I gave a talk called “How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change” for the College of Science and Health at Utah Valley University. For those of you who aren’t familiar with me, I am a Republican and a geochemist who, until a few years ago, was quite skeptical about the idea that humans are causing significant climate change.
In the presentation, I briefly talked about how I had made the transition from being a climate change “skeptic” to being an outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science. I then discussed how it is that people like me can so effectively avoid the truth about climate change.
Please pass this video along! I am actually writing a book with the same title, but there’s no way I can get it published before the Republican primaries. Hopefully this kind of thing can influence a few people toward the center on this issue.
[UPDATE: If the embedded video below doesn’t have sound, try a direct link to the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNXuX6D60U]
Climate Asylum 
Nice. You should put up your slides.
By: William M. Connolley on November 11, 2011
at 8:57 am
E-mail me if you want a copy.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 11, 2011
at 12:38 pm
Please send me a copy of the slides. I think the presentation was a model for those of us who need to deal with sceptics.
Thanks!
By: Jay Mulberry on November 13, 2011
at 6:01 am
Shouldn’t you be trolling wikipedia? oh wait, I forgot..
By: fluff on November 30, 2011
at 7:42 pm
Nice presentation. How was it received? I assume you took questions afterwards.
Getting a book published quickly might be difficult, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be too hard to polish and re-record your narration with the slides and get this down to 20 minutes or so? Your message is so important and most people’s attention spans are so short.
By: clarkbeast on November 11, 2011
at 10:35 am
It seemed to be received very well, and I got a lot of good questions, afterward. The dean of the college there told me that the students around him were either laughing or gasping the whole time.
I’ll see if I have time to shorten it up a bit.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 11, 2011
at 12:55 pm
Seconded. A short write up with the main issues in your conversion from “confusion” to “truth” would be tremendeously useful. For me (and presumably others as well), a 40 min video is a big hurdle.
By: Bart on November 11, 2011
at 11:08 am
I’m watching now, but please consider writing a 2-3 page article about this? Many more people will read than will watch a 40-min video…
By: Simon on November 11, 2011
at 11:43 am
Also, consider changing the title? I want to sent it to someone who’s in the “B.B. of viewpoints past” camp, but I fear the existing title won’t be well received. What title would have intrigued your earlier self?
By: anna haynes on November 13, 2011
at 8:31 pm
Sorry, Anna, I can’t change the title now. The video wasn’t put up by me, so this version is set in stone, at least. Anyway, you should try it out to see how your friend responds. The title is a little edgy, but so is the presentation. Maybe if you framed it for your friend as being about how **I** changed my mind, the title won’t be offensive.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 14, 2011
at 10:54 am
A title like “How I Avoided the Truth…” might be more appealing, but the truth is that the presentation is partly about how I did it, and partly about how people in general do it. I don’t think I fell for every one of the strategies I described, for instance.
Ok, so I had never heard of Monckton back then, but I still cling to the hope that I WOULDN’T have listened. 😉
By: Barry Bickmore on November 14, 2011
at 10:57 am
Oh dear. It all looks like a religious conversion to me. Who did the brain washing? Michael Mann? Are you really convinced on the basis of very dodgy paleo studies and computer models? I think you should look into the models a bit harder.
By: Tufty on November 11, 2011
at 12:13 pm
I think you don’t know what you’re talking about… just like I didn’t a few years ago.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 11, 2011
at 12:53 pm
Tufty is a big fan of The Hockey Stick Illusion, written by He Who Quotes from Dog Astrology Journal (HWQDAJ), see .Andrew Gelman’s blog. I thank him fro reminding me of this.
By: John Mashey on November 12, 2011
at 3:27 pm
Barry this was really excellent, just the right tone for reasonable people who are able to break free of self-deception. I propose a state-wide tour! Next time anyone asks me about a moderate or Utah-friendly climate change talker, I’ll be sending them your way. I will send to my folks, and you should send it to our daily herald neighbors as well, if they’re willing to watch I think it might make them think, even if just for a second.
One of your first slides, the first couple of bullets are along the lines of what I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. What is it that allows us to deceive ourselves? I’ve seen some psychologists hypothesize that there may be evolutionary advantages to self-deception – you are much more convincing when you can self-deceive, than when you are knowingly lying. At a gut level this seems true to me, but I’ve only seen one paper discuss it, and the metanexus link is broken, not sure how scientific it was…
In my view, to be a fundamentalist (for free market or anything really), one HAS to be capable of self-deception, because the world is not so simple as to have a sound-bite for each truth. But that’s coming from someone who doesn’t think life and the world is easily explainable, so I guess I would say that…and knowing I come from that viewpoint I’m not sure my opinion about that is to be trusted… 😉
By: Utahn on November 11, 2011
at 2:02 pm
utahn, self-deception? I recall a finding many years ago, no idea who, what, how to look it up, about salesmen. (In the study it was all men IIRC.)
What they found was that the people that many regard as dishonest and cynical self-seekers deceiving the public when selling cars, real estate and the like … actually weren’t. The big problem with these people was that they ‘sold’ themselves on ideas.
Most importantly, any veneer of realism, let alone cynicism, evaporated entirely when they were faced with a sales pitch themselves. They were far and away the most gullible when considering offers that were ‘too good to be true’.
I’m pretty sure that someone, somewhere could marry this work into the more recent stuff looking at how sets of attitudes make some people more likely to be persuaded when they know someone, or at least know their name. Some of it is probably proprietary material generated by advertising agencies. One day, some very perceptive PhD candidate will do exactly the study I think is worth doing and receive my eternal gratitude in reply.
By: adelady on November 11, 2011
at 4:38 pm
Funny we just bought a car, and somehow that study came up talking to my wife, though I’d never heard of it before then. I’ll post here if she knows where she heard it…
That last section about people hearing Monckton say,”look it up and verify what I’m saying”, and people thinking therefore it must be true was interesting. Last time my parents came to town they were talking about an email they got from a friend with all these “facts” about Obamacare, like “you can’t get cancer care after age 72”- complete with page number references to the bill!! “Look it up yourself” the email said. My folks were astounded when 2 seconds of googling found that the bill wasn’t even the one that passed,and that even the bill the email incorrectly referenced as Obamacare had no such statements on those pages.
By: Utahn on November 11, 2011
at 6:02 pm
A lot of what we believe is based on faith in the sense that we don’t check all the work ourselves by a long shot (including verifying basic theorems in math, nevermind hard to acquire data and basic scientific results that agree with latest accepted theories). It’s a matter of accepting the story we think is less likely to be wrong, for example, which appears to have the most number of paths accepted by many “trustworthy” people and which are independent and overlapping and appear consistent. [We accept lots of stuff that is not consistent.. see last paragraph below.]
If a person has a model they believe and you insert foreign data, they might not believe it because it clashes, but, even when they become open to it over time, it is tough to reconcile good data with a bad model. It takes time to re-evaluate your hidden assumptions (axioms) and little by little build up the new and improved “theorems” (aka, the short-cut “facts”).
Understand that most people don’t have the background (ie, necessary axioms/theorem framework, such as certain math, to easily absorb new “obvious” evidence). It’s a matter of time and effort to build up a model in your mind, and it is the more difficult when you already have an extensive model that you have accepted but which appears to brush harshly against the new point of view.
The mind can both be flexible as well as sturdy (up to a point, of course). My guess is that the more “fundamental” material gets surrounded in a tight intricate set of connections by many dependent items. The better the model, the easier many paths converge and painlessly reinforce themselves. “Na na na can’t hear you” is an effort to avoid short-term head pain and self-threatening confusion, but, fortunately, the mind can take new input and subconsciously readjust itself a bit. A good model brings pleasure.
By: Jose Testx on November 12, 2011
at 5:02 pm
Barry, I took notes. OK if I post them?
(btw, I especially like the way you used the Galileo story to show why consensus _is_ what science is about.)
By: anna haynes on November 11, 2011
at 8:27 pm
No problem.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 11, 2011
at 8:30 pm
Someone might come up with a re-cut version that is shorter (as there appears to be demand for that) as well as a written summary and any other derivative work, perhaps adding new twists.. to the extent Barry doesn’t mind (US copyright law, etc). .. It’s smart to spread the load.. like in science.
By: Jose Testx on November 12, 2011
at 5:04 pm
I don’t really have time to do a summary right now, so if someone wants to pitch in, I’d welcome it. For now, Anna’s summary in the comments here is pretty good.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 8:59 am
Notes from talk:
Dr. Bickmore looks quite handsome & respectable in a suit & tie.
Sticking points: BB had thought that
* there was lots of scientific controversy about human contributions;
* climate projections were based solely on complex computer models of physical systems, which (having worked on them, he knows) are easy to screw up.;
* There’s always uncertainty involved in science.
ergo doubt about climate change
but BB found out, not that all that was wrong, but that he was missing information:
* there’s almost no scientific debate over whether humans are largely responsible for the temperature increase over the last 50 yrs or so;
* there are other ways besides models to estimate climate sensitivity (eg paleo) & they give about the same answers as the models;
* uncertainty’s mostly on the high end, given the data we have now.
How we avoid the truth:
(Target audience for this talk; people like me & those who want to understand people like me)
* we tend to believe what we want to hear;
* there are always (truth-challenged) people who’ll tell us what we want to hear, to promote political goals – (most actually believe what they’re saying – they have a real problem with #1 (believing what they want to hear); and they sound so sure of themselves);
* The media makes little or no effort to determine who’s probably right;
*Most people have naive ideas about the nature of science, how it works, should work, etc.;
re What we want to hear –
The #1 predictor of what we think, is our political persuasion
“oh yeah those environmentalists again”
Gingrich (pre-flip-flop) explains in video clip – says for most of the last 30 yrs enviro probs meant bigger govt & higher taxes needed. so even though it might be the right thing to do, you end up fighting it…
re How the media helps us (to not listen) –
Memo from Bill Sammon of Fox to underlings – we should refrain from saying that planet has warmed (or cooled) w/o saying others think differently; it’s not our job to assert such notions as facts.
(BB summarizes outcome: “so why don’t you just believe whatever you felt like in the first place”)
Boykoff & Boykoff study – found false balance in the prestige press, over half the papers showed false balance.
More recent examples of faulty press –
Deseret News : global warming consensus far from settled;
recent paper – “phony consensus on climate change”;
Where are they getting this stuff? A: truth-challenged individuals.
Polling shows 97-98% of actively publishing climate scientists agree humans are causing GW;
Few peer-reviewed publications challenge the consensus (in Oreskes study, n=928 for “global climate change” 0% questioned consensus);
Example thought experiment – suppose the ad said:
“1 out of 33 dentists recommend chewing sugarless gum! buy Trident”
Strategy (of doubt-mongers) –
1. Broaden the field of “experts” or “peer reviewed literature”
2. Petitions & lists, not sci polls or surveys – want big Numbers, not percentages
The Oregon Petition (John Coleman clip on Fox)
– yet you only had to claim a bs or equiv in sci/math/eng, to sign.
48% were engineers. 40% had just a bs. 8% docs&vets
And less than 1% had phds in climatolology, atm sci, meteorology
Scientists are more narrow than you think
Likewise medicine – if you have cancer, you don’t go to your podiatrist
quote “30,000 of us, 9k phds”
* “900+ articles” claim – but most are crap in weird journals
e.g. JSE “astrological factors in relation to dog behavior…”, “ufo abduction” etc
If you want to jackup the # of articles, you’ll accept stuff like this.
Claim – “science isn’t about consensus” (appeal to galileo)
Ask them, “which climate scientist do you follow?” i.e. produce your Galileo
1 candidate – Roy Spencer – goes against the consensus;
Wrote The GW Blunder – claims contrarians are persecuted, etc;
Spencer & Braswell published article in Remote Sensing . Forbes ran with it (“new nasa data blow gaping hole in gw alarmism”);
What it was –
14 cli models – S&B reported avgs of 3 most sensitive & 3 least sensitive models, & compared them against actual temps;
Drew conclusions that
1 – models are fouled up;
2 – the highes & lowest climate sensitivity models both differed from the real data
BB: Hey, that’s a statistical argument – where are the statistics?
Dessler did the statistics – put error bars on the data – and used another temperature dataset, which makes a difference (matches better);
Hey, where are the other 8 models that S&B analyzed? turns out they do a much better job of matching(?) the data;
The 3 best ones *are* w/in the error bars – S&B had left out data that undercut their case;
The Real Galileo – is remembered for what he got right. arguing for the Copernican system; had good arguments about pendulum motion, and telescopic observations;
But he didn’t think those other arguments were very conclusive – what he thought was conclusive was the argument about the tides.
Copernican system was based on circular orbits ; but actually elliptical. so still had to use epicycles.;
G’s “tides are sloshin around from epicycles” argument would predict 1 tide/day; not 2. G resisted. The more people piled on evidence, the more he dug in.
***Even the great scientists make bad arguments, stick their necks out, act dogmatically***.
So consensus is _crucial_ to the success of modern science..
Beating the crud out of a new idea – that’s the difference bet the Greek philosophers & modern science. Those who say “consensus isn’t science” don’t understand science.
Most scientists are capable of changing their minds in the face of evidence; (though some do have to die off)
Claim of “who needs experts?”; i.e. don’t need no steekin badges
Monckton – not a scientist, a viscount
M says don’t believe me, just rigorously enquire, check what I say;
But how many of his audience actually checked? not many;
People have checked. From
Lord Monckton & Liberty
M graph showed Temp 2002-2009 vs ipcc predictions – the 2 actually looked way different;
Criticism: M’s “IPCC projected zone” should show exactly the (wider)values the ipcc projects – yet it doesn’t, it’s way too narrow;
M responds that the IPCC projections had been (wrongly) “detuned” to conform to observation;
But actually M was using wrong eqn, wrong data fed into it; so got wrong answer
He’s not someone whose “science” you can trust.
The press could have checked his background. He claims to be a member of parliament – but parliament says he’s not, says “stop using our logo”
He claims to have a miracle cure for hiv, ms, graves disease, flu, colds;
(and says “they’re doing research” to substantiate it)
He says “go check on me” but most people don’t; & then treat him like another expert. He was invited to testify before congress; as an expert witness on climate change. Was called “one of the most knowledgeable experts”, by congressman
Talk conclusions –
*These contrarian objections almost always have a kernel of truth.
* liberals _do_ sometimes spin enviro issues;
* there _are_ some legit climate scientists who object to the consensus;
* there might _be_ a climate galileo on the horizon;
* non-experts _should_ try to figure out climate science as much as we can;
There’s always room for doubt, especially in science
but when we are:
* turning vets & metallurgists into climate experts
* pointing to articles in dog astrology journals
* putting forward potential Galileos who can’t put together any decent evidence
* and relying on a fake member of parliament who claims to have developed a miracle cure-all;
– then we’re trying too hard to avoid the truth.
By: anna haynes on November 11, 2011
at 8:46 pm
what time scale where the paleoclimatic studies that changed your mind?
,what role did things like the keeling curve affect your change in thinking?
as a common person with no degree, looking at the table of contents of the journal of climate and seeing the diversity of topic’s suggests that their is much more being studied in climate that a simple response to a forcing.
thank you for your time jacob l
By: jacob l on November 11, 2011
at 10:01 pm
Hi Jacob,
The timescale ranges from the last 100 years, to the last 2000 years, to the last 20,000 years, to the last 400 million years. When you can explain most of the data across all those timescales with the same basic physical model, that’s impressive to me. Contrarians like Dick Lindzen and Roy Spencer, who want a lower climate sensitivity, uniformly reject the paleoclimate studies.
And there is a lot more being studied, but I think of most of that as “the details,” whereas climate sensitivity is really one of the “big picture” questions.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 9:23 am
Barry,
Good stuff. Alas, your view of the media’s handling of climate change is as outdated as your view of climate change once was. For starters, Max has a later study that shows much improvement on false balance issue.
Secondly, citing the Fox memo and your local media as representative is faulty, for these are “truth-challenged” outlets.
If you would have cited work from NYT, WaPo or AP climate reporters, you would see a different representation. But that wouldn’t fit the meme that the media is still he said/she said on climate.
Be careful of “spotlighting” to confirm your own biases on this. Perhaps, I’ll follow up with a post.
By: Keith Kloor on November 12, 2011
at 7:53 am
Hi Keith,
You’re probably right that it has improved since 2004. The BBC is a good example. I didn’t mean to do a blanket condemnation of the media, e.g., the Salt Lake Tribune in my area is quite good, so I should have acknowledged that. The false balance issue is still a big problem, however, at least in my opinion, so I think it was legitimate to bring it up.
You’re also right that if I were to look at experienced science reporters, the picture would be different. But how many media outlets have one of those? The Deseret News is a good example of that kind of problem, in my area. I don’t think the editors are hard-core contrarians, and they sometimes publish very science-friendly stuff. But that seems to depend largely on which reporters and editors are handling a piece, and whether it’s from a wire service. Very uneven.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 12, 2011
at 8:13 am
I think “he said, she said” in major outlets may have faded some in response to criticism. But most people read their local papers more than major outlets, and I bet the false balance issue today is still much worse in local media than it ever was in the big outlets(despite even more scientific knowledge now!). I would love to see that study replicated in 50 local papers rather than 4 major papers…
For the major outlets, I think ignoring the issue is a bigger problem right now. Sometimes I don’t think it’s deemed newsworthy, or as relevant as it really is.
