studied it, probably a lot more than you have."

    (Snip) You are also continuing to ignore important realities, the big picture, and the fact that it is now 2012. Not to mention posting links to unreferenced images; those images by themselves mean nothing.

    Could have MBH98 done some things better? Yes, of course, it was a seminal work, it would have been a miracle had they gotten it right. But that does not translate into a conspiracy by certain paleo climate scientists to "hide" the MCA or whatever as suggested by 'skeptics', nor does it warrant a vendetta that has been going on against them (led by McIntyre) for the last 7 years. MBH addressed the concerns raised in the NRC report, subsequent papers have improved on their seminal work.

    But we have McIntyre, cherry-picking reconstructions that somehow managed to fit his narrative, and we have this and this and this

    It is unbelievable that you and other fans of McIntyre appear to be stuck in 1998...

    I am not getting into a (Snip) match with you. We could do this all night. You can show a graph, I can show a graph. You can show a graph, I can show a paper questioning that or suggesting something else.

    The fact remains that thanks to the vendetta McIntyre has against Mann et al., there are a myriad of canards and myths circulating to this day about climate scientists. Mission accomplished? I hope not.

    The fact also remains that it is this:



    From here.
    Moderator Response: Ad-hominem and inflammatory snipped.
  7. ManBearPig, regarding the 3°C doubling, it is a result of a series of feedbacks in the system: First RH which increases the intrinsic warming effects of CO2 from 1.2°C/ doubling of CO2 to 2.5°C and second cloud albedo feedback, which is thought to add a further 0.5°C.

    It is the cloud albedo feedback that is one of the larger uncertainties within the model dynamics. (There are also large uncertainties in anthropogenic aerosol emission forcings.)

    What is important to understand is these feedbacks don't act instantaneously, partly due to the thermal mass of the oceans. As an aside, the larger the environmental climate sensitivity (ECS) the longer it takes to reach a new "stationary point" for climate.

    But it is clearly a mistake to try and compute ECS just by comparing temperature to CO2. This makes the assumption that the relationship is instantaneous, and further neglects other important climate forcings, such as the aerosols I've mentioned above

    To give you a flavor of what you've left out of radiative forcings Here are GISS Model E's assumed forcings Note that net anthropogenic forcings were nearly flat until around 1970.

    These comments are reflected in the AR4 summary, which in essence says it is not necessary to invoke anthropogenic forcings to explain the observed change in global mean temperature until post 1970. (That's why 1970-now is sometimes referred to as the period of AGW).
  8. Laurie, would you be happier if I prefaced that by stating it is my unqualified opinion? Or you could just read the literature on the subject. This is a good start, as is this.

    Both these sources (and the references therein) speak to the text written by that you quoted :)
  9. Doug @ 45

    “The individual behaviors of members of a collection of rockets (those on a production basis, anyway) are more faithful to their aggregate statistical behavior than are the characteristics of any individual person as a sample against the statistics describing a population.”

    Bingo!

    Isn’t that exactly what papers such as this are doing? Trying to tie sceptics as a group to aggregate statistical behaviour that doesn‘t actually exist? Rather than a collection of unique individuals with their own unique behavioural responses to their own unique triggers?
  10. Carrick,

    Differences aside. I for one appreciate your post at #67. FWIW, thank you.

    If you don't mind, I need to spend some time with my family and work on a paper. So good night.
  11. At this point, Nigel Steve and Willard Tony should be asking themselves how many moves in advance Prof. L. has gamed this out.
  12. Tyger @ 68

    But you've been saying we can't give our unqualified opinions, exactly because they are unqualified opinions.

    Umm... if you're going to give me references, please give me something more reliable than SkS ones.
  13. Tyger, you guys ar the are the onse who brought up MBH 1998 by erroneously claiming that McIntyre made no important contributions to the field. And to be truthful, I think you are being unnecessarily incendiary in your response to my comments by saying things I never said and misrepresenting others.

    I have a version of your figure too:

    Proxy Ensemble Including Mann 2008 EIV + MBH 98:
    .

    If you want to drop the argument that MBH 98 was replicated by later series, we can leave it off future figures.

    I don't have any large problems with Mann 2008 EIV, I notice you left off Mann 2008 CPS (the closest to his original methodology, which he also says in his paper doesn't perform well). And of course there's the double counted Tiljander series and the Yamal series (which he uses one or the other but not both in his reconstructions)..

    I think the newer studies largely agree with each other, though there are arguments over how independent they are in terms of key series.