For some NYT criticism see link:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/26/354437/the-new-york-times-abandons-the-story-of-the-century-and-joins-the-energy-and-climate-ignorati/
By: Utahn on November 12, 2011
at 1:25 pm
+1 utahn (“ignoring the issue is a bigger problem right now”); Cases in point, from Alex Steffen (tweets):
“An entire Economist piece about Texas drought that manages to avoid mentioning climate change: http://www.economist.com/node/21538196 #reportingfail”
“NYT: TX town “has received no measurable rainfall since April” + is taking desperate measures, but let’s not even mention climate change.” ( http://goo.gl/3bqPk )
By: anna haynes on November 12, 2011
at 2:58 pm
“The factor which shall not be named.” They probably get a bunch of hatemail if they do name it, maybe that’s part of their unwillingness to name it.
By: Utahn on November 13, 2011
at 1:01 am
[…] professor and Republican delegate Barry Bickmore has an interesting video out epxlaining why he around on climate change and how it is that educated scientists avoid it for […]
By: This week in science | Hotspyer – Breaking News from around the web on November 12, 2011
at 8:16 am
Barry,
Local news outlets have always been weak on science, but you’re about the whimsical nature, per individual reporters/editors.
And now there’s this problem, too:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jbiNXAb6r3wPEoVtKOP45364OV-g
BTW, has that story made into the Desert News? 🙂
By: Keith Kloor on November 12, 2011
at 10:10 am
I couldn’t open your link. Do you have one that goes to the original article, rather than through Google?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 12, 2011
at 10:55 am
Barry, try this one:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/11/142259509/utah-mayor-used-alias-to-write-upbeat-news-stories
By: Keith Kloor on November 12, 2011
at 4:36 pm
Nyuck, nyuck. Now they haven’t just gotten rid of the science reporters, they’ve crowd-sourced the whole shebang!
Thanks, Keith. That was beautiful.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 8:57 am
I remember when I thought AGW was just another killer bee scare. An artifact of urban development. I was apolitical, more a libertarian than anything else. But the 2000 election and it’s aftermath changed all that.
One morning driving to work. while Florida was still being decided, I heard news that Bush’s team had filed suit to halt the recount. That evening on my television, Jim Baker said “Al Gore wants to tie the election up in the courts.” The anchor did not challenge this assessment and the fact that Bush had initiated the lawsuit was not even mentioned.
It was an OMG moment. I had always naively believed that the Fourth Estate would moderate the excesses of politics. I realized at that moment that I had better either figure out what was going on, or close my eyes and follow the masses.
What a mess. How do I discern the truth, when both sides are telling lies?
Science. That was my answer. AGW was both scientific and political. A perfect way to empirically ground myself, a tether as I explored the oceans of rhetoric.
It was the saturation argument that finally convinced me which side was right. You know the one; “The CO2 bandwidth is already saturated, therefore it cannot trap any more heat.” An argument that I found in a 1932 encyclopedia, but one that has been debunked since the 1940’s, when high altitude testing changed the way scientists looked at the atmosphere.
I guess I would now be considered liberal. And even though I hold many libertarian and conservative ideals, I am proud to be considered liberal. Liberalism is what this country was founded on. Don’t take my word for it though, just as the Father of the Country.
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”
By: Bob Strayer on November 12, 2011
at 12:30 pm
CERES satellite data (measuring incoming and outgoing energy at the top of the atmosphere) tell us there is an imbalance of 6.4 W m−2.
Calculations from knowing the absorption spectrum of CO2 is that a doubling CO2 would account for 3.4 W m−2.
But, from the ‘known’ amount of recent global warming (partially dependant of tree ring data) the amount of energy imbalance ‘required’ is estimated to be only 0.85 ± 0.15 W m−2 (Hansen et al. (2005)).
I’m still a bit worried on this. Hive I got this wrong somewhere?
By: markx on December 14, 2011
at 10:56 am
Not wrong, you are just missing an important detail.
The 5-yr global mean CERES net flux from the standard CERES product is 6.5 W m−2, much larger than the best estimate of 0.85 W m−2 based on observed ocean heat content data and model simulations. The major sources of uncertainty in the CERES estimate are from instrument calibration (4.2 W m−2) and the assumed value for total solar irradiance (1 W m−2). After adjustment, the global mean CERES SW TOA flux is 99.5 W −2, corresponding to an albedo of 0.293, and the global mean LW TOA flux is 239.6 W m−2. These values differ markedly from previously published adjusted global means based on the ERB Experiment in which the global mean SW TOA flux is 107 W m−2 and the LW TOA flux is 234 W m−2.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2637.1
Scientists are writing to and for their peers. Another scientist would be familiar with Weiliki et al 2006, or would look up the reference. Unscrupulous people however, look for confusing statements like that to fuel the
‘Big Lie.” It is nothing more than a specious deception to distract and confuse you.
By: Bob Strayer on December 14, 2011
at 4:32 pm
Is this saying the CERES data is adjusted to match the known global temperature rises?
By: markx on December 14, 2011
at 7:30 pm
This study provides a detailed error analysis of TOA fluxes based on the latest generation of Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) gridded monthly mean data products [the monthly TOA/surface averages geostationary (SRBAVG-GEO)] and uses an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux and heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system.
By: markx on December 14, 2011
at 7:36 pm
No. It means there are problems with calibrating the hardware. If the Earth were absorbing an average 6.5 W m-2, it would be warming 7 times as fast in the past five years. We know that is not happening. Weiliki et al 2006 is the most cited error analysis, which brings us close to the estimate based on models and measurements, but still does not account for all discrepancies. So research and analysis, IE active science, goes on.
By: Bob Strayer on December 14, 2011
at 10:47 pm
The adjustment appeared to have a purpose?
“….to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux (ie satellite measurements) and (“known”) heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system….”
By: markx on December 15, 2011
at 8:26 am
direct quote from abstract:
Loeb etal 2009
Toward Optimal Closure of the Earth’s Top-of-Atmosphere Radiation Budget
J. Climate, 22, 748–766
By: markx on December 15, 2011
at 8:42 am
OK, so what is your point?
By: Bob Strayer on December 15, 2011
at 10:18 am
I thought this might have been the high altitude data you found convincing, but reading again, I guess not, if you are talking about the 1940s!
But, anyway, for the sake of completeness, I’d be interested to know what that data was?
Many thanks, Mark
By: markx on December 15, 2011
at 10:57 am
I see, you were wondering what convinced me.
Here is an explanation.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm
By: Bob Strayer on December 15, 2011
at 12:04 pm
Thanks Bob, I’ve read that previously. There is quite a discussion in the comments section, which refers a little too often to TOA measurements and models to make me entirely comfortable (which then becomes perhaps a little circular in ‘proof’).
One very nice reference on CO2 absorption from the discussion is here:
By: markx on December 15, 2011
at 11:05 pm
Thank you,
A very detailed explanation. Gonna take a while for me to get through all eight installments.
By: Bob Strayer on December 15, 2011
at 11:26 pm
You do realize that Lord Muncton is actually Sacha Baron Cohn – the guy that played Borat.
By: Matt Hartman on November 12, 2011
at 3:12 pm
Punked again!!!
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 9:49 am
[…] professor and Republican delegate Barry Bickmore has an interesting video out epxlaining why he around on climate change and how it is that educated scientists avoid it for […]
By: This week in science - Online Political Blog on November 12, 2011
at 5:10 pm
Prof. Bickmore, I’m getting no sound with your embedded video or the direct link. Other videos on YouTube and elsewhere play fine for me. I tried other videos posted by the same source (“uvusch”), and they also lacked sound. Some technical problem with the upload?
By: MissMoss on November 12, 2011
at 6:12 pm
A couple others have had that problem, but it works for most everyone else. Have you tried a different browser, or restarting the computer?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 9:03 am
I’ve checked the Usual Suspects–plug-in conflicts, outdated drivers, etc. I can get sound on every other YouTube video I’ve tried, so I guess my system has just decided to balk on yours for arcane reasons of its own. S’alright–the slides pretty much tell the story.
By: MissMoss on November 13, 2011
at 7:48 pm
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By: A Republican ex-climate skeptic explains how people avoid the truth about climate change on November 12, 2011
at 11:53 pm
Invaluable!
It helps that right at the outset of the presentation you outlined what misunderstandings were holding you back. I hear those same concerns from so many other people that aren’t convinced on AGW and are misinformed about climate science.
By: WheelsOC on November 13, 2011
at 11:52 am
Feel free to use any points or metaphors from my own recent video dealing with similar points. It’s designed to tackle the difference between skepticism and denial with clarity, animations and humour, and if if any of it helps you get your message across in the US, I’ll be very happy!
By: Richard Milne on November 13, 2011
at 12:58 pm
Thanks, Richard. I had already started watching your presentation a few days ago (not done, yet), and it’s great so far.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 13, 2011
at 3:39 pm
Impressive, your powerpoint skills are. Yes, hmmm…
By: Utahn on November 13, 2011
at 11:00 pm
Richard, I’ve got some feedback on some somewhat-tangential parts of your talk; where would you like it?
(e.g. you split climate-related stuff into science and politics, with no 3rd “policy” category; which IMO isn’t divided enough, for citizens who need to be able to distinguish between effective & not-so-effective policies)
(Richard’s talk is 1 hr long, plus ~20 min of questions which range more widely; which might indicate that a wider-ranging talk is what the audience needs?)
By: anna haynes on November 14, 2011
at 11:57 am
(BTW, I really liked your “bad science is like a bent cop” analogy; and also “Galileo had evidence – something the deniers don’t”)
By: anna haynes on November 14, 2011
at 12:00 pm
Aloha Professor Brickmore,
I learned about you on climatecrocks. Peter Sinclair is my inspiration and his blog is my mentor — much of my AGW work in the newser.com NEWSER BY USERS page originates from ideas on climatecrocks.com. However, as often as possible I go to the “source” to do the summary which is posted on newser. Here’s the link to my summary of your YouTube presentation.
http://www.newser.com/story/133367/a-mormon-geologist-looks-at-climate-science-denial.html
You asked that it be passed on and this is one way I intend to do so.
Here’s my entire “body of work” on newser — at least one if five of my summaries is on AGW and nearly half of them are on client science denial.
http://www.newser.com/user/39776786/1/kokuaguy.html?type=stories
By: kokuaguy on November 15, 2011
at 1:06 pm
Thank you! I’m glad someone is presenting this information. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around this issue for some time, how to make global climate change the People’s issue rather than a left vs. right political issue. I really appreciate the way you have presented the different arguments. I’m sure I’ll reference you in a presentation I’m preparing for next month. So timely!
Thank you again!!!
By: Nathan Birks on November 16, 2011
at 11:12 pm
Any reason for the comments I put to be deleted?
By: Wow on November 21, 2011
at 11:45 am
Scratch that, wrong thread…
By: Wow on November 21, 2011
at 11:49 am
Why is Barry making things up? Most of the articles in the 900+ peer-reviewed list are not from those two journals or even journals similar to them. Those two journals represent exactly 3 papers on the list, if you remove them you still have over 900 papers from 255 other scholarly peer-reviewed journals. The complete journal list is included in the notes following the list;
Journal Citation List:
AAPG Bulletin
Academic Questions
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
Advances in Geosciences
Advances in Global Change Research
Advances in Space Research
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Agricultural Meteorology
Agricultural Water Management
Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment
Ambio
American Journal of Botany
Annales Geophysicae
Annals of Applied Statistics
Annals of Glaciology
Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics
Antiquity
Applied Energy
Aquatic Botany
Arabian Journal of Geosciences
Arctic and Alpine Research
Area
Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law
Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law
Astronautics and Aeronautics
Astronomical Notes
Astronomy & Geophysics
Astrophysics and Space Science
Astrophysics and Space Science Library
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Atmospheric Environment
Australian Journal of Emergency Management
Bioscience
Boreas
British Medical Journal (BMJ)
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS)
Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics
Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology
Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
Canadian Journal of Forest Research
Central European Journal of Physics
Chemical Engineering Progress
Chemical Innovation
Chinese Science Bulletin
Climate Dynamics
Climate of the Past
Climate Research
Climatic Change
Cold Regions Science and Technology
Comptes Rendus Geosciences
Contemporary South Asia
Coral Reefs
Current Opinion in Biotechnology
Doklady Earth Sciences
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Ecological Complexity
Ecological Economics
Ecological Modelling
Ecological Monographs
Ecology
Economic Affairs
Economic Analysis and Policy
Economics Bulletin
Emerging Infectious Diseases
Energy
Energy & Environment
Energy & Fuels
Energy Policy
Energy Sources
Environment International
Environmental and Experimental Botany
Environmental Conservation
Environmental Geology
Environmental Geosciences
Environmental Health Perspectives
Environmental Law and Management
Environmental Politics
Environmental Research
Environmental Research Letters
Environmental Science & Policy
Environmental Science and Pollution Research
Environmental Software
Environmetrics
Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science
Fresenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry
Future Virology
Futures
Geoforum
Geografiska Annaler
Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography
GeoJournal
Geology
Geomagnetism and Aeronomy
Geophysical Research Letters
Geoscience Canada
Global and Planetary Change
Global Biogeochemical Cycles
Global Change Biology
Global Environmental Change
GSA Today
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Hydrological Sciences Journal
Il Nuovo Cimento C
Interfaces
International Journal of Biometeorology
International Journal of Climatology
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
International Journal of Environmental Studies
International Journal of Forecasting
International Journal of Geosciences
International Journal of Global Energy Issues
International Journal of Global Warming
International Journal of Medical Microbiology Supplements
International Journal of Modern Physics B
International Journal of Remote Sensing
International Social Science Journal
Internationales Asienforum
Irish Astronomical Journal
Irrigation and Drainage
Iron & Steel Technology
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics
Journal of Biogeography
Journal of Business Ethics
Journal of Chemical Education
Journal of Climate
Journal of Coastal Research
Journal of Cosmology
Journal of Electromagnetic Analysis and Applications
Journal of Environmental Sciences
Journal of Environmental Quality
Journal of Experimental Botany
Journal of Forestry
Journal of Geographic Information System
Journal of Geophysical Research
Journal of Hydrology
Journal of Information Ethics
Journal of Integrative Plant Biology
Journal of International Studies
Journal of Lake Sciences
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering
Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics
Journal of Paleolimnology
Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
Journal of Physics Malaysia
Journal of Plant Physiology
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Journal of the American Water Resources Association
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
Journal of the Italian Astronomical Society
Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering
Journal of Vegetation Science
La Chimica e l’Industria
Latvian Journal of Physics and Technical Sciences
Leadership and Management in Engineering
Malaria Journal
Marine Environmental Research
Marine Geology
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics
Meteorologische Zeitschrift
Missouri Medicine
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
Monthly Weather Review
Moscow University Physics Bulletin
Natural Hazards
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Natural Hazards Review
Natural Science
Nature
Nature Biotechnology
Nature Geoscience
Netherlands Journal of Geosciences
New Astronomy
New Concepts In Global Tectonics
New Literary History
New Phytologist
New Zealand Geographer
New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research
Nordic Hydrology
Norwegian Polar Institute Letters
Oceanologica Acta
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
Paleoceanography
Paleontological Journal
Physical Geography
Physical Review E
Physical Review Letters
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth
Physics Letters A
Physics Reports
Physics Today
Planetary and Space Science
Plant and Soil
Plant, Cell & Environment
Plant Ecology
Plant Physiology
PLoS Biology
Population and Development Review
Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences: Engineering
Proceedings of the ICE – Civil Engineering
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
Proceedings of the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Progress in Oceanography
Progress in Physical Geography
Public Administration Review
Pure and Applied Geophysics
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service
Quaternary International
Quaternary Research
Quaternary Science Reviews
Regulation
Risk Analysis
Russian Journal of Earth Sciences
Science
Science of the Total Environment
Science, Technology & Human Values
Scientia Horticulturae
Sedimentary Geology
Social Studies of Science
Society
Soil Science
Solar Physics
South African Journal of Science
Space Science Reviews
Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy
Statistics, Politics, and Policy
Surveys in Geophysics
Technology
Tellus A
The Astrophysical Journal
The Cato Journal
The Electricity Journal
The Holocene
The Independent Review
The Lancet
The Lancet Infectious Diseases
The Open Atmospheric Science Journal
The Quarterly Review of Biology
The Review of Economics and Statistics
Theoretical and Applied Climatology
Topics in Catalysis
Trends in Parasitology
Waste Management
Water, Air, & Soil Pollution
Water Resources Research
Weather
Weather and Forecasting
World Economics
Journal Count: 257
Nature and Science are not “climate science” journals either they simply also publish papers on the subject of climate science.
By: Poptech on November 22, 2011
at 8:28 pm
And this, PopTech, is why your list is so stupid. Most of the articles aren’t original research papers. They are review articles and opinion pieces that appear in journals that don’t normally publish climate science. I counted 137 papers from Energy and Environment, an idiotic grey-literature journal that has the distinction of publishing Oliver “Global Warming is Natural Because the Sun is Made of Iron” Manuel. 137!!! Exactly what would an article in “Waste Management” have to do with anything? An article in “The Electricity Journal”? “Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy”? My point was that when you include stuff like this, as well as the articles from your dog astrology journal, it is clear that you have no interest in quality control. You just want a big number to flash in front of people.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 22, 2011
at 9:59 pm
If you noticed I did not call you any names.
It is a strawman argument that all the papers are supposed to be original research as the list makes no such claim, only that they are all peer-reviewed. Review papers are legitimate peer-reviewed papers. There is an extensive amount of original research papers on the page that you are intentionally avoiding. Not all papers relating to climate science only appear in explicit climate science only journals, that is another strawman.
Energy & Environment is a scholarly peer-reviewed journal not “grey” literature,
– Thompson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI) lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&ISSN=0958-305X
– EBSCO lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (PDF)
– Scopus lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
– Elsevier lists Energy & Environment as a scholarly peer-reviewed journal on their internal master list. (Source: Email Correspondence)
– The IPCC cites Energy & Environment multiple times
http://tinyurl.com/7une5vz
Energy & Environment only represent 14% of the list. There are over 769 papers from 256 other journals on the list.
Dr. Manuals papers was published as a viewpoint and did not pass peer-review nor is it on the list. His controversial theory has been published in the peer-reviewed literature and covered in the media,
Superfluidity in the Solar Interior: Implications for Solar Eruptions and Climate
(Journal of Fusion Energy, Volume 21, Numbers 3-4, pp. 193-198, December 2002)
– Oliver K. Manuel et al.
Scientist: Sun composed mostly of iron (CNN, July 23, 2002)
“Waste Management” (1 paper), “The Electricity Journal” (6 papers), “Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy” (1 paper) are all peer-reviewed journals.
Waste Management is irrefutably a peer-reviewed science journal,
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&Full=waste%20management
Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy explicitly says,
“The journal particularly welcomes manuscripts dealing with: fundamental aspects of bioanalytical, biomedical, environmental, and atmospheric measurements”
No article on the list deals with Dog astrology. My interest in quality control is clear as all journals must be peer-reviewed before being added. JSE is peer-reviewed,
Click to access instructions_for_authors.pdf
“Manuscripts will be sent to two or more referees”
When you cherry pick a handful of papers and mischaracterize the list as being comprised mostly of these types of papers you are being disingenuous.
By: Poptech on November 22, 2011
at 10:30 pm
Hi PopTech,
You are jumping the gun a bit, here. I never said you called me a name. You merely said that I was “making things up,” just as I merely said I thought your list was “stupid”.
And I never said the articles you listed weren’t “peer-reviewed.” I could make my own online journal today and make it “peer-reviewed.” The “peers” would just be whatever other dog astrologers I could recruit.
My point is that a large number of the articles you cite are not the sort of thing scientists would normally list when giving evidence for or against a “consensus of experts”. You criticize Naomi Oreskes, but that’s what she did, and what you emphatically fail to do. For that kind of thing, we would normally restrict the field to original research articles, because opinion pieces and review articles (especially those in off-topic journals) are not necessarily written by experts in any aspect of the field. E.g., the one you cite from “Iron & Steel Technology” was written by a metallurgist. We would also restrict the field to those that show up in a standard database like ISI. E.g., you note that the ISI **SOCIAL SCIENCES** database lists E&E, but what about their physical sciences database? A journal may pass muster (barely) in one category, but not in another, especially in a case like E&E where the subject matter is so broad. (And my point about Oliver Manuel’s paper was simply that if E&E would publish something that ridiculous, what else would they publish? I can name several other E&E papers I think are awful, too, if you like.)
So if you want people like me to forego criticizing your list, why not make a shorter one that only includes the ones people can agree represent expert opinion?
Anyway, I’m not saying your list is useless. If I want to know what’s out there from a contrarian point of view, your list is a good place to go.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 23, 2011
at 1:47 am
Barry, you seem confused as my list has nothing to do with a “consensus of experts” it is a resource of peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments and to demonstrate these papers exist.
I criticize Oreskes on what her paper misleadingly implies, that no such peer-reviewed papers exist and this point was emphasized by Al Gore, She made no qualifications in her paper that these papers exist or may. Her paper explicitly states that she searched the ISI for the phrase “climate change”, when she really used “global climate change”. Her whole argument is based on ONE search phrase and some how this gets published and passes peer-review? I have a hard time accepting that,
Click to access climatechangescience.pdf
You seem hung up on “Dog Astrologers” which is odd as no such paper exists on the list. Peer-review means the reviewer’s qualifications are related to the subject matter of the paper regardless of the journal. This would include papers in the JSE.
You continue to state the strawman argument of “original research” as even Oreskes makes not such claim in her paper. Review papers are scholarly peer-reviewed. I have made no claim anywhere that all the papers on the list are original research even when many are.
Dr. Stubbles has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry,
John R. Stubbles, B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.) Metallurgy, Manchester University, UK (1954); Ph.D. Physical Chemistry, Imperial College, London University, UK (1957); Member, AIST (1958-2009); Research, Princeton University (1958-1959); Lecturer, Manchester University, UK (1960-1963); Distinguished Member, AIST (1984), Manager of Technology, Environmental Program, Charter Steel Co. (1993-1999); L.G. Kuhn Award, AIST (1994) John Elliott Lecturer, AIST (1995-96); Howe Memorial Lecturer, AIST (1997); Private Consultant, U.S. Department of Energy (1999-2009); (Died: October, 2009)
The ISI is simply one for profit database by the multi-billion dollar Thompson Reuters Corporation. Many more Peer-reviewed papers can be found in other academic databases. Free academic search engines like Google Scholar are making these largely irrelevant. My intent is not to hide papers using arbitrary search phrases in select academic databases as I believe Oreskes intentionally did to get a “0” dissenting result.
There is nothing unusual for publishing a viewpoint from a scientist [Manuel] who’s work has already been published in the scientific literature. Again his paper is not on the list as it did not pass peer-review and should not be considered as such.
The IPCC includes various papers from social-science journals in the WGII and WGIII reports so there is nothing unusual about including a journal classified by the ISI as such [E&E]. My list covers socio-economic and policy issues related to AGW/ACC Alarm.
My problem is not that you are criticizing the list but that your criticism is not valid. You present two peer-reviewed journals that represent exactly three papers and falsely state that these represent most of the list. This is patently false.
What is considered “expert opinion” is subjective and while some would consider X,Y and Z credentials for an “expert” others will not. The only solution is to include them all.
People are free to ignore the papers they wish but they cannot ignore that they exist.
By: Poptech on November 23, 2011
at 4:39 am
HI Poptech,
Oreskes made a correction about the search phrase in Science. And as I pointed out in my talk, Oreskes was not trying to do an exhaustive search of the literature. She was trying to get a good RANDOM SAMPLE. Using that particular search phrase, she got 928 original research papers, which is a really healthy-sized sample for doing a statistical analysis. If there were no contrarian papers in this large sample, then this is devastating to the idea that a really significant fraction of the peer-reviewed climate science literature (not economics and social science, which you include in your list) is contrarian. That is, she proved conclusively that there IS a strong consensus (which does not imply absolute unanimity.)
You begin your list by criticizing Oreskes, but your list simply doesn’t address her argument at all. Now, if OTHERS have misconstrued what Oreskes’s argument was, that’s another matter. Your list is fine for addressing the charge that there are NO contrarian papers
Yes, I am hung up on “dog astrologers”. I never said that you listed any dog astrology papers–only that you listed papers from a journal that also prints dog astrology, UFO research, ESP research, and so on. This is a fact that cannot be denied, and illustrates my point that people like you are not interested in finding out what PROPORTION of the experts believe one thing or another–you just want a big number to flash in front of people, and you are not at all interested in quality control.
Dog… Astrology. Let that roll around in your brain for a while.
So get it through your head. I am NOT giving a blanket criticism of your list. Your list is fine for some purposes (although I think the dog astrology thing and the off-topic journals diminish your argument). But as a criticism of Oreskes’s claim that her work was a strong indicator of a strong scientific consensus, your list fails badly.
Your charge that Oreskes intentionally manipulated her search term is baseless and ridiculous, in any case. She got 928 papers, for Pete’s sake. And ZERO were contrarian. ZERO. You are essentially saying that she must have tried a number of search phrases and read TENS OF THOUSANDS of papers to come up with a phrase that yielded zero contrarian papers. Ridiculous. There’s no way she could have gotten this result with any reasonable search term, unless there really are very few contrarian research papers.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 23, 2011
at 8:59 am
I am well aware of her “correction”. My point is her whole argument was based on one search phrase that some how passed peer-review and was published explicitly with the search phrase “climate change” not “global climate change”. I do not believe that is a typo, sorry. And unbelievably not a single reviewer did a five minute check to see if it was true? I don’t believe it was accidental or the peer-review of her paper thorough.
Can you quote from her paper where she says the papers were “original research” as I did not see that phrase used in her paper. Her paper explicitly says,
“…published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change’”
She did not use the words “original research”, “random” or “sample” in her paper.
All she proved was that when you use arbitrary search phrases in limited databases you can get results you are looking for.
In the notes preceding the list I quote Al Gore but I do not make a criticism of Oreskes. If I was going to directly address Oreskes I would have cited her paper and made an argument against it.
What is a fact that cannot be denied is the JSE is the only journal on the list that includes those types of subjects yet you made the fallacious argument implying that most of the papers on the list are published in similar journals. I have no problem with you criticizing that journal but your criticism of the JSE in relation to the other journals is baseless.
It is a strawman argument speaking about what “proportion” of “experts” (which is defined arbitrarily) believe anything as my list makes no such argument. The purpose of the list is to be a resource and to demonstrate that these papers exist.
If you were not giving a blanket criticism of the list then you would not have explicitly stated in your talk, “Most of the articles are things like this…” and you cite two papers from two journals, the journals of which represent a whopping three papers on the list.
My charge is not baseless, she titled her paper “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” and the paper explicitly mentions the search phrase “Climate Change” not “Global Climate Change“. Her paper is exactly one page long and her whole argument revolves around this ONE search phrase. Either she and the reviewers of her paper are incompetent or it was intentional.
It is not difficult to perform a search using a specific phrase, start reviewing papers until only the results you like come up with or not and then change the phrase and start again. All without looking through the entire search results for the ones you do not use.
I am well aware she got zero using an arbitrary search phrase in a limited database, that is irrelevant to the fact that these papers do exist.
My list irrefutably demonstrate these papers exist.
By: Poptech on November 23, 2011
at 8:43 pm
PT,
You are totally missing the point of Oreskes’s argument. In order to do a literature survey like hers, you have to generate a random sample of the literature that is also manageable in size. Using the phrase “global climate change,” that’s what she got. If you want to show there’s something wrong with her search phrase, you can’t do it by showing that it didn’t catch every contrarian paper out there. Rather, you have to show that using another reasonable search phrase would give much different results. I don’t think you can do it.
Still, it’s only a random sample, not the entire population, so getting zero contrarian papers ABSOLUTELY does not mean none exists. It just means that it is statistically WILDLY IMPROBABLE that they represent a significant fraction of the scientific literature on the subject.
Using a “limited database” like ISI Web of Science simply serves as quality control. They don’t index dog astrology journals, for instance.
In my talk, I said that “most” of your papers were like the examples I gave. Well, I didn’t actually count how many I thought fell into that category, so maybe “many” would have been a better choice, but skimming through your list, it is clear that the number of such papers was large.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 27, 2011
at 10:36 am
sci.tamucc.edu/~lsci/lsci/uploads/KWithers/climatechangescience.pdf
Her paper does not include the words, “random” or “sample”.
Her paper says she used the search phrase “climate change” not “global climate change”.
How did this pass peer-review? A journal like E&E would not have caught that in peer-review.
Can you tell me exactly where on my list I am making an argument against Oreskes? Why do you keep repeating this strawman argument?
You misrepresented the list and attempted to poison the well by cherry picking what you felt were the most extreme examples and then falsely implying these represented the rest of the papers on the list.
Your claim of “many” is still incorrect.
I thought you were a professor at a University? Aren’t you supposed to be more careful when making statements like this?
By: Poptech on November 27, 2011
at 1:23 pm
BTW,
Naomi Oreskes told me that she focused only on original research articles. She also said that Science wouldn’t allow her to write up all her methods, because of the severe length restrictions.
You go on about how her paper doesn’t include the words “random” or “sample”, but to any scientist (her intended audience) this goes without saying. It’s completely obvious.
And yes, I am a professor, and an Associate Editor for two journals. Given that experience, I can tell you that Naomi’s typo could easily have gotten through peer review in almost any journal. Reviewers don’t generally reproduce an entire study. They just look the paper over for any obvious errors and omissions.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 9:16 am
I don’t buy it. Nothing prevented her from including a reference to her methods in the paper. Do you really think people are going to buy the “typo” excuse?
It is quite disturbing to know something of this significance to her argument would pass peer-review.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 10:30 am
Barry, why is the IPCC citing an “idiotic grey-literature journal” multiple times?
http://tinyurl.com/7une5vz
Fascinating stuff.
By: Poptech on November 22, 2011
at 11:59 pm
Hi Poptech,
Looks to me like E&E was cited a few times in the Working Group 3 report. This is consistent with it being indexed by ISI Social Sciences, but not physical sciences.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 23, 2011
at 8:38 am
Where was it claimed that it was a physical science journal?
By: Poptech on November 23, 2011
at 8:44 pm
Look at the E&E articles you cite. Aren’t any of them about physical science?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 24, 2011
at 12:28 pm
Of course as E&E explicitly states it is an “interdisciplinary journal” and includes papers from both physical and social scientists. They have never claimed to be a pure “physical science journal” since they also publish social science papers. Due to the way journals are classified by the ISI it makes sense they are listed in the SSCI.
By: Poptech on November 24, 2011
at 5:58 pm
I don’t suppose we are going to agree about this. My original points were simply that 1) your list (being a list, rather than a literature survey) doesn’t directly address Oreskes’s argument, and 2) including articles that are essentially opinion pieces (not research articles) from off-topic journals and weird journals that publish stuff about dog astrology and the Sun being made of iron smacks of desperation to find ANYTHING to jack up your numbers.
I absolutely stand by these points.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 27, 2011
at 10:25 am
You stand by your strawman arguments?
1) The list was not created to address Oreskes’s survey. It was created to be a resource for skeptics and to prove these papers exist contrary to what was implied by people like Al Gore. If I was directly addressing Oreskes I would state this on the list, I do not. So why do you keep repeating this strawman argument?
2) The list makes no claim that all the papers are research papers, only that they are peer-reviewed.
It has already been established that only two papers come from the JSE journal. Not a single other journal on the list is related to in any remote way to the JSE.
Dr. Manuel’s theory on the Sun was peer-reviewed and published in the scientific literature,
Superfluidity in the Solar Interior: Implications for Solar Eruptions and Climate
(Journal of Fusion Energy, Volume 21, Numbers 3-4, pp. 193-198, December 2002)
– Oliver K. Manuel et al.
According to you no one is ever allowed to publish controversial scientific theories on anything.
That “Weird Journal” was cited multiple times by the IPCC,
http://tinyurl.com/7une5vz
What is desperate is your strawman arguments and misinformation you stated about the list falsely implying that, “Most of the articles are things like this…” and then citing two papers that are not related to the other papers on the list.
Please don’t state misinformation like this.
By: Poptech on November 27, 2011
at 1:13 pm
PT,
On your page you said you made the list to combat misinformation such as that embodied in a number of quotations. One of them was this:
“There was a massive study of every scientific article in a peer reviewed article written on global warming in the last ten years. They took a big sample of 10 percent, 928 articles. And you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we’re causing global warming and that is a serious problem out of the 928: Zero.”
– Al Gore, Former U.S. Vice President and Failed 2000 U.S. Presidential Candidate
This is clearly a reference to Oreskes’s study, and so I assume that you think your list addresses that study in some way.
It doesn’t.
Also, I never said that most of your articles came from the journals I cited. I just said that the ones I cited were indicative of your lack of quality control. Your list seems to indicate that you have been criticized before about the same kinds of issues. And yet, you continue to keep garbage like that on your list. Well, live with the consequences, then.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 27, 2011
at 3:30 pm
It explicitly says on my list,
“Purpose: …and to prove that these papers exist contrary to widely held beliefs,”
And then I quote Al Gore from his documentary An Inconvenient Truth where he falsely implies that no peer-reviewed papers exist.
My explicit words are, “to prove that these papers exist…”
I was addressing what was falsely implied by Al Gore and what people falsely believed after seeing AIT.
What you explicitly said in your presentation at 17:53 was,
“Most of the articles are things like this…”
This is misinformation as those two papers you cite are not like any other paper on there. As those two journals represent exactly three papers on the list.
This is irrelevant to the fact that they are still peer-reviewed. You have failed to demonstrate that they were not peer-reviewed or that there has been a published criticism of them that was not rebutted by the author.
Yes I have dealt with misinformation and strawman arguments about the list as you have made here.
By: Poptech on November 27, 2011
at 5:13 pm
PT,
In the quotation you cite, Al Gore explicitly mentioned that Oreskes took a “big sample” of the literature. He gave a very precise summary of the study, and didn’t “falsely imply” anything. Who did you say is knocking down strawmen?
As I have said several times, I have no problem with your list as an indication that contrarian literature exists, but it does not address Oreskes’s work. When you said your list was meant to address Gore’s comment, and he merely (accurately) reported Oreskes’s results, I assumed you thought your list addressed her thesis, rather than just how some people falsely interpreted it. Furthermore, in your comments here, you have consistently argued against Oreskes’s thesis, and the only evidence you cite is 1) she made a typo, and 2) your list. Therefore, I conclude that you use your list to criticize Oreskes.