    You should take home with this, that I can agree that McIntyre did something right that I'm suddenly his "fan". I've made it clear that I think he often impedes progress, usually with the unnecessarily inflammatory nature of his comments (red meat for his followers I know), and for that reason I rarely read his blog.
  14. ugh.. misspoke. "You should take home this: simply I can agree that McIntyre did something right doens't mean that I'm suddenly his "fan".

    Credit where credit is due is my philosophy.
  15. For a good discussion about what lukewarmers are and why the position is intellectually bankrupt, see the Idiot Tracker

    -----------------------------
    There is a half-full glass here, which is that a number of people who clearly identify emotionally and politically with the denialist movement have taken major steps towards the scientific consensus in order to maintain their credibility. While sharing the denialosphere's loathing of "activists" and its demonization of scientists like Hansen and Mann (whose unforgivable sin was to establish beyond a reasoned doubt that humans are causing a rapid and substantially unprecedented warming of the earth's climate) the lukewarmers avoid three major pitfalls of denialism:

    1. They do not have to deny the basic physical laws which dictate that greenhouse gases cause warming.

    2. They do not have to refute the massive physical evidence that the climate is warming.

    3. They do not have to pretend that the vast majority of scientists who accept the theory of AGW are participating in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth about (1) and (2).

    The lukewarmist position also allows one to position oneself as a moderate threading the needle between two extremes. . . . .

    The real contrast here is not between "activists" and "skeptics" but between deniers and everybody else – between the science and the right-wing lunacy. But lukewarmers are exploiting the shift in the Overton window brought about by voluble climate deniers to position their radical views as a sane middle ground.

    Here's the problem. Lukewarmism doesn't get its adherents where they want to go – because even if we accept at face value their claims, the world would still require intense efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to stave off disaster.
    --------------------------------

    Eli also took a crack at this
  16. Eli @71

    Well, for his sake I certainly hope he has, cos at the moment he's about 10 moves behind ;)
  17. Thomas, it's quite clear that Carrick is amply intelligent but otherwise it's impossible to for me to know what he is, certainly not from anything on offer here. I'll offer that unless Carrick is a very remarkable person, if he's a scientist himself his domain-specific knowledge will resemble a bell curve of sorts, centered on his area of specialty and diminishing with distance from his center of interest. Naturally, with peaks and dips here and there.

    Unfortunately very few if any of us can lay claim to omniscience of a level that can position us equal to experts across the entire spectrum of human knowledge. Einstein's opinions on the Piltdown Man affair were likely no more useful than that of an organic chemist of average ability.

    Carrick, unless I'm mistaken your 12:30 PM on 11 September, 2012 comment is not quoting me, if that was your intention:

    "What is more, independent reconstructions that do not even use Yamal series show a Hockey stick. Heck, there are multiple temperature hockey sticks derived using data and methods independent of those used by Mann et al. But don't let inconvenient facts trouble you..."

    Perhaps you can point me to where I might have said that?

    Not sure what your point is in any case. How do hockey sticks figure in this? Some of don't see them everywhere. :-)
  18. Tyger:
    Differences aside. I for one appreciate your post at #67. FWIW, thank you.


    You're welcome. For what it's worth, I prefer talking about the "state of the art" over who did what wrong. I didn't realize we could do inline comments until you did yours (most blogs ban them). (-snip-)

    And FWIW, I do appreciate your comments, even if we see at loggerheads at times. I don't fit in any category. I like to call myself AR4 believer, which means I start with the AR4, and usually argue with people if I think they are misstating the findings. "Start" doesn't mean I agree with everything, the process is highly politicized, to the detriment of all, and you have to I think sift the wheat from the chaffe with this document as with any other.

    Have a good evening.
    Moderator Response: Moderation complaints snipped.
  19. Doug, I think I misquoted you. Apologies.

    I don't claim omniscience by any means, but I am more "well rounded" than most researchers you will have encountered. My research path has been rich and diverse, sometimes in the sense of the Chinese curse "may you lead an interesting life". It is perhaps the case I am a remarkable person, I'd like to think we all are in our own way.

    That's the optimist in me speaking.
  20. Eli, isn't a shorter version "if you aren't for us, you're against us"? That seems like a very polarizing view (and I think it is meant to be).
  21. Laurie,

    I dare you to read the journal papers in "The debunking handbook"-- those ought to keep you busy for a while. The canard that SkepticalScience is unreliable is just too funny.

    What you do not seem to understand is that, unlike the "skeptics" here and elsewhere, I am not trying to tell Dr. Lewandowsky how to do his job.