Also, I already said that I should have said “many” rather than “most”, since I didn’t actually count. But to say that the two papers I cited “are not like any other paper on there” is beyond ridiculous. Just look at the journal list, for Pete’s sake. You have papers from “The Electricity Journal,” “The Cato Journal,” “The Independent Review,” and on and on. No journal is too off-topic. Opinion pieces and review articles all count, even though they don’t represent any independent research. No journal is too obviously partisan (The Cato Journal) or just plain bizarre (The Journal of Scientific Exploration), as long as they claim to use some kind of “peer review” system.
In short, I was right. You want to simultaneously use your list to criticize Oreskes, and double-talk your way out of any responsibility for the critique. You have absolutely no mechanism of quality control.
Let’s cut right to the chase. Oreskes’s thesis was that her literature survey proved that there is a very strong scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. Do you agree with that assessment, or not? If not, what is your evidence?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 8:27 am
Yes, Al Gore falsely implied that no peer-reviewed papers exist by not qualifying his comments and stating what he did how he stated it. His comment immediately following what I quoted further implies this,
“…The misconception that there is disagreement about the science has been deliberately created by a relatively small number of people.”
I have added this to his quote on the list.
My list has nothing to do with Oreske’s work because I do not make an argument against her work anywhere on the list.
My consistent arguments here against Oreske’s work are independent from my list.
Your conclusion in relation to myself and Oreskes is a strawman argument that is unrelated to my list.
“Many” is still incorrect as there are no other journals on the list that deal with some of the topics covered in the JSE.
The Electricity Journal is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (ISSN: 1040-6190)
– EBSCO lists The Electricity Journal as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Click to access a9h-journals.pdf
– There are only 6 papers on the list from this journal.
The Cato Journal is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (ISSN: 0273-3072)
– EBSCO lists The Cato Journal as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
Click to access a9h-journals.pdf
– There are only 2 papers on the list from this journal.
The Independent Review is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (ISSN: 1086-1653)
Thompson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI) lists The Independent Review as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=MASTER&Full=INDEPENDENT%20REVIEW
– There are only 5 papers on the list from this journal.
It is a strawman argument that all the papers on the list must be original research as this claim was never made on the list.
Please quote from the list where it states all the papers are original research.
Please explain what political party the Cato Journal is affiliated with.
Please quote from the list where I was criticizing Oreskes and not Al Gore.
Your dishonesty on this matter is rather disturbing.
Of course there are mechanisms of quality control – the paper must be in a peer-reviewed journal.
No I do not agree with Oreskes.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 10:20 am
Poptech,
You are pretty good at accusing others of strawman argumentation while simultaneously engaging in it yourself.
1. Gore explicitly said Oreskes’s study dealt with a “sample” of the literature, not the entire corpus. Therefore, he can’t be said to have implied that no contrarian papers had ever been published. It was a poor choice of words, however, to say that it is a misconception that “there is disagreement”. He should have said “significant disagreement”, so I can give you that, at least. But saying there is a strong “consensus” doesn’t necessarily imply absolute unanimity, and I think that’s all Gore was going for when he criticized the misconception that “there is disagreement” among scientists on this issue. Is there any scientist, anywhere, that disagrees with the consensus? Of course, and there always will be. There is an organization of a couple hundred geoscientists who don’t believe in Plate Tectonics, after all. Does this represent a significant fraction of the geoscience community? Absolutely not. So the real implication of Al Gore’s statement is that the disagreement is “negligible”.
2. You (at least claim to) argue against what Gore said, but he merely reported Oreskes’s results. Therefore, you were arguing against Oreskes’s results. You have continued to do so here. You harangue me for citing your list as something used to argue against Oreskes, when you say you were merely objecting against how some people incorrectly use her work (even though Gore correctly cited her). And yet, YOU DO use your list to argue directly against Oreskes. You’ve done so here. You have even argued that Oreskes’s work seems to imply that there were no contrarian papers in 1993-2003 and accused her of doctoring her search term and intentionally leaving out “global” in her report to imply that the literature search was complete. So the fact is that you DO think your list is a good argument against the thesis you falsely ascribe to Oreskes. The only straw you can grab onto is that you only explicitly said you were arguing against Gore, who was citing Oreskes, and whom you claim was using that citation to promote a thesis that you also claim Oreskes was trying to promote! And you have the gall to call me “dishonest.”
3. You say “‘Many’ is still incorrect as there are no other journals on the list that deal with some of the topics covered in the JSE.” But my point was not that there were lots of articles in journals that print dog astrology and ESP, but rather that there were lots of articles from journals that publish weird stuff that would normally be classified as extreme fringe. E&E (which accounts for 137 of your articles) is a good example. Manuel’s piece is a good indicator. You say it wasn’t peer-reviewed, but it actually was. It got trashed in review, and the editor published it anyway. See this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/25/real-climate-libel-threat
P.S., even if Manuel’s theory on the Iron Sun was once published, that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with global warming. The only thing he ever published on that was in E&E.
4. Then you list the 3 journals I mentioned, and note that they are “peer reviewed” and that they only account for a few papers. My point was not that they are not peer-reviewed, but that they are wildly off topic. Journals without editors with expertise in a particular subject usually decline to publish it, because otherwise they are liable to publish absolute crap. And I can point out a whole lot more such journals on your list. “Contemporary South Asia”, anyone? “Chemical Engineering Progress”? “Chemical Innovation”? “Current Opinion in Biotechnology”? “Internationales Asienforum”
5. You say, “It is a strawman argument that all the papers on the list must be original research as this claim was never made on the list.” It wasn’t a strawman argument, because that’s not the argument I made. I merely pointed out that such articles can’t be included in any argument against Oreskes’s thesis. Since you do use your list as such an argument, there you go.
6. You say, “Please explain what political party the Cato Journal is affiliated with.” It is affiliated with a libertarian “think-tank,” not a political party. When did I say it was affiliated with a political party? I merely said it was “obviously partisan”. Are you going to argue that it isn’t?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 11:32 am
1. All that can be implied from the use of the word “sample” is that the number was not all the papers available. Of course he can be said to imply no papers existed because he did not qualify his statements to say otherwise and explicitly stated,
“The misconception that there is disagreement about the science…”
He is clearly trying to argue that there is no disagreement and thus no papers. If Al Gore wants to argue that the number of papers that disagree with what he considers the scientific consensus is a fraction of the total number of papers then he should state this.
2. I explicitly say on my list, “…and to prove that these papers exist contrary to widely held beliefs” and then I cite Al Gore NOT Oreskes.
My arguments against Oreskes work are completely separate from my list. How dishonest do you have to be to continue to lie about my position on this?
If I used my list to argue directly against Oreskes I would have explicitly said so on my list.
3. There are not “many” journals on the list that would publish fringe topics. Dr. Manuel’s article was published as a viewpoint NOT a peer-reviewed paper in E&E.
Dr. Manuel’s previous paper was on climate,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2352635vv166363/
4. All those journals are peer-reviewed. The peer-review process protects editors from publishing “crap” since the reviewers would have relevant qualifications to the subject matter of the paper.
5. It is a strawman argument that my list is arguing against Oreskes paper.
6. The Cato Journal is still peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 12:11 pm
Pop tech, you said:
“I criticize Oreskes on what her paper misleadingly implies, that no such peer-reviewed papers exist”
To which your list proves otherwise.
You continue:
“and this point was emphasized by Al Gore,”
You directly use your list to criticize Oreskes thesis, and connect it to Al Gore.
Now you are calling Barry a liar because he took you at your word.
I suspect the irony is lost on you.
By: Bob Strayer on November 28, 2011
at 4:28 pm
I am criticizing Barry for him incorrectly stating the purpose of the “list”. I used the existence of SOME papers on my list to criticize the implied conclusions from Oreskes but not the “list” as a whole. This list was not created for this purpose and it is not meant to be a rebuttal to Oreskes paper only the falsely implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments.
There is nothing ironic about any of this.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:26 pm
No. You are not making an argument. You are just parsing words and making a fool of yourself.
I would encourage you to continue.
You are a superb example of willful ignorance, the perfect spokesperson for the climate science deniers.
By: Bob Strayer on November 28, 2011
at 7:38 pm
I am not parsing words but making sure Barry makes factual statements as he has already admitted to incorrectly using the word “most” when he failed to count the journals on the list and then wants to make the same mistake by changing this to “many”.
Either way I am sure he will continue his cherry picking exercise to poison the well in his desperate attempt to smear my list.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 6:33 pm
How many years would have to pass with no increase in global temperature for you to re-think your position?
By: 007 on November 23, 2011
at 2:16 pm
NOAA says it would take about 15 years to statistically establish that we are on a different trajectory. I also note that there has been warming over the last decade. I.E., the trend is positive. If you simply want to compare with one cherrypicked year (like 1998), you aren’t talking about trends, but about records. If you’ve never taken a statistics class, and don’t understand what I just said, I’d be happy to point you to more info.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 23, 2011
at 4:14 pm
I was just asking a legitimate question, but your tone is telling.
But I appreciate you taking the time to answer.
By: 007 on November 23, 2011
at 7:28 pm
007,
Sorry, didn’t mean to have a tone problem. If you were thinking along the lines I anticipated, and haven’t taken a stats class, that would be completely normal. The offer for more info still stands.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 23, 2011
at 8:12 pm
007, given that sort of question is aggressive itself, a robust tone back is merely quid pro quo.
And ANY statisticics knowledge would tell you how AGW as described by the IPCC could be falsified in the temperature record: a statistically significant difference between the climate science that we currently have and the actual records.
E.g. the last year has a trend of undefined +/- infinity. You can’t do an annual global trend on less than two points.
With two years’ data, you have a trend but the error in that is +/- infinity. You need three points to calculate variance.
In 10 years, a trend of 0.0 +/- 0.3C (if such an event happened DOES NOT preclude the IPCC trend of 0.17C per decade.
In 30 years, a trend of 0.0 +/- 0.12C (if such an event happened), DOES preclude the IPCC trend of 0.17C.
But deniers who insist that Phil Jones said “no significant warming since 1995” are making three major lies in that:
1) “statistically significant” was the phrase, not significant
2) the trend was +0.12C per decade which is significant
3) the error in that trend was +/-0.13C, hence it neither disproved the IPCC estimate nor disproves a zero trend. More data would be needed to preclude one or the other.
And guess what happens when you include more data (e.g. from 1994)?
The zero trend is excluded, statistical significance is attained.
By: Wow on November 24, 2011
at 4:41 am
Wow,
Such illogical gibberish.
The trend since 1979 is .141/decade. (ie 30yr trend less the .17c/dec.)
Which side are you on in this debate?
Again, I was just asking the dr. a legitimate question.
By: 007 on November 30, 2011
at 2:50 pm
Poptech,
As I mentioned above, Science magazine has very draconian length restrictions, especially for the type of article Oreskes published–it was only one journal page. Since this is the case, sometimes a little clarity may be sacrificed. You mentioned that Oreskes’s article nowhere mentions the words “random” or “sample”, and you are right, but I replied that this would be obvious to Oreskes’s intended audience (scientists). If you want to check whether my assessment is correct, take a look at a longer piece on the same subject, which she published as a book chapter.
Click to access oreskes-chapter-4.pdf
In that piece, she said, “Using a key word or phrase, one can sample the scientific literature on any subject and get an unbiased view of the state of knowledge.”
So I was right–she was just trying to sample the scientific literature, not examine all of it.
You contend that the phrase “global climate change” would bias the sample. Can you demonstrate that? Here’s how you could do it, if you wanted to try.
1. Search ISI Web of Science (not Social Science) for “climate change” in 1993-2003. Remove all that are just opinion pieces or review articles, and then get a final count of papers.
2. Count up all the articles on your list that 1) represent original research, 2) show up in the ISI Web of Science (not Social Science) database, and 3) were published in 1993-2003. You should also 4) remove the papers that you say skeptics use to advance their arguments, but which don’t actually question the consensus. (I thought that was also pretty silly of you to include those on your list. E.g., I could use Roy Spencer’s latest paper to argue that climate sensitivity in standard climate models is not obviously related to how well they perform at mimicking short-term response trends, even though he came to the exact opposite conclusion. His paper should clearly be counted in your total, and not in the total of papers that support the consensus.)
3. What percentage of the total do your papers now represent?
4. Calculate a margin of error for Oreskes’s sample (I expect it is a couple percent, or so.) and see whether your results fall outside that margin of error.
Now THAT would be a legitimate attempt at addressing her thesis.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 9:58 am
Where on my list does it state it is addressing Oreske’s study? Why do you keep repeating this strawman argument?
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 10:52 am
Wow.
Even though you admit you criticized Gore’s statement, where he merely cited Oreskes’s results, you can’t fathom why it would be construed as a criticism of Oreskes’s results.
Even though you say your list was meant to criticize the claim that no contrarian literature exists, and you also go on here to charge both Gore and Oreskes with trying to promote that claim, you can’t fathom why your list would be construed as a criticism of Oreskes.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 11:50 am
Where did I state Oreskes was trying to promote the claim that no papers existed?
I can fathom why you are creating strawman arguments about my list and my statements very well.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 12:14 pm
You said above:
“My intent is not to hide papers using arbitrary search phrases in select academic databases as I believe Oreskes intentionally did to get a ‘0’ dissenting result.”
So, are you now going to claim that she intentionally manipulated her search term so she could get zero dissenting papers, but she didn’t have any particular purpose for doing so?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 12:31 pm
I meant where on my list did I state Oreskes was trying to promote the claim that no papers existed?
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 12:59 pm
Like I said in another comment (see below):
“In other words, you criticize me for inferring something from your article that is true, but you don’t think I should have been able to infer it.”
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 1:44 pm
Your inferences have been wrong, namely about the list being created to address Oreske’s study.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 2:09 pm
Oh, just admit it. You created the list as an argument against how some people USE Oreskes’s study, and you think Oreskes intentionally gave them the wrong impression.
Frankly, I don’t see this as materially different from creating the list to address Oreskes’s study. As I said, however, I will be happy to be clearer, in the future, about the indirect nature of your criticism.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 2:23 pm
One reason I created the list was an argument against people stating that their are no peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments. SOME of these people have used Oreskes study to make this claim. This is demonstrated on my list as I have two quotes, one from Al Gore and one From John Kerry. Kerry’s quote does not mention Oreskes at all. If I was arguing against Oreskes I would explicitly state this and limit my papers to her date range.
The other reason was to be a resource for skeptics.
The difference is that my list is only arguing against these papers not existing at all and you are attempting to make a direct comparison of my list to Oreskes study.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 2:42 pm
You say, “The difference is that my list is only arguing against these papers not existing at all and you are attempting to make a direct comparison of my list to Oreskes study.”
But then you also said that Oreskes was intentionally trying to give the impression that such papers don’t exist. Ergo, you were arguing against a thesis that you believe Oreskes was promoting, and citing Gore, who directly cited Oreskes.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 3:20 pm
I believe she was well aware of how people would misinterpret a zero result regardless of her use of an arbitrary search phrase in a limited database.
This is irrelevant to the fact that my list cannot be used as a direct comparison to Oreskes study for various reasons, including that my list does not limit the date range to the one she used. And it was never intended to be an argument directly against her study nor was it created for this purpose.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 4:01 pm
Poptech,
Even though I disagree strongly with many of your points, I’ll offer these concessions.
1. In the future, I will say that “many” (not necessarily “most”–I just said that on the fly) of the articles on your list are like the ones I cited, i.e., opinion pieces or review articles, in off-topic journals, or even in journals that the vast majority of scientists would consider “grey literature”, to put it mildly.
2. I will point out that your primary concern was to disprove the false impression some people got that there were no such articles. I reserve the right to point out, however, that you seem to have gotten the false impression that Oreskes’s work (and Gore’s citation of it) implied such a thing. Thus, you seem to have been trying to argue against Oreskes, but in reality you were only arguing against some who have misconstrued her thesis.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 10:07 am
1. Many is still incorrect. As the two papers you cited do not represent “many of the articles”. There are no other journal on the list that includes the other subject matter that is in the JSE or Iron and Steel Technology.
You also did not properly represent Dr. Stubbles credentials,
John R. Stubbles, B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.) Metallurgy, Manchester University, UK (1954); Ph.D. Physical Chemistry, Imperial College, London University, UK (1957); Member, AIST (1958-2009); Research, Princeton University (1958-1959); Lecturer, Manchester University, UK (1960-1963); Distinguished Member, AIST (1984), Manager of Technology, Environmental Program, Charter Steel Co. (1993-1999); L.G. Kuhn Award, AIST (1994) John Elliott Lecturer, AIST (1995-96); Howe Memorial Lecturer, AIST (1997); Private Consultant, U.S. Department of Energy (1999-2009); (Died: October, 2009)
You called him a “metallurgist”, failing to note he has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry.
2. You reserve no right to lie about my position on anything. I did not get any false impressions about her work because I am well aware when you use arbitrary search phrases in limited databases you can get the results you are looking for. People have used Oreskes study to falsely imply that no such papers exist. Al Gore falsely implied this by failing to qualify his statements about her study in his film. His failure is very serious since his film was geared toward the public.
As an example of how the public was misinformed on this subject thanks to Al Gore you can read Roger Ebert’s review of his film,
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060601/REVIEWS/60517002
“There is no controversy about these facts,” he says in the film. “Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero.”
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 11:18 am
Listen, Poptech.
1. So if none of your other journals deal specifically with iron and steel technology, I can’t say they are “like” that journal in any way, even if I obviously only meant that they are off-topic. Give me a break.
2. Metallurgy is a subfield of Physical Chemistry, and Stubbles obviously specialized in that subfield. Neither one makes one an expert in climate.
3. I am not lying about your position, as far as I can tell. You think your list constitutes some kind of argument against the thesis you (falsely) ascribe to Oreskes. Even though you admit this, you keep whining that I couldn’t have gotten that out of the web page with your list. I think it was perfectly reasonable to get that out of your web page.
Am I missing something? If I’m misreading your comments here, why don’t you just come out and say, “I don’t think my list can legitimately be used to argue against the thesis Oreskes meant to promote.”
I’m getting tired of your constant rhetorical gymnastics, here.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 12:02 pm
1. What is the objective criteria for determining if a journal is on-topic?
2. You failed to mention he has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry. A Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry does make one qualified to understand a write a review paper on the subject as Dr. Subbles did.
Who is considered an “expert” in climate is subjective.
3. The fact that you keep stating this lie is absolutely disturbing as my list makes no charge against Oreskes. The only time Oreskes is mentioned is in a quote I directly attributed to Al Gore.
Where the hell have I admitted that my list is an argument against Oreskes?
I have already explained this multiple times.
My arguments relating to Oreskes have nothing to do with the purpose of my list.
My list can be used as an argument against those like Al Gore who cite Oreskes and falsely imply no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 12:29 pm
1. So I gather your argument is that since there are grey areas regarding whether a journal is off-topic, then clearly we can’t exclude anything, including “Iron and Steel Technology”, “Contemporary South Asia”, “Chemical Engineering Progress”, “Chemical Innovation”, “Current Opinion in Biotechnology”, and “Internationales Asienforum” are all fair game. So since the platypus lays eggs, all animals are mammals. Once again, I am getting tired of the rhetorical gymnastics.
2. Who is an expert in climate change? Like you say, it’s a difficult thing to make fine distinctions about something like that. But how about we restrict ourselves to people who have published original research on climate change in peer-reviewed science journals?
3. You keep repeating that your list doesn’t directly criticize Oreskes. I keep agreeing.
I keep repeating that your list does use Al Gore’s citation of Oreskes as an example of what you’re arguing against. You keep agreeing.
You keep repeating that your list argues against the false impression that there are no contrarian papers in the literature. I keep agreeing.
I keep repeating that you have said here that Oreskes INTENTIONALLY manipulated her search term to give this impression. I take this to mean that your list was meant to criticize a thesis that you charge Oreskes with intentionally promoting. You seem to disagree about something, here, but I’m not exactly sure what.
You seem to be claiming that even though you criticized what you think is the implied message of Gore’s (accurate) citation of Oreskes, and you put the blame for that implication squarely on both Oreskes and Gore, it is dishonest of me to treat your list as a critique of Oreskes.
In other words, you criticize me for inferring something from your article that is true, but you don’t think I should have been able to infer it.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 12:51 pm
1. Why would I exclude peer-reviewed papers simply because they are in journals you do not approve of?
2. I do not believe their is an objective way to define who an expert in climate change is.
3. I agree that I use a quote from Al Gore in relation to what I am arguing against. The context of which implies that no peer-reviewed papers exist.
I agree that I having a secondary argument here in relation to Oreskes study unrelated to my list.
My list was never created as a criticism of Oreskes study.
I put the blame for what is stated and implied in Al Gore’s quote directly on Al Gore.
Yes it is dishonest of you to treat my list as a criticism of Oreskes since I do not make an argument against her anywhere on my list.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 2:19 pm
1. You don’t need to do anything to keep me happy. In fact, it’s so rhetorically devastating to point out that you aren’t too snobbish to cite a dog astrology journal, I would encourage you to hold the line!
2. Again, if you don’t believe there are any useful criteria by which we can define a pool of “experts” on climate change, then by all means, don’t change a thing! Then I can point out what you’re doing to others, and it will impress whomever it impresses.
3. Your separation of your page from Oreskes’s study is contrived, at best. I’ll try to be clearer in the future about how your list relates to Oreskes’s study, however.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 3:30 pm
1. I do not cite a dog astrology journal as the JSE is not a journal on “dog astrology”. What is rhetorically devastating is the fact that the journal published a paper disproving astrology,
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_04_1_mcgrew.pdf
“Astrologers did no better than chance or than a nonastrologer
control subject at matching the birth charts to the personal data; this result was independent of astrologers’ confidence ratings for their predicted matches. Astrologers also failed to agree with one another’s predictions.”
I am sure you will fail to mention this in your smear campaign.
2. There is various subjectively chosen criteria that can be used to define an “expert” on climate change. This does not make it any less subjective.
3. What is an irrefutable fact is that my list was NEVER created to address Oreskes study. If you lie about this in the future I will make sure to let everyone know of your dishonesty.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 3:49 pm
1. Wow. If you really think it’s going to help your case, rhetorically speaking, to mention that JSE publishes BOTH astrology papers (including those of the canine variety) AND papers dismissing astrology, then more power to you. In fact, I think I WILL mention this in the future, because it adds to the ambiance.
2. Like I said, if you don’t want to use ANY criteria for experts, be my guest. It supports my point that you don’t have enough quality control.
3. Who said this? “Her paper is fraudulent propaganda. He conclusions are debunked by the existence of my list.” See below for the answer, my truth-challenged friend.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 4:22 pm
1. Please mention they publish papers debunking astrology.
2. I am not interested in subjective qualifiers for scientists.
3. What part of REALITY do you not comprehend? Why the list was created and later arguments it was used in are two different things.
The list was initially created do to an argument I got in at another website were someone was stating that no peer-reviewed papers existed supporting skeptic arguments and NO mention of Oreskes was brought up.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 4:39 pm
I hasten to add that you keep saying I am “lying” about your position, but didn’t you say that Oreskes intentionally left out the word “global” in her paper to give them impression her literature search was complete? (Scroll up.)
This is what I am saying your position is:
1. You think Oreskes intentionally tried to imply that there were absolutely no peer-reviewed, contrarian papers.
2. You think Gore implied the same thing when he cited Oreskes.
Aren’t those true statements?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 12:08 pm
Yes I personally believe it was intentional as her whole argument on her one page paper revolved around a single search phrase.
1. I believe Oreskes intentionally manipulated her search to get the results she wanted. If her intent was not to imply that none at all existed then she should have qualified this in her paper, something she never did.
2. Without question I believe Al Gore intentionally tried to imply that there were absolutely no peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
Not to mention if I was trying to argue against Oreskes I would have limited the papers on my list to the date range or her study.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 12:50 pm
Hi PT,
1. I think your conspiracy theory is ludicrous, not least because I know Naomi, but also because it involves WAY too much work on the part of the conspirators. If what you say is true, then she would have had to try a bunch of search terms that sound pretty generic, but that exclude ALL contrarian papers. She would have had to examine every single one of the papers pulled up by ALL of the different search terms.
2. I can’t tell whether Gore meant to give the wrong impression. All I can tell is that he only ascribed the results to a “sample” of about “10%” of the literature. Since his was for a non-scientist audience, however, I agree that he could have added some further clarification.
3. So, you seem to be agreeing with me that your list is meant as a criticism of a thesis that you claim Oreskes intentionally tried to promote?
I’m not asking you to agree that therefore it was ok for me to criticize your list on those grounds. I’m just trying to establish that I have been clear enough about my reasons for thinking it was ok, and that you agree about the factual accuracy of those reasons. You simply disagree with me about whether those reasons are good enough.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 1:02 pm
1. It is very easy to filter results using database searches and it does not require much more then having a list of skeptical scientists names. It does not require examining every single paper from all the different search terms. You can rule out search terms you don’t wish to use very easily by adding in the scientist names as filters. It is not very complicated at all.
3. My list has nothing to do with Oreskes study as it includes papers outside of her date range. If I was to make a direct argument against her study I would have limited papers on my list to her date range. My list was created to show that these papers exist and to be used as a resource for skeptics, nothing else.
I believe the confusion comes from the fact that the paper count is now at 900 which is similar to her result. The list originated at 450 papers which disproves this coincidence.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 2:36 pm
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
By: clarkbeast on November 28, 2011
at 12:07 pm
PT,
I’ll ask you to take a step back and look at the big picture of how I used your list in my talk.
Whether or not you meant it specifically to criticize Oreskes’s study, I believe you did mean it to combat the claim that there is an “overwhelming consensus” in the literature. It sounds really impressive to flash 900+ articles in front of people. But how did you get such a big list?
1. You included review articles and opinion pieces, which are not necessarily written by people that would normally be considered “experts.” Who cares how many non-experts disagree with the consensus?
2. You included articles from journals that are wildly off topic, and in any case, the articles in those off-topic journals are almost certainly just opinion pieces, rather than original research. (At least, the ones I checked were, and I can’t imagine the editors of a journal like “Contemporary South Asia” agreeing to publish original research into climate change.)
3. You included stuff from weird fringe journals.
4. You included articles by people who say they don’t question the consensus, just because some contrarian has used that article to make some point. Were these contrarians experts, too? Because Monckton is famous for citing literature to make points that directly contradict the conclusions of the articles state.
In other words, to impress the masses with the amount of dissent, you 1) used a list, rather than a survey, and 2) expanded the field to include things that normally would not be. Those are the main points I was using your list to illustrate, and they are absolutely correct.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 1:27 pm
1. I included only peer-reviewed papers. Who is considered an “expert” is subjective.
2. Again, what is the objective criteria for determining if a journal is on-topic?
The list makes no claim that all the papers are original research. Regardless their are many original research papers on the list.
3. I only included two papers from the peer-reviewed journal JSE both explicitly discussing climate change and global warming and both by Ph.D. scientists.
4. That is because the list is of peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments it is not a list of skeptics. The list has nothing to do with Lord Monckton.
Since the list was created as a resource I do not discriminate based on objections using subjective criteria if the paper was peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 2:57 pm
Poptech,
You are a liar.
I did a quick Google search and found a mirror of your “900+” page here:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/8892-900-peer-reviewed-papers-supporting-skepticism-of-qman-madeq-global-warming-agw-alarm
Part of the ensuing discussion was about Oreskes’s paper, and on that topic you made a comment on May 27, 2011 at 19:54. You said:
“Her paper is fraudulent propaganda. He conclusions are debunked by the existence of my list.”
And yet, here you call ME a liar because I treated your list as a critique of Oreskes’s paper.
I have tried to be reasonable and see whether anything I said could have been clearer, but I’m done with you. All further comments from you will be put in the spam folder, unless of course you want to explain yourself in this particular matter.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 4:09 pm
You cannot lie about why I created the list or it’s purpose no matter how desperate and dishonest you want to be.
The list is not a direct criticism of her paper. If it was I would explicitly state this on the list. Notice I explicitly state,
“…as you can easily find papers within her time frame that reject her alleged consensus.”
I am well of the time frame she used for her paper and my list is not in that time frame.
Any comments of mine you refuse to publish I will at my site as I am copying them in case you decide to censor anything I submit here.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 4:34 pm
Honestly, I couldn’t care less what your original motivations were. What I am sure of is that you have publicly stated that your list (or at least some portion of the list) refutes Oreskes’s study. Therefore, I feel quite justified in saying that one of the reasons for your list is to refute Oreskes.
This is unbelievable. On my site you say:
“My list has nothing to do with Oreskes study as it includes papers outside of her date range.”
On that other site you say:
“Her paper is fraudulent propaganda. He conclusions are debunked by the existence of my list.”
And also:
“Where ever Orseskes published her fraudulent paper is irrelevant, as her claims are debunked by my list as you can easily find papers within her time frame that reject her alleged consensus.”
So in one place you say your list has “nothing to do with” the study, because it includes papers OUTSIDE of Oreskes’s date range. But in another place you say that your list debunks Oreskes’s study because it includes papers INSIDE her date range.
Which is it? Do tell.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 4:47 pm
My reply to this is below – By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:04 pm
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:08 pm
PT,
Up above you said:
“What part of REALITY do you not comprehend? Why the list was created and later arguments it was used in are two different things.
“The list was initially created do to an argument I got in at another website were someone was stating that no peer-reviewed papers existed supporting skeptic arguments and NO mention of Oreskes was brought up.”
I am very happy to oblige you. In the future I will try to remember to say that you use the list to attack Oreskes’s study, and will not imply that this was the original motivation for the list.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 4:54 pm
Make sure you quote me too,
“I believe her paper to be fraudulent because it includes the search phrase ‘climate change’ and not ‘global climate change’.”
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:12 pm
Depending on space/time considerations, I may just do that. It shows you to be a conspiracy theorist loon.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:16 pm
If you wish to show that I am a “conspiracy theorist loon” then you should make sure to include the full quote,
“I believe her paper to be fraudulent because it includes the search phrase ‘climate change’ and not ‘global climate change’.”
Don’t be afraid to “expose” me.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:18 pm
No problemo.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:30 pm
The creation and purpose of the list has nothing to do with Oreskes study. I did not create it in relation to Oreskes study and it’s purpose is not in relation to Oreskes study.
I am glad you brought this up since the person I was responding to explicitly said,
# Philip Makowski 2011-05-21 03:43
“…her original analysis of all studies that mention climate change in journals listed in the ISI list of peer-review journals,”
That is irrefutable evidence how people repeat propaganda about her paper. Philip mentions that Oreskes did an analysis of “all studies” that mention “climate change”.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:04 pm
I have already said that I accept that your list is a good antidote for certain misinterpretations of Oreskes’s study. Kudos.
You say, “I did not create it in relation to Oreskes study and it’s purpose is not in relation to Oreskes study.”
I accept your claim that you didn’t originally create it to refute Oreskes (2004).
However, I have trouble with your claim that “it’s purpose is not in relation to Oreskes study.” First, the sentence is incoherent. Second, if you mean that its PRESENT purpose has nothing to do with Oreskes (2004), then I have to object that since YOU in fact use it to try and refute Oreskes (2004), then that’s one of the “purposes” YOU are presently using it for.
Are you going to come back and tell me that you don’t use it for that purpose?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:14 pm
I have used the existence of some of the papers on the list to refute the falsely implied conclusion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments. That is different than using the “list” to “refute” Oreskes (2004).
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:41 pm
Oh, I’m sorry… did I use language that wasn’t exact enough for you, again?
While you can say, “He[r] conclusions are debunked by the existence of my list,” **I** am commanded to say something like this:
“Poptech uses a portion of the papers on his list to ‘debunk’ [not ‘refute’!!!] a false conclusion that he says Oreskes (2004) intentionally promoted. But he insists that debunking this paper is not one of his purposes for the list, because even though he uses PART of the list for that purpose, ‘the list’ as a whole does not fulfill that purpose.”
Why can’t I say, “Poptech thinks the existence of his list debunks the conclusions of Oreskes (2004)”?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 6:08 pm
My problem is with your use of the word “purpose”.
You failed to quote where I state criticizing/debunking/refuting ect… Oreskes (2004) was a “purpose” of the list.
Purpose (defined) – “the reason for which something exists.”
http://www.wordsmyth.net/?ent=purpose
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 6:34 pm
Ahhh, I see. Well, I looked on Dictionary.com, and the first definition of “purpose” was:
“the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.”
I was using “purpose” to mean “the reason for which something is used”.
Or am I only allowed to use the definitions in YOUR preferred online dictionary? Even if I do, I find that a few of the synonyms listed for “purpose” are “use”, “application”, and “function”. Do you want to deny that debunking Oreskes (2004) is one of the “uses” you have for your list?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 10:19 pm
You have two choices you can either honestly represent my list or you can continue to lie about with your smear campaign.
You of course can choose to use words that would be misleading as to the reason the list was created or you can be clear to your intent.
As a “purpose” of the list is has nothing to do with Oreskes (2004).
I have used the existence of papers on the list to refute the implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist, this includes online arguments where Oreskes (2004) was brought up.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 6:38 pm
This is just fantastic, Poptech. After all this, your objection comes down to the fact that while you do use your list to attack Oreskes, that wasn’t your original motivation for making it, so I’m not allowed to treat your list as a critique of Oreskes.
Well, too bad.
Likewise, you insist that I shouldn’t criticize your lack of quality control because YOU think your measures were enough.
Well, too bad.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:05 pm
The “list” is not a critique of Oreskes because the papers on it fall outside of her date range and this was never the intention or purpose for creating the list. The existence of papers on my list within her date range can be used as a critique against her implied conclusions but they do not represent the “list” as a whole.
Thus you cannot treat my “list” as a critique of Oreskes.
Please provide the objective criteria for “quality control”.
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:17 pm
Ok, so the list is not a critique of Oreskes. You merely use it to critique Oreskes. This sort of anal ultrasensitivity about the nuances of my language is a great way to change the subject away from your prevarication.