    Carrick,
    McIntyre did not contribute anything of note concerning MBH98, ultimately what he did manage to do was keep a feeding frenzy going with the "skeptics" and those who deny the reality of human-caused AGW. Some of the myths that resulted are with us to this day.

    If you are not a "fan" of McIntyre are you perhaps a sympathizer? If you like giving credit where credit is due, are you also going to credit McIntyre with his ongoing witch hunt and personal vendetta against certain scientists?
  22. Carrick we cross-posted, I think we just have to agree to disagree on McIntyre. That might sound lame, but I really don't think going down that road is conducive to constructive dialogue. Apologies for my sometimes intemperate and sometimes snarky remarks-- I get worked up about this stuff and with the web it is hard to remember sometimes that you are addressing a person.

    Got to go, my wife is getting impatient! Good night.
  23. Carrick, I'm a mile wide and an inch deep, with extensive dry bars and the occasional scour.

    That is, hopefully I'm a mile wide. From a position this low to the surface it's sort of hard to tell.
  24. Tyger, I know exactly where you're coming from.

    Doug I won't make any comments about how "wide" you appear to me. There's noway that could come out sounding right. ;-)
  25. Carrick in #67, so doubling co2 for +3 degrees is not really Tyger meant? That's okay I forgive mistakes. I am sort of worried you did go ahead with the math though.

    And so you are saying we can use 1970 as start point? And Tyger agrees? Cool! I agree too.

    Okay then tell me what was CO2 in 1970? and right now 2012? How about temp?
    You can get the data here for co2
    http://co2now.org
    And here for temp
    http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt

    Do the math. It's easy, and the result no where near +3 C. If you can't figure out the formula then I can give it to you. Hint: delta t over t gives you the percent increase in co2. Multiply that by 3 deg C that gives you the expected increase since 1970 until today.
  26. Hint: Equilibrium temperature. Hint: Somebody's ignorance is showing. No worries, ignorance isn't a crime (although it's embarrassing for everybody if it's a posture) and it's so easy to fix:

    "The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) refers to the equilibrium change in global mean near-surface air temperature that would result from a sustained doubling of the atmospheric (equivalent) carbon dioxide concentration (delta Tx2). This value is estimated, by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) as likely to be in the range 2 to 4.5 °C with a best estimate of about 3 °C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5 °C. Values substantially higher than 4.5 °C cannot be excluded, but agreement of models with observations is not as good for those values."
  27. Oops, sorry, truncated an important bit:

    "A measure requiring shorter integrations is the transient climate response (TCR) which is defined as the average temperature response over a twenty year period centered at CO2 doubling in a transient simulation with CO2 increasing at 1% per year.[5] The transient response is lower than the equilibrium sensitivity, due to the "inertia" of ocean heat uptake.

    Over the 50–100 year timescale, the climate response to forcing is likely to follow the TCR; for considerations of climate stabalisation, the ECS is more useful."
  28. #46 thomaswfuller
    Here's a conspiracy theory for you: This is the subject of the study, not the survey. The reactions of the skeptic community to a controlled publication with obvious flaws, presented as caustically as possible and with red herrings presented for them to grasp at..
    (-Snip-)
    Moderator Response: Copies of stolen intellectual property snipped.
  29. Blog science=dumpster diving, squirming through compost in search of tasty bits? I don't thing that's -quite- the idea, surely?

    The notion of "humility" appeared earlier on this thread but I don't recall anybody suggesting that humiliating one's self was a requirement.
  30. Geoff, the danger of digging through illegally stolen private correspondence (besides the ethical issues) is not getting the full context. In this case, I was discussing an experiment that was publicly run on Skeptical Science that tested the impact of comment threads on retention and comprehension.
  31. Stripping away context and then getting caught seems a standard element of what's evolved to become a sort of climate meta-science bunraku, a ritual performance with certain elements required for a presentation to be considered complete.

    I wonder if this general situation has ever arisen in the past? What about the struggle over tetraethyl lead? Did volunteers come forward to perform for the public, demonstrating their passionate attachment to octane boosters?
  32. Prof Lewandowsky showed prescience. I guess it wasn't so hard.

    3. Where do we go from here?
    That’s easy. On to the next theory, of course.
  33. Would it help the discussion along a bit if everyone understood that John Cook who comments above is actually the Registrar Nominee, Administrator and Tech contact for this site - as well as his better known climate activist site - Skeptical Science.

    Whois


    Brings a whole new dimension to the concept of sock-puppetry.

    Does this count as a conspiracy theory?
  34. Foxgoose, possibly yes. Read Geoffchambers' comment #89 and feel free to explain how John Cook could possibly be sockpuppeting.
  35. J Bowers at 21:57 PM on 11 September, 2012

    By popping up as a commenter at a site he is actually operating and moderating without revealing the fact maybe?

    I did say "new dimension to the concept".

    Just imagine the furore if Climate Audit, WUWT and Bishop Hill all turned out to be registered to the same guy.

    Prof Lew & Gleick would have to be given intravenous sedation.
    Moderator Response: John Cook does not moderate at this site. Cease with that particular conspiracy theory; it is now OT.
  36. Foxgoose, instead of semi-sleuthing on WhoIs (note the 100% transparency there anyway), why not just poke around this very blog a bit more? Still think there's any new dimension to be added?
  37. @-Doug Bostrom at 18:01 PM on 11 September, 2012
    "I wonder if this general situation has ever arisen in the past? What about the struggle over tetraethyl lead? Did volunteers come forward to perform for the public, demonstrating their passionate attachment to octane boosters?"

    Midgley who developed TEL certainly demonstrated his passionate attachment to his octane booster by being less than careful in its manufacture and use in the 1920s. He spent much time recuperating from lead poisoning as a result. When TEL went into production at various refineries there were many deaths among the workers from lead poisoning.
    Despite this and repeated warnings from the health sciences and biochemical field, lead was added to petrol for the next sixty years because of industry pressure and a concerted campaign to discredit or cast doubt on the health concerns.

    When the health damages got to big to ignore, and Dr Patterson had shown that natural environmental lead levels were now swamped by human produced lead from petrol in the mid-late 70s the attempt to reduce and eliminate lead from petrol was vigorously opposed in many of the same ways that are seen now on the issue of CO2.

    http://whatisaids.com/lead/leadout2.html

    "When the EPA launched the first of several halfhearted attempts to begin removing lead from gasoline, lead's corporate affinity group fought back with a ferocity that bespoke major arrogance and even greater desperation. No sooner had the EPA announced a scheduled phaseout, setting a reduced lead content standard for gasoline in 1974, than it was sued by Ethyl and Du Pont, who claimed they had been deprived of property rights. In that same year, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside the EPA's lead regulations as "arbitrary and capricious."
  38. J Bowers at 22:39 PM on 11 September, 2012

    Don't be silly - we all know he's an author here.

    Being the blog proprietor and administrator is something else entirely.

    We all know Monckton has authored articles in WUWT - but you'd be frothing at the mouth if he turned out to own it.
  39. So your answer is: "It's not me, it's you." If everyone had just recognized what a glowing opportunity was in their inboxes (under whatever name used to send it), this problem would never have existed. Maybe try the mass-marketing technique next time: (snip) After all, the survey looks like what one designs in consumer psychology classes to learn more about one's target market. Of course, you really won't get any blogger interested in data and science to answer, but it will be a clean miss and all the bloggers will remember receiving the email. Or-gasp!-you could do some (snip)research and maybe get science bloggers to participate.
    Moderator Response: Capitals removed.
  40. @Foxgoose - Another red herring.

    This site is clearly states where its funding comes from and who are the principals and editorial board. John Cook is not listed as the 'proprietor' (ie registrant). Registrant, admin and tech support of domain names are different functions.

    Surely you can come up with a better conspiracy theory than that one. The bottom of the barrel is wearing thin from all the scratching and scraping.

    (BTW I doubt too many people care who owns or funds WUWT, much less 'froth at the mouth'. If it 'turned out to be' Monckton - would it make much difference to the blog content?)
  41. ManBearPig, Doug is right. You are assuming instantaneous response in a system with thermal equilibrium, and you still need to factor in the total forcing not just one factor.

    What you're trying to do is assume, with a touch of the accelerator, a car can reach its peak velocity, and further you're doing the equivalent of neglecting power train losses in computing your peak velocity.
  42. @Tom Fuller #55 wrote: Sou, you can and do have an obligation to investigate the data and remove responses where appropriate. This is standard research hygiene.

    That's not what I was saying. I maintain that you can't just remove responses because they are different to what you thought they would be (eg someone agreeing with every conspiracy theory). Otherwise why do the research in the first place?

    In your own surveys you can apply your own criteria to rule out whatever you think are invalid responses. In this particular research project, the paper discusses these issues and states what responses were ruled out and why, and the noise impact of 'gamed' responses.
  43. "We all know Monckton has authored articles in WUWT - but you'd be frothing at the mouth if he turned out to own it."