And I don’t need to provide “objective criteria” for quality control, since there will be an element of subjectivity in any such judgment. I merely have to demonstrate that YOUR criteria, whatever they are, are vastly different from those that would seem reasonable to people in my audience. E.g., I told my audience that you included a bunch of opinion pieces by non-climatologists in off-topic journals. I also told them that you are not too snobbish to include papers from journals that publish dog astrology. Both of these things are true, so what is your beef? I say these things because **I** think they illustrate nicely that you have poor quality control. I’m banking most people will agree.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:28 pm
My reply to this is below – By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 6:00 pm
Poptech,
Up above you said:
“I am criticizing Barry for him incorrectly stating the purpose of the “list”. I used the existence of SOME papers on my list to criticize the implied conclusions from Oreskes but not the “list” as a whole. This list was not created for this purpose and it is not meant to be a rebuttal to Oreskes paper only the falsely implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments.
“There is nothing ironic about any of this.”
Yes, the irony is lost on you.
You are criticizing me for saying that the purpose of the list was something for which you only used PART of the papers on the list. And yet, your hypersensitivity to my language IS a bit ironic, considering that you said:
“Her paper is fraudulent propaganda. He conclusions are debunked by the existence of my list.”
Wait! You didn’t say that meant only part of your list until way down on the comments page! Were you “lying” at the time? Also, I’m more than happy to admit that you only meant that part of your list debunks Oreskes (2004). Are you satisfied, now? Have I said anything else that isn’t EXACTLY correct in the most literal sense?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 5:45 pm
An argument in which part of the list is used to support vs. the list’s “purpose” are two different things.
The list’s purpose is general,
Purpose: “To provide a resource for peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm and to prove that these papers exist contrary to widely held beliefs”
If it’s “purpose” was to refute or criticize Oreskes (2004) I would explicitly state so. I have no problem speaking my mind about what I think of Oreskes and her paper.
First of all the ORIGINAL comment was # Poptech 2011-05-21 18:45 and was qualified by saying “…as you can easily find papers within her time frame that reject her alleged consensus.”
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 6:20 pm
As I said above, one of the standard definitions for “purpose” is “use”. And yet, you say, “An argument in which part of the list is used to support vs. the list’s ‘purpose’ are two different things.”
The purpose of something is PRECISELY what it is used for, by that definition… which is a completely standard definition.
Oh, wait!!! I didn’t mention that debunking Oreskes (2004) was only the purpose of PART of your list! That totally ruins my argument (even though you told the people on that other website that the very existence of your list debunks Oreskes’s conclusions.)
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 10:26 pm
The standard definition of purpose is not simply “use” even with your definition. It is,
“the [b]reason[/b] for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.”
The reason for the list was not to be used to refute Oreskes (2004).
The purpose is explicitly defined on the list and it does not mention Oreskes.
The existence of certain papers on my list can be used to refute the implied conclusion of Oreskes (2004) that no peer-reviewed papers exist. This is a different argument then what you are falsely implying as no direct 1 on 1 comparison between my list and Oreskes (2004) can be made.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 6:55 pm
Poptech,
Your English is terrible.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 7:45 pm
Yes that sentence is bad.
The reason the list was used was not to refute Oreskes (2004).
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 9:09 pm
There is no preview or edit option in these comments so I have no way to correct all of my grammatical errors.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 9:11 pm
But you did use the list to (attempt to) refute Oreskes (2004). I.e., that was the “purpose” for which you used it.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 11:26 pm
The “list” was not used to refute Oreskes (2004), the existence of various papers on the list was used to refute the implied conclusion I believe was made by Oreskes that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 11:30 pm
By which I mean that you are conflating two definitions. One definition is “the reason for which something is made,” while another one is “the reason for which something is used.” You are insisting that the reason for which something is used MUST BE the reason for which it was made. It isn’t, necessarily.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 7:55 pm
So what was the “reason” the list was used in that situation?
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 9:07 pm
In what situation?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 11:27 pm
No I use the existence of papers on the list in a critique of what I believe are her implied conclusions in an argument unrelated to the purpose of the list.
The Criteria for Inclusion (which has not changed) has been added to the list,
Criteria for Inclusion: All counted papers must be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal and support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm.
So I take it you will admit that quality control is subjective to your audience?
How my list was presented to your audience was intentionally negative, very misleading and did not accurately represent the contents of the list.
Will you mention to your audience that my list also includes many papers of original research on climate change in addition to other legitimate forms of peer-reviewed papers and cites 257 different journals?
Or is your intent not to be objective about the contents of my list?
By: Poptech on November 28, 2011
at 5:59 pm
1. “Use” is a synonym of “purpose”. (See above.)
2. Of course I admit that quality control is (at least partially) subjective. Even the judgment that peer review is a must for quality control is somewhat subjective. Certainly there are some non-reviewed pieces that are better than some that have been, after all. The idea I am trying to get across is that if you want to convince others that you have done a good job at quality control, you have to show that you have adopted standards that they would agree are reasonable. I think that according to most people, you have failed miserably.
3. I don’t mind mentioning some of the characteristics of the list. And mentioning that there were some on the list that would have showed up in Oreskes’s list if she had used a different search criterion would reinforce what I did say–that her study was not meant to show that no contrarian papers existed.
What you seem to be missing is that my intent was not to go over all the pros and cons of your list, but to simply show that your quality control sucked. If my two examples aren’t convincing enough for everyone, I can add a lot more.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 28, 2011
at 10:38 pm
1. “Use” is NOT a synonym of “purpose”.
2. Quality control is subjective and the list meets a standard of quality control that requires all the papers be peer-reviewed. What people believe is “reasonable” is also subjective. You are certainly free to say the list does not meet your opinion of quality control but it cannot be said that no quality control exists.
You are free to present more cherry picked examples or you can be intellectually honest to the total contents of the list.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 7:16 pm
“Use” is indeed a synonym of “purpose,” at least according to the dictionary you chose to cite.
When you quoted a definition for “purpose”, you cited this source:
http://www.wordsmyth.net/?ent=purpose
Under your definition, it says this: “synonyms: application, design, function, object, rationale, use”.
Wait–maybe you can find another online dictionary that doesn’t say anything like that. I’m sure you’ll try.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 7:39 pm
I thought you were not using my definition of “purpose”?
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 8:58 pm
I just explained that you were conflating two different definitions of “purpose”. You used one. I used another. They are not the same. What, exactly, was unclear?
By: Barry Bickmore on November 29, 2011
at 11:29 pm
The link that lists “use” as a synonym for “purpose” only does so for my definition of “purpose”.
http://www.wordsmyth.net/?ent=purpose
As you notice the synonyms change based on the definition.
If you select the synonym “use” off that page it takes to you the definition of “use”. Here the only definition that includes “purpose” as a synonym is;
definition 6: purpose; function.
Which does not support your definition of “purpose”.
Your Dictionary.com link does not include “use” as a synonym in the context you used it in.
By: Poptech on November 29, 2011
at 11:53 pm
Yes… “use” is a synonym for “purpose” under the definition you were using. Think about it.
Yes… one definition of “use” is “purpose” or “function”. Think about it.
And yes… Dictionary.com does not list “use” as a synonym of “purpose”… because it’s right in the definition. In fact, if you click the “Thesaurus” tab on the page, it says:
Main Entry: purpose
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: use
…and then lists a bunch of synonyms for that definition.
Think about it.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 7:30 am
Oh, and by the way, I did a Google search for the exact phrase, “purpose for which it was used”, and got 1,690,000 hits.
Think about it.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 8:23 am
I looked up “use” on thesaurus.com, and guess what? “Purpose” is one of the synonyms listed.
Think about it.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 8:25 am
Thesaurus.com gives different definitions then Dictionary.com. Talk about an unreliable source. It does not list “use” as a synonym but as a simple inaccurate definition.
Regardless you claim your definition is ‘the reason for which something is used”
This definition does not support the use of the word “purpose” in each instance in this statement,
“Poptech uses a portion of the papers on his list to ‘debunk’ [not ‘refute’!!!] a false conclusion that he says Oreskes (2004) intentionally promoted. But he insists that debunking this paper is not one of his purposes for the list, because even though he uses PART of the list for that purpose, ‘the list’ as a whole does not fulfill that purpose.””
You are intentionally and misleadingly mixing definitions of the word. This is something you will likely do in the future and is intentionally misleading. If you have any intention of being honest about my list you will make it clear that the purpose “the reason for which something exists.” has absolutely nothing to do with Oreskes (2004). Any implication otherwise would be dishonest.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 11:40 am
I refuse to be held responsible for your inability to understand plain English.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 11:44 am
That is not plain English and unless the definition is clearly defined in each instance for “purpose” the context can easily be misconstrued.
I am very concerned your will attempt this in the future.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 12:08 pm
Look at the google search I recommended. It is plain English.
In any case, in the future I intend to simply quote you.
“Where ever Orseskes published her fraudulent paper is irrelevant, as her claims are debunked by my list as you can easily find papers within her time frame that reject her alleged consensus.”
I am also counting how many original research papers there are within the time frame, in journals that are indexed by ISI Science Citation Index. I’m going through them to see how many say they reject the consensus about humans being mainly responsible for recent climate change. This should make for a decent apples-to-apples comparison.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 12:28 pm
Is that so? In any case in the future I intent to quote you,
“Energy and Environment, an idiotic grey-literature journal”
With the title, “Barry Bickmore believes the IPCC cites “idiotic grey literature”.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 12:44 pm
Sounds fine to me.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 12:47 pm
I am working on it as we speak.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 12:59 pm
Barry, the problem is poptart cannot actually think.
His list includes papers from people who have requested he remove them from his list because they disagree with his attribution of them. One such author being RPSr, so it’s not “AGW faithful” trying to scuttle poptart’s crusade.
By: Wow on November 30, 2011
at 7:40 am
I know…. It’s just fun to see how far he will go to show that a “purpose” for which he uses his list is not a “purpose” of the list. I’ve never seen denial go this far, before. Usually when they are caught red-handed, they just refuse to comment anymore, but this guy will seemingly NEVER quit arguing about such idiotic things as whether I’m “dishonest” to use a word in a perfectly normal, dictionary sense.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 7:51 am
So now we are down to childish name calling, typical.
Which paper does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
The papers by Roger Pielke Jr. and Sr. neither you nor Barry support so please stop with that charade.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 11:14 am
Aside from the Pielkes, I see that you have a paper by Peter Doran, which is pretty ironic, since he published one of the polls showing a strong consensus among climate experts. I see one by Stefan Rahmstorf and another by Charles Keeling. I could go on.
I wish you would separate on your list the papers that actually express skepticism that humans are causing significant climate change from those that contrarians merely cite for one reason or another. I see this as just another way of padding your list.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 11:34 am
Rahmstorf and Keeling’s papers are used to support skeptic arguments for a 1,500 year climate cycle theory.
Doran’s paper is used to support skeptic arguments relating to Antarctica cooling.
There should be nothing ironic about any of this as the list is not a list of skeptics as explicitly stated in the disclaimer but a resource for skeptics.
By: Poptech on November 30, 2011
at 11:50 am
I understand that. However, since you do use your list to attack the idea that there is a strong consensus, I think you should separate out those kinds of papers into a different category.
By: Barry Bickmore on November 30, 2011
at 11:55 am
Again you mistake poptart’s overwhelming brilliance (snurk…).
He knows far better than the authors of all of those papers what they meant. Therefore there’s no need to separate out into a different category, since he is inerrantly correct in their current categorisation.
NO MATTER WHAT EVIDENCE from anyone (even the authors, even the content itself) to the contrary.
If Nature posted a “See Spot Run” paper, poptart would include it in his list if he needed to get 901 papers in his list.
By: Wow on December 1, 2011
at 6:15 am
Which paper does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
I asked you a simple question, surely you can answer it.
There are already over 901 papers on the list.
By: Poptech on December 1, 2011
at 6:46 pm
By: Wow on December 2, 2011
at 8:25 am
No answer, just more refuted nonsense,
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=4040
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/truth-about-greenfyre.html
Do you have anything that is an actual point?
By: Poptech on December 2, 2011
at 10:19 am
Nope, we’re down to the nuts and bolts of reality AND name-calling, poptart.
By: Wow on December 1, 2011
at 6:15 am
The reality is you have no argument which is why all you have left is to call me names.
By: Poptech on December 1, 2011
at 6:49 pm
Well, that’s the probem, isn’t it.
Your position wasn’t arrived at by reasoning and logic, so there’s no reasoning or logic available to persuade you it’s wrong.
As an example, all you have read is me calling you poptart, in celebration of the complete lack of regard I hold you in. And ignoring the FACT that even RPSr disagrees with your interpretation of his work.
Because your position on his work isn’t arrived at by logic and reasoning, but by your own insanity, and there’s nothing that can be done in the face of such mental instability other than laugh at it.
The evidence of your error is for other people, not for you, because you do not believe in evidence, only the diseased imaginings of your own internal monologue.
By: Wow on December 2, 2011
at 8:24 am
All my positions were arrived at by reason and logic.
You call me names because you cannot form a logical argument.
Where did Roger Pielke Sr. comment on the list?
Again, which paper does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
Why can you not answer the questions?
By: Poptech on December 2, 2011
at 10:26 am
No, I can call you names because you’re a clown. A figure of fun.
A lunatic.
I formed a logical argument: authors disagree with your interpretation of their papers.
But you can’t see it.
Because you’re a clown. A figure of fun.
A lunatic.
So when calling you poptart, at least you can hear it. You just won’t listen to any facts if they contravene your faith.
By: Wow on December 2, 2011
at 10:36 am
You call me names because you cannot support your arguments and cannot answer simple questions.
Your argument is illogical because I am not reinterpreting their papers. These “authors” believed they were listed for [insert strawman argument]. Their papers are listed because they support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm. Those papers in question are NOT listed because I am claiming the papers rejects ACC/AGW as these authors falsely believe.
Since you cannot comprehend basic logic, I ask again,
Which paper does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
By: Poptech on December 2, 2011
at 5:41 pm
I have yet to hear a clear articulation of a skeptic argument.
I perused your list. I didn’t look at all of them, but from the sample I saw, none of the papers you list support a legitimate anti-AGW argument.
You have old Heinz Hug listed there. He calculates absorption, but ignores emission. That IMO is a solid argument in favor of the AGW argument, since, in order to agree with Mr. Hug, one must needs set aside the fundamentals of physics.
By: Bob Strayer on December 2, 2011
at 7:33 pm
Have your read,
The Hockey Stick Illusion
or
The Skeptical Environmentalist
By: Poptech on December 2, 2011
at 10:05 pm
No I haven’t read them. Nor will I. Bjorn Lomborg has recanted (sort of) and now claims that he never was a denier. But irregardless, I have no intention of supporting those making money from propagating doubt. So why don’t you, in your own words, tell us what the “skeptical argument” against AGW is.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 9:52 am
First you tell me you have not heard a clear articulation of a skeptic argument and then you tell me you will not read them?
Lomborg’s position has never changed. He was never a “denier” (whatever that is).
http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1540-bjorn-lomborg-u-turn-on-global-warming-hardly.html
The arguments are varied and many have to do with being against ACC/AGW Alarm. If you are truly interested then I suggest reading those two books.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 5:29 pm
Reading those books would be almost as much a waste of time as assembling your list was.
If you cannot articulate a logical skeptic argument, or provide a credible reference to one, I will assume that you don’t really have one.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 6:14 pm
The list is not a waste of time and has been an incredibly valuable resource.
I provided two credible references that you are refusing to read. Unlike you I have an open mind and have read books on both sides of the issue. When you asked for them, I immediately provided them and then proceed to makes excuses for not reading them. There is nothing I can do if you refuse to read them but do not pretend I did not provide you with what you requested.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 6:21 pm
A credible reference would be a scientific citation.
I have been studying physics and reading published climate research since 2003. I am not going to waste my time on pulp fiction.
Your list is useless as an argument against AGW, since it’s mere existence as the best that the deniers can come up with, makes the whole anti-AGW crowd look ridiculous.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 6:48 pm
Both cite the scientific literature and neither are fictional. If you ever overcome your fear and excuses let me know.
My list is not an “argument” against AGW. Why are you repeating this strawman argument? It is an argument for the existence of peer-reviewed literature that supports skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 7:41 pm
You already had the “what is the meaning of use and purpose” with Barry. None of the papers on your list support a scientific argument against ACC/AGW. That is just a pigment of your hallucination.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 7:48 pm
All of the papers on the list support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm. Various papers support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW.
Whether you personally accept the argument is irrelevant.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 7:50 pm
None of the papers on your list support a scientific argument against ACC/AGW.
Whether you personally accept this fact is irrelevant.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 7:54 pm
Oh yes various papers do,
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
(International Journal of Modern Physics B, Volume 23, Issue 03, pp. 275-364, January 2009)
– Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Your denial of the existence of such papers is noted.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 7:57 pm
I said a scientific argument. You must do better than a specious interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Gerlich and Tscheuschner mistakenly interpret the second law of thermodynamics. They assume that net flow from a warmer body to a colder one, precludes the possibility of back-radiation from a cooler body to a warm one. This is total nonsense of course, since all bodies radiate, therefore the atmosphere radiates heat toward the surface. The surface (warm body) radiates on average 470W/m2, while the atmosphere back radiates an average of 340W/m2, for a net flow of 130W/m2 from the surface to the atmosphere, thus the atmosphere is heated by the surface. This is the greenhouse effect and it does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. The surface of the Earth is 33C-34C warmer than it would be without it.
Their simple model of a non-rotating planet, with an atmosphere transparent to IR may exist somewhere, but it certainly is not in this solar system. And it is definitely not the Earth.
BTW That paper was an invited review, not subject to the normal peer review process, so you should strike it from your list.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 8:52 pm
They do make a scientific argument, whether you agree with their argument is irrelevant to this. If you have a criticism of their paper I suggest submitting it for publication in the same journal. The authors are more than capable of defending their work.
While it was invited, it was still peer-reviewed as I confirmed this with the editor so it will remain on the list.
By: Poptech on December 3, 2011
at 9:33 pm
You are correct. My opinion is irrelevant. The physics however are not. If G&T are correct… then the average surface temperature of the Earth is 255K, not 288K. To arrive at that conclusion, they use a non rotating model.
The paper has been soundly refuted within the minor journal it was published in. (Not to mention the empirical evidence that the Earth’s surface is actually 33C-34C warmer than it’s black-body temperature.)
Here is the rebuttal.
Click to access 0802.4324v1.pdf
Here is the demolition.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/04/die-fachbegutachtung-below-is-elis.html
Here is a peer-reviewed comment.
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S021797921005555X.html
You cannot change the laws of physics! Better have Scotty beam you up now.
By: Bob Strayer on December 3, 2011
at 10:32 pm
I am aware of both of these papers;
Here is the rebuttal to Smith,
Click to access 0904.2767.pdf
Here is the published rebuttal to Halpern et al.,
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S0217979210055573.html
Click to access 1012.0421v1.pdf
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 12:19 am
LOL Kramm et al. An even bigger joke than G&T. In the English translation of the demolition of G&T by Georg Hoffman posted on Rabett Run, there in the discussion section is a conversation between Kramm, Smith, and my friend Duae Quartunciae.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/04/die-fachbegutachtung-below-is-elis.html
G&T did not address the criticism in their rebuttal. It is about the most bizarre paper and response to criticism I have ever seen. They go on and on about how the atmosphere is not a glass enclosed greenhouse on the assumption that science is not aware of that fact. They then claim that back radiation violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
That journal does not generally publish atmospheric physics papers. The G&T paper was invited, likely because any journal with real climate scientists would never let it past the peer review.
It is nothing more than denier porn.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 11:18 am
Kramm’s criticism boils down to this:
Arthur used the term average, when he should have said “properly weighted average”.
Sounds similar to the tizzy fit you threw about the proper use of purpose. I find it so ironic that you create a list to debunk what you describe as a perceived implication, and then take offense at another perceived implication.
Hmmm, the constant in both these equations is your perception.
Think about it.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 2:02 pm
This is responded to below – By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 4:21 pm
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 4:22 pm
I *did* support my position with evidence.
YOU ignored it.
Which is how you deal with all criticism of your list which is merely a statement of your idiocy.
By: Wow on December 5, 2011
at 11:20 am
Your “evidence” was based on the strawman argument.
Again, Which paper does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
By: Poptech on December 5, 2011
at 9:26 pm
The published criticism has been rebutted by the author and the other non-peer-reviewed paper has been addressed as well. I have no interest in blog posts by someone who thinks he is a bunny rabbit least of all the comments from a bunny rabbit blog. So I am not going to entertain those.
The purpose the list was created for is explicitly stated, thus making claims that it was created for any other purpose is a lie and I obviously would take offense to a lie about the list.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 4:21 pm
Not surprised. It is obvious you don’t understand the subject.
The authors did not address the criticism. They simply said it was hogwash and then went off on a tangent.
Kramm lost his argument with Smith.
Not only that, form his rebuttal to smith.
“The symbols are explained in my comment #770, with exception of eps, a planetary emissivity. If we use a value for eps less than unity, we will obtain an equilibrium temperature T_e higher than 255 K. For eps = 0.61 the temperature T_e amounts to 288 K. In such a case there would be no greenhouse effect. This means that this simple instance of a planetary radiation balance is inappropriate to explain the greenhouse effect, as correctly stated by Gerlich & Tscheuschner.”
He is correct in using 0.61 for effective emissivity. He is totally wrong however in concluding that there would be no greenhouse effect, since effective emissivity 90.61) includes the greenhouse effect.
Scary that he is in a position to confuse young people.
Here is a cute response.
“Anonymous said…
What’s the difference between “cramming” and “Kramming” for a test?
In the former case (“cramming”), you may start out knowing little to nothing but (usually) end up knowing enough to pass. In other words: it helps.
In the latter case, you may start out knowing enough to pass, but inevitably end up utterly (and hopelessly) confused. In other words: it hurts (usually a lot).
“
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 5:04 pm
As I said I do not get my scientific information off of blogs of people who believe themselves to be bunny rabbits nor will I waste my time entertaining them.
I believe they did address the criticisms. If they did not then those making the criticisms would have published another response, they have failed to do this so this matter is closed as far as I am concerned.
My list is about the peer-reviewed literature not bunny rabbit blogs and those who read them.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 5:14 pm
Of course you would believe they addressed the criticism. It is obvious that you don’t understand what the criticism was. I read your blog. You are scientifically illiterate.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 5:21 pm
Bob, I have forgotten more about computer science than you know.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 5:33 pm
Another example of your illogical mind.
If you have forgotten it… how do you know that you ever knew it?
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 5:37 pm
Figure it out the, the irrefutable facts about my computer science education and knowledge do not change.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:04 pm
I already figured it out.
Your education and knowledge do not change, and that is why you an ignorant denier of science.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:12 pm
Now I deny science? You would think that getting your facts from a bunny rabbit blog.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:15 pm
You agree with G&T, but cannot articulate their argument. I would suggest that not only are you willfully ignorant, but also cognitively challenged.
It is one thing to agree with something you understand, quite another to agree with something you don’t.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:21 pm
I only stated that G&T have addressed the argument. It is not my job to make their arguments for them, they do this themselves,
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S0217979210055573.html
arxiv.org/pdf/1012.0421
And no I do not accept your comments or those made on a bunny rabbit blog equivalent to those that have been published in the scientific literature.
You seem confused in that you believe I am here to have a debate on the science of climate change or to debate the contents any individual paper.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:31 pm
I don’t care why you are here.
I am glad you are.
Your comments and your list are great examples of how desperate and incoherent the anti-ACC/AGW rantings really are.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:36 pm
There is nothing desperate to irrefutably demonstrate the existence of peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments.
I will clarify whichever one of my comments you feel was not clear enough for you.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 7:14 pm
Here is the comment.
Click to access halpern_etal_2010.pdf
I am curious how exactly did they address the criticism that they cited anonymous sources. I would also like to hear why they misquote the German meteorological society.
Contrary to this, in the infrared range of the spectrum the radiation emitted from the ground is absorbed to a large extent by the atmosphere . . . and depending on the temperature, re-radiated in all directions. Only in the so-called window ranges (in particular in the large atmospheric window (8–13 μm) the infrared radiation can escape into space. The infrared radiation that is emitted downwards from the atmosphere (the so-called back radiation) raises the energy supply of the Earth’s surface.a
Gerlich and Tscheuschner then comment:
The assumption that if gases emit heat radiation, then they will emit it only downwards, is rather obscure.
Yes, it is an obscure assumption… since it appears they are the only ones making it.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:10 pm
Again another blog. If you have anymore peer-reviewed comments on the paper, let me know as the ones that have been published in the scientific literature have all been addressed.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:13 pm
That is the published peer reviewed comment.
For a computer scientist, you seem somewhat computer illiterate.
The link I gave is the side door on the paywall.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:17 pm
That was already rebutted by the author. We have been over this already.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:20 pm
No it wasn’t.
If it was, how did they explain citing newspaper op-eds in a science review paper?
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 6:22 pm
I have provided irrefutable evidence of the existence of the rebuttal,
Reply to “Comment on ‘Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics’ by Joshua B. Halpern, Christopher M. Colose, Chris H0-Stuart, Joel D. Shore, Arthur P. Smith, Jorg Zimmermann”
(International Journal of Modern Physics B, Volume 24, Issue 10, pp. 1333-1359, April 2010)
– Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/24/2410/S0217979210055573.html
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1012.0421
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:33 pm
The existence of a reply is not a rebuttal.
I asked you specifically, how did they answer their misrepresentation of the GMS.
They didn’t do it in the link you provided, so why don’t you tell us how they explained their misinterpretation, and how that impacts their results?
What was their explanation for citing anonymous sources, and newspaper articles?
Or is it as I suspect. You don’t know because you never read them.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 9:13 pm
I feel it has been rebutted. If you have a problem with something in their paper or reply I suggest you publish it.
I am not hear to discuss or debate the contents of any of the papers, least of all with someone like yourself who outright refuses to read things in response to your own requests. I have better things to do them waste my time with people too scared to read things.
For the record I have read them.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 11:06 pm
Science is not about feelings.
They didn’t answer those criticisms. Like you they just ignore inconvenient facts and resort to arguing semantics.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 11:21 pm
rebuttal (defined) “a statement that a claim or criticism is not true”
G&T have clearly made this claim,
“It is shown that the notorious claim by Halpern et al. recently repeated in their comment that the method, logic, and conclusions of our \Falsi cation Of The CO2 Greenhouse E ects
Within The Frame Of Physics” would be in error has no foundation. Since Halpern et al. communicate our arguments incorrectly, their comment is scientifically vacuous.”
What inconvenient facts did I ignore?
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 11:32 pm
That criticism is more apropos to their own paper.
1.) On page 306, GT09 quotes a description of the greenhouse effect in a position paper issued by the German Meteorological Society.
in the infrared range of the spectrum the radiation emitted from the ground is absorbed to a large extent by the atmosphere . . . and depending on the temperature, re-radiated in all directions.
To which they state;The assumption that if gases emit heat radiation, then they will emit it only downwards, is rather obscure.
Nowhere does the paper cited make this assumption, in fact the authors explicitly state that the absorbed radiation is re-radiated in all directions.
2.) On page 309, GT09 quotes a definition from Rahmstorf’s web site.
The infrared radiation emitted downward (the so called back radiation) increases the energy transferred to the surface. Equilibrium can only be re-established when the temperature of the ground increases, and as a consequence of Planck’s Radiation Law, producing increased emission.
G&T then misinterpret this as reflected radiation, not absorbed and re-emitted radiation.
Where in their rebuttal do they address these egregious errors and scientific misconduct?
What facts do you ignore? Far as I can tell, you have no regard whatsoever for the facts or the details.
Your list is a perfect example. None of the papers on your list, except those you misinterpret, meet even the most basic standards of scientific literature. GT09 is a prime example of psuedo-scientific nonsense and scientific misconduct.
Which is why it is published in an obscure off-topic journal, instead of a prestigious science journal.
By: Bob Strayer on December 5, 2011
at 10:44 am
Let me know when your criticisms are published so I can read the authors rebuttal.
“None of the papers on your list, except those you misinterpret, meet even the most basic standards of scientific literature. GT09 is a prime example of psuedo-scientific nonsense and scientific misconduct.”
This is a total and absolute lie.
G&T answered the charge of why they published where they did,
“The results of our paper are not the results of (so-called) climate science or chemistry, but of theoretical and applied physics. Therefore, the submission of our article to an applied physics journal did make sense. In our honest opinion this is not true for the recent comment by the chemist Halpern and his co-authors”
By: Poptech on December 5, 2011
at 8:52 pm
They lied in their answer. Joshua B. Halpern received a B.S. in physics from John Hopkins in 1966 and a Phd. in physics from Brown in 1972. Calling him a chemist is like saying Rahmstorf thinks IR is reflected by the atmosphere, or that the German Meteorological Society thinks atmospheric emissions of IR can only travel downward.
Like I said, I don’t know why your here, but you sure make it easy to expose the lunacy of climate change deniers.
By: Bob Strayer on December 5, 2011
at 9:39 pm
Their answer was based on his position being a professor of chemistry. Regardless his Ph.D. in Physics is a good rebuttal to that point.
Again, let me know when your criticisms are published so I can read the author’s rebuttal.
“Like I said, I don’t know why your here, but you sure make it easy to expose the lunacy of climate change deniers”
I am here to correct the misinformation Barry stated about the list. Who is a climate change denier? I have never heard of anyone denying that the climate changes.
By: Poptech on December 5, 2011
at 10:14 pm
It is published and G&T did not address the criticism in their response.
BTW, Joshua B. Halpern is Eli Rabett.
By: Bob Strayer on December 5, 2011
at 11:58 pm
If you feel something important to G&T’s argument was not addressed in their rebuttal then I suggest publishing it as I would be interested in reading G&T’s response.
On the bunny rabitt blog here is the bio of “Eli Rabett”,
“Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.”
Let me know when it says Joshua B. Halpern.
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 12:06 am
Don’t take my word for it. Ask G&T, or your friends at climateaudit.
By: Bob Strayer on December 6, 2011
at 12:39 am
As of right now that blog is written by someone calling themselves a bunny rabbit and repeating this in their BIO. If this changes let me know.
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 12:48 am
Bob, I am curious as to why you keep quoting off a blog by someone who believes they are a bunny rabbit and not one by a real scientist with actual credentials? And you want to criticize skeptics for publishing in the peer-reviewed literature? Please.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 5:20 pm
Eli Rabett is a materials science professor. Arthur Smith is a physicist, and Duae Quartunciae (AKA Chris Ho-Stuart) is a mathematician and computer scientist.
Smith and Stuart are contributing authors of the comment.
By: Bob Strayer on December 4, 2011
at 5:35 pm
I do not know any bunny rabbits who are material science professors.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:03 pm
I don’t know anyone who has a Birth Certificate with the name “poptech” on it either.
By: Wow on December 6, 2011
at 6:50 am
I consistently use the name “Poptech” online since it is easily recognizable in relation to Popular Technology.net as opposed to “Andrew”. I also do not claim to be a “climate” scientist.
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 7:27 am
BTW none of them would be considered climate scientists.
By: Poptech on December 4, 2011
at 6:14 pm
However, your complaint was:
“someone who believes they are a bunny rabbit and not one by a real scientist with actual credentials”
I guess the whoosh you heard must have been swamped by the sound of your goalposts shifting.
By: Wow on December 6, 2011
at 6:51 am
This comment was in relation to the published comment by Halpern et al. to G&T.
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 7:28 am
Then why do you consider Gerlich’s papers?
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:23 am
You are confused, one of the arguments made against G&T was that they are not climate scientists, this works both ways.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 3:11 pm
So that comment has no purpose other than to be a comment (your post By: Poptech on December 6, 2011 at 7:28 am)?
By: Wow on December 6, 2011
at 10:18 am
What?
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 5:22 pm
Yes, that’s what I want to know.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 5:59 am
And Eli uses a fake identity to stop psychos like you stalking him. He doesn’t believe he is a bunny himself, he plays one on the internet.
Or are you the only one allowed a fake identity?
By: Wow on December 6, 2011
at 10:19 am
I use a screen name directly related to my website which is vastly different than thinking I am a bunny rabbit.
It is very disturbing that you are attempting to smear me as both a “psycho” and a “stalker”. I am surprised Barry allows these sort of libelous comments to be posted here.
By: Poptech on December 6, 2011
at 5:22 pm
And Eli uses a fake identity just like you do.
So he doesn’t believe he is a rabbit.
He is, in fact, a reputable scientist, just like you claimed you wanted to hear from.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 5:58 am
I use a screen name directly related to my site when posting for reasons explained above and do not pretend to be a mythical creature. I also publish all my posts with a real first name – Andrew.
Let me know when the bunny rabbit blog gives real credentials.
I hear from reputable scientists all the time and none of them pretend they are bunny rabbits.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:01 am
And rabbits are not mythical.
Eli is a respectable scientist.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 10:19 am
Quote and cite the university that has “Eli Rabbet” employed there. LOL.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:27 am
This is a perfect example of how the brain of the denier works.
Rabett Run is Joshua Halpern’s blog. This is an indisputable fact. Eli Rabett is the name he blogs under, also an indisputable fact. Yet here you are post after post, denying that fact.
Keep it up, you are the perfect poster child for the lunatic fringe.
By: Bob Strayer on December 7, 2011
at 10:34 am
Then provide irrefutable evidence that I cannot “deny”.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:37 am
Nope, it’s not libel, you moron.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 5:59 am
Oh yes it is libel, you have accused me of being psycho and a stalker. Please get a legal dictionary..
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:05 am
Nope, I’ve called you a psychopath and idiot and lunatic.
However, your idiocy is very moncktonian: full of fire about your legal whanger being flailed about, but you’re all mouth, no trousers.
Your list is an example of your idiocy.
Your defense of it an example of your psychopathy.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 10:18 am
Just remember there is NOTHING you can do about the list, it exists and is not going anywhere. Traffic to it increases daily and more and more people learn that skeptic arguments are supported by the peer-reviewed literature and all you can do about it is pound childish names and libelous lies into your keyboard. I feel sorry for you knowing how utterly helpless you are to stop it.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:25 am
I for one am glad your list exists. I send people there all the time to show them how crazy climate deniers are.
By: Bob Strayer on December 7, 2011
at 10:29 am
Who do you know denies there is such a thing as a climate?