    Who is Steven Goddard? Why did Bob Ferguson get hundreds of thousands in salary from the Idso's outfit and not SPPI? Why do 365qtr.com run three anti-AGW blogs? What are the other dozens of domains a GMU graduate in marketing is registrant of apart from SPPI?

    See how easy it is to cast a net? But the salient point is that they publish bunk about climate science. If Monckton did turn out to be running WUWT I'd just yawn and put it down to the usual network of bloggers and orgs; it would be that unsurprising and have no impact on my opinion on their content.
  44. Carrick, if you say that with doubling the acceleration on a car it goes up 3 mph (or x mph) then that is what I expect. If you later have additional condition then I expect you to know what they are and you need to tell me what they are. If you further say you need to start at t= 1970 then that is what I expect. Otherwise you claim is invalid or meaningless. So what is your start time and end time for doubling co2 that gives you +3 degrees? Then let me know what the same method so we can see what the current temp should be given the time from 1970 or what ever start date you want. Produce some numbers or don't bother responding.
  45. Lurie, think of it this way, Prof. L. is playing a version of rope a dope

    Carrick, as usual you are asking about how considerate one should be to the fact free community.
  46. Eli, your'e a Climate Sci prof or something. You should have the numbers I asked memorized. Why don't you provide them (Snip)?
    Moderator Response: Inflammatory tone snipped.
  47. ManBearPig, I wish you would be a bit more explicit about what you're looking for.

    I'm guessing what you are asking for is this: There is a rapid component of the climate response which we can call the direct response, this is associated with the atmosphere and consists roughly of the direct forcing from CO2, which amounts to a 1.2°C/doubling and an feedback from water vapor, that accounts for roughly another 1.2°C/doubling or so.

    There is a delayed response due to ocean mass that can be as long as 300 years, plus a delay that is linked to the ocean response in cloud aerosol feedback of the same magnitude. The larger you make this feedback, the longer it takes for the system to equilibrate (because in part the relative contribution of the ocean is smaller).

    The 3° doubling refers to the response of climate to an instantaneous doubling of CO2 and the latency of the response refers to how long it would take before climate operated around the new higher set point. Rough numbers are about 300 years.
  48. Eli:
    Carrick, as usual you are asking about how considerate one should be to the fact free community.


    And as usual, you prefer the pond to remain very small, with very few fish in it. I see that as pointless.

    If you were to make a Venn diagram of believers and doubters, I'd say about 90% of them argue based on fact free (or more accurately arguments that are at least in part contradicted by known facts) content. I would say you yourself are sometimes guilty of this, as with the recent kerfuffle over the "in the WTF category" argument you posed on Lucia's blog where yu were completely erroneously arguing about the temperature range that electronic equipment can be subjected to---to somebody who routinely puts out 100+ sensors into harsh environments.

    Are you suggesting (Snip) perhaps I should start a blog and mock your view points? I wouldn't do so because it's a pointless and counterproductive activity, and anyway your entire comment amounts to papering over other people's poor behavior, who's generally goals you think you are in line with.

    And what's with never admitting when you are wrong? That slinking off thing gets old.
    Moderator Response: Ad-hominem snipped.
  49. Manbearpig, sorry I flipped the modality on a statement I made to you. I meant to say "(because in part the relative contribution of the ocean is larger)." (not smaller).

    The larger the relative contribution of the "slow climate response term" the longer it takes to get within "delta T" of the equilibrium temperature.

    I can show this mathematically, pop my a query if you want the proof. It's about five lines of math + a simple model for exponential approach to equilibrium.
  50. Thanks Carrick. Blog comments are always the best way to be explicit.

    My point is that doubling co2 give +3 C is function or formula or algorithm in which given a initial time and end time and the co2 at both those times and the temperature at both those times. You are saying it is not linear. You are also saying you need to put in a 300 year difference to achieve the doubling. However, the function should allow for intermediate input of, say, 40 years and let us know where we are at. Since we are well lower than the linear I say we are also extremely likely to be lower with the non-linear estimates.

    Even if it's not, 300 years is pretty far, I would even say ridiculously far, into the future to know what sort of anthropogenic and technological, and cultural changes there will be. Even 15 years is. Instantaneous change is frankly impossible and impractical.

    (snip)
    Eli has at times provided astonishingly good technical climate information on some blogs when he feel like it. Not that I disagree with your comments about him. He just needs a carrot now and then.

    Thanks for the correspondence, I know its time consuming so I appreciate your effort.
    Moderator Response: Ad hominem removed although stated to be a joke

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