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:32 am
Yup, another moncktonian attribute of poptart is that he’s so obviously fruitcake loony that he demonstrates how completely void of any seriousness the denial industry is.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 11:08 am
Re poptart (December 7, 2011 at 10:37 am)
You’re a denier, and a whacko. You can deny ANYTHING.
There are people who STILL believe the earth is flat. Despite being able to watch a boat go over the horizon with their own eyes.
There’s nothing you’ll deny to maintain your illusions.
By: Wow on December 7, 2011
at 11:10 am
Hi Poptech,
I was intrigued by your statement that “Where ever Orseskes published her fraudulent paper is irrelevant, as her claims are debunked by my list as you can easily find papers within her time frame that reject her alleged consensus.” I was also intrigued by your claim that Oreskes intentionally wrote that her search phrase was “climate change,” when it was really “global climate change.”
My contention all along has been that you and others have used your list to argue against Oreskes (2004), and my criticism has been that your only quality control was peer review. Our conversation here shows that my criticisms were on the mark, but I have decided to go further. I want to do a complete, apples-to-apples comparison to see the extent to which your list challenges Oreskes’s conclusions.
I first took your list, and removed all references to papers published outside of Oreskes’s 1993-2003 window. I then removed the ones that were obviously just comments on other papers and such, and cut out any that are not on the ISI master list for the Science Citation Index, which is what Oreskes used. This left something like 250 papers.
Next, I went to the ISI Web of Science (just like Oreskes did) and searched for research papers (not opinion pieces, review articles, or comments) using the search phrase “global climate change” over the period of 1993-2003. I got 931 hits, whereas she got 928, so ISI must have expanded their database slightly since 2004. I then searched using the same criteria, except that the search phrase was “climate change”. I got 9553 hits this time.
Now, I have to note here that this does not represent the full literature on climate change over 1993-2003, even in the ISI Science Citation Index, any more than Oreskes’s original 928 papers did. What if the parts of some papers in the database only had the phrase “climatic change,” rather than “climate change”? They wouldn’t show up. There are likely to have been several tens of thousands of papers on the subject during that time period, but what we are doing here is taking a REALLY LARGE random sample of the literature, and seeing what percentage of it challenges the mainstream about climate change.
I have now gone through all the papers on your list that were left, and I looked to see how many were listed in the sample of 9553 papers. That number is 57, which represents 0.6% of the total sample.
But I’m not done, yet. I’m now going through and examining all of those 57 papers to see how many actually challenge the consensus. I’ve already found a number that don’t. E.g., a number of papers are about the “lag” between temperature changes and CO2 changes in the ice core records of the last million years. But the mainstream opinion has long been that the glacial-interglacial cycles were driven by changes in the amount and distribution of sunlight hitting the Earth, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit, tilt, and so on, and changes in CO2 were acting as a feedback in the system. So while those papers may “support a skeptic argument,” that “skeptic argument” is not addressing the scientific consensus about climate change.
I expect that the final tally will be considerably less than 0.5%.
So there you have it, Poptech. You’ve done a great service by keeping a more or less comprehensive list of “skeptical” papers, because it allows someone like me to show that even if we take the papers you list into account and select a much larger sample of the literature, Oreskes was right on the money, in that a survey of the literature DOES strongly support the idea that there is an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists. There’s no question about it.
What’s more, this also shows unequivocally that your conspiracy theory about Oreskes (2004) is idiotic. If less than 0.5% of the literature is contrarian, then it’s not all that unlikely that a smaller sample like Oreskes (2004) used would turn up none. In any case, if the true answer is less than 0.5%, then why bother manipulating generic-sounding search terms until you get 0 hits?
Finally, let me just conclude by acknowledging that I recognize your primary purpose for the list is to debunk the common notion that there is no peer-reviewed contrarian literature. I have no problem with that, but the fact is that you also use your list (or at least the papers in your list from 1993-2003) to argue that Oreskes (2004) was wrong, which she clearly wasn’t. I also acknowledge that the ISI database doesn’t cover every single good journal, and that you have papers on your list from 1993-2004 that would have shown up with a different search phrase. But since I was going after a percentage, not just a number, I had to use a well defined sampling technique. There is no reason to believe that using either search phrase (“global climate change” or “climate change”) would bias the results.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 7, 2011
at 2:19 pm
My list is not comprehensive nor was it created to be used as a direct criticism of Oreskes outside of the notion that there are zero papers supporting skeptic arguments. This has been repeated ad nauseum.
Your percentages are worthless because you have not shown which papers explicitly endorse ACC/AGW. You are making a meaningless comparison between papers that explicitly reject ACC/AGW alarm and papers that include a search phrase “climate change”. Just because a paper includes the search phrase “climate change” does not mean it explicitly endorses ACC/AGW.
Please provide your results for for the search phrase “anthropogenic climate change” or “anthropogenic global warming”.
Only papers in these results can be claimed to explicitly endorse ACC/AGW.
You have failed to show any evidence of “consensus”.
My charges against her fraudulent paper stand. No one remotely competent believes for a second that she made a duplicate “typo” when her whole argument revolved around a single search phrase on a one page paper that also passed peer-review. You are more naive than I thought If you do not understand why a “zero” result would be better for propaganda purposes than “some”.
If a sampling technique produces zero as opposed to some results that clearly does bias the results.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 7:37 pm
I just found a graph that explains your belief system.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
By: Bob Strayer on December 7, 2011
at 7:50 pm
Here is a better graph,
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 8:57 pm
PT,
Your graph clearly shows an upward trend, but it is muted by the fact that whoever made it jacked up the range of the y-axis so that the data will look flatter.
So yeah, that pretty much does illustrate your belief system about as well as Bob’s does.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 7, 2011
at 10:09 pm
Yes it shows a mild warming trend since the end of the LIA that is put into context to how the average person would care about it.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:44 pm
Of course I didn’t count the papers that agree with the consensus. Oreskes already did that study, and there’s no way I’m going to read almost 10,000 papers. She found 75% agreed with the consensus.
The fact is that you said your list refutes Oreskes, because you have listed so many “skeptical” papers in the time period she sampled. I did an apples-to-apples comparison by finding what percentage of your papers would have shown up in a search for “climate change,” and calculating what percentage of the papers they represent. It was less than 0.5%. So even using a much larger sample size, you can only scrape up less than 0.5%.
Now you want me to try a DIFFERENT search phrase, but you don’t provide any reason why the results would be any different.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 7, 2011
at 10:30 pm
The 75% that agree with the consensus is pure fantasy. Benny Peiser still disputes this and for good reason the percentage is a lie.
Again, please provide your results for for the search phrase “anthropogenic climate change” or “anthropogenic global warming”.
How is it an apples to apples comparison when she used the search phrase “global climate change”?
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:39 pm
Benny Peiser said he had 34 papers from Oreskes’s sample that went against the consensus. When he was asked to produce said 34 papers, he came up with a list of 33, most of which were obviously NOT going against the consensus. Maybe they were just like many of your papers, in that some contrarian, somewhere, had used some point made in the paper to further an argument. In any case, when the ABC in Australia asked him which papers in the sample were contrarian, all he came up with was one that was a committee report for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which was obviously not a research article, and so would not have been in the sample.
So now Benny disputes the 75% figure. Well, he’s already shown that he doesn’t know the field well enough to tell when a paper supports the consensus, or not. Sorry, I’ll wait until he actually tries to produce some evidence for his new claim.
Now you want me to do a whole new study with new search terms. The problem with your “analysis” is that Oreskes went through each and every paper in her sample to categorize it, so the search term doesn’t matter, as long as it could reasonably be expected to yield a random swath of the literature on the subject.
Anyway, if you think using a different search term would give radically different results, knock yourself out.
As for the “apples-to-apples” issue, here’s the deal. All you need for an “apples-to-apples” comparison is ANY search term that you could reasonably expect to produce an unbiased sample of the literature on climate change. In this case, I was comparing how many contrarian papers you had that would have shown up in a search for “climate change,” rather than “global climate change,” because you indicated that it made a big difference (and even floated a conspiracy theory about it.) I found that you had produced papers to account for less than 0.5% of the larger sample, which is probably statistically indistinguishable from Oreskes’s results.
THEREFORE, your claim that your list refutes Oreskes (2004) is false. If all you are claiming is that it refutes a misreading of Oreskes (2004), then you are at least correct about that.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 9:33 am
I have already clarified that my claim was in relation to the implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments. I have made no claim that my list or the existence of papers on my list is a direct refutation of the fraudulent Oreskes study regardless of some poorly worded comment you found online.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 5:18 pm
I have added the following clarification;
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/8892-900-peer-reviewed-papers-supporting-skepticism-of-qman-madeq-global-warming-agw-alarm#comment-31625
“Clarification for those who wish to distort this comment out of context AKA Barry Bickmore.
The “claim” I am referring to is the falsely implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments and is not a direct refutation of her biased and fraudulent paper. I am well aware that when you use arbitrary search phrases in a limited database you can get the results that you want.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 5:29 pm
Oh, I completely understand. You DID directly claim that your list refutes Oreskes (2004). However, you also have claimed that her paper is “fraudulent” because you think it was meant to give the impression that no contrarian papers existed. So, you have directly claimed that your list is a refutation of conclusions that YOU impute to Oreskes, but which she didn’t actually draw.
While your list DOES refute the conclusions that Oreskes didn’t draw, it DOESN’T refute the conclusions that she did draw. All that is quite clear, so don’t worry about me misrepresenting your list.
My question at this point is this. If you are now saying that your list is NOT a direct refutation of Oreskes (2004), does that mean that you are acknowledging that she didn’t actually draw the conclusion that you say she “implied”? In other words, are you saying that your list does not refute the conclusions she actually stated?
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 5:43 pm
Peiser’s criticisms and updates to his criticism can be found here,
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060627/20060627_18.html
“Naomi Oreskes claims to have analysed 928 abstracts she found listed on the ISI Web of Knowledge database (1993 – 2003) using the keywords “global climate change.” However, this claim is incorrect: while the ISI database includes a total of 929 documents for the period in question, it lists only 905 abstracts. It is thus impossible that Oreskes analysed 928 abstracts.
In my original critique, I used the same ISI database and the same key words as Oreskes but used all documents listed therein. While Oreskes did not specify the method she applied in her study, she later confirmed that she had limited her search to “articles”, while I included “all document types” in my initial assessment. This difference appears to explain the discrepancy between the “928” abstracts Oreskes claims to have analysed and the 1117 documents I found and considered, although her figures don’t add up, one way or another.
Some commentators have argued that these differences undermine my main criticism while they validate Oreskes’ claim. However, as I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the ‘consensus view.’
In fact, the vast majority of abstracts do not mention anthropogenic climate change.”
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 5:54 pm
Thanks for the link. Peiser’s argument is stupid, however. It’s totally impossible that Oreskes looked up a few papers that didn’t have abstracts in the database? That’s all he’s got?
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 6:00 pm
No Barry, you do not understand completely. I have clarified what I meant by that comment – the context of which you are distorting. Your continued use of a strawman argument is pathetic.
Please quote off my list where it claims to “refute” Oreskes.
My claim that her paper is fraudulent is based on the fact that her paper explicitly states she used the search phrase “climate change” not “global climate change”.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 6:04 pm
Peiser’s charges are very serious, which includes,
“Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the ‘consensus view.’”
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 6:06 pm
“No Barry, you do not understand completely. I have clarified what I meant by that comment – the context of which you are distorting.”
What did I distort?
And way to avoid my question.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 7:36 pm
You distorted a poorly worded comment I made on website even after it was clarified and I posted the clarification.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 10:37 pm
Poptart:
“I have already clarified that my claim was in relation to the implied notion”
Except that it is you and ONLY you that has implied that notion.
All you’re doing is proving yourself wrong.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 7:14 am
Again, why should I believe Peiser’s analysis, when he already said he had a list of 34 papers that explicitly attack the consensus, but then that got whittled down to 1 that wasn’t even in Oreskes’s list. In other words, he is an anthropologist who doesn’t know enough about climate science to have good reading comprehension when reading this literature. After reading a number of papers on your list, I would say the same about you.
E.g., you have a 1999 paper in Ambio by Wibjorn Karlen et al. called “Man-Made vs. Natural Climate Change”. Here’s what Karlen said:
“The above conclusions indicate that the increased greenhouse effect is very likely to have contributed to the observed increase in global mean, surface temperature during the past century. This indication is particularly strong when considering the past 25 years.”
Since this is essentially the same as what the IPCC was claiming, I have to conclude that this paper is on your list because some contrarian, somewhere thought that the fact that natural climate drivers exist is an argument against the consensus view. That would be a truly, truly stupid argument, so maybe you can enlighten us about some other reason that paper is on your list.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 7:46 pm
Here’s another one. You list one 1996 paper by Crowley in Geophysical Research Letters that explores solar forcing of the climate. Crowley says this:
“The simulated temperature response to solar forcing changes is also consistent with present estimates of climate sensitivity from greenhouse studies.”
So again, the only reason I can think of to include this paper on your list is that some complete ignoramus contrarian didn’t realize that all the climatologists already knew that solar forcing is a natural climate driver that has to be taken into account. Can you enlighten us about some other reason why this paper is on your list, when it explicitly endorses the consensus view about how sensitive the climate is to GHG forcing?
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 7:55 pm
How about this one?
Roger A. Pielke Jr., Rethinking the role of adaptation in climate policy (Global Environmental Change, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 159-170, June 1998)
Pielke Jr. says:
“As a point of departure, this paper begins with acceptance of the conclusions of the IPCC. Specifically, that
– Greenhouse gas concentrations have continued to increase.
– Anthropogenic aerosols tend to produce negative radiative forcing.
-Climate has changed over the past century.
-The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate.
-Climate is expected to continue to change in the future.
-There are still many uncertainties (IPCC, 1996c).”
My heavens, how explicitly do you have to endorse the consensus view to stay off Poptech’s list?
The only reason I can think of for including this paper is that some contrarians argue that even if the consensus is right adaptation is a better strategy than mitigation. But that is assuming, for the sake of argument, that the consensus view is right, so I still fail to see why this should be included. Please enlighten us all.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 8:11 pm
Peiser attempted to reproduce Oreskes using the methods she specified in her fraudulent paper. He has since updated his criticism,
“While Oreskes did not specify the method she applied in her study, she later confirmed that she had limited her search to “articles”, while I included “all document types” in my initial assessment. This difference appears to explain the discrepancy between the “928” abstracts Oreskes claims to have analysed and the 1117 documents I found and considered, although her figures don’t add up, one way or another.
Some commentators have argued that these differences undermine my main criticism while they validate Oreskes’ claim. However, as I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the ‘consensus view.’
In fact, the vast majority of abstracts do not mention anthropogenic climate change.”
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 9:28 pm
“Roger A. Pielke Jr., Rethinking the role of adaptation in climate policy (Global Environmental Change, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 159-170, June 1998)
The only reason I can think of for including this paper is that some contrarians argue that even if the consensus is right adaptation is a better strategy than mitigation.”
This is correct.
“But that is assuming, for the sake of argument, that the consensus view is right, so I still fail to see why this should be included.”
Are we back to this strawman argument again? Papers can be listed that support the existence of ACC/AGW but also support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW ALARM.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 9:31 pm
“E.g., you have a 1999 paper in Ambio by Wibjorn Karlen et al. called “Man-Made vs. Natural Climate Change”.”
All the online links to the full abstract are no longer available. Please provide this or a link to the entire paper so I can answer your question in detail.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 9:32 pm
“You list one 1996 paper by Crowley in Geophysical Research Letters”
This paper’s abstract states:
“Forcing of an energy balance model with the solar time series indicates that modest amounts of solar variability and climate sensitivity yield temperature variations that represent a significant fraction of the inferred changes during the Little Ice Age. This latter result further supports the hypothesis that solar variability may be significantly contributing to climate change on decadal-centennial time scales.”
The paper supports skeptic arguments for a sun-climate theory of climate change.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 9:45 pm
“Papers can be listed that support the existence of ACC/AGW but also support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW ALARM.”
Ok, I accept that explanation.
But since you have no problem accusing Oreskes of doing a “fraudulent” study that was intentionally misleading, I have no problem accusing you of mixing in a BUNCH of papers like that one in with the rest to give the misleading impression that there are more “skeptical” papers than there really are. If you weren’t trying to give that impression, why wouldn’t you separate the “skeptical” papers from those that support the consensus, but are used by contrarians to make some point or other? Tut tut. Seems very fishy to me.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 9:21 am
You’re not getting off so easily on Crowley, though. The consensus position is that the Sun is one of the major climate drivers. ONE contrarian position is that the Sun is a much bigger driver than previously thought, and so GHGs must be a less important driver than previously thought. Since Crowley explicitly says that his estimates are consistent with current estimates of GHG effects, how can this possibly be construed as an argument for skepticism against the consensus? It is an explicit argument FOR the consensus position.
Nobody could possibly use this to support a contrarian position, except someone who doesn’t understand it. Like you, or Benny Peiser.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 9:28 am
Where in Oreskes’s (2004) paper does she make the statement that “some” skeptic papers exist? This is a very serious oversight and never should have passed peer-review without being qualified.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 9:10 pm
All she ever claimed was that none existed in the 928 papers she examined. Do you dispute this claim? Benny Peiser tried, and failed. But at least he understood what was being claimed. Anyone who says otherwise is reading in more than she ever claimed, and what’s more, anyone who does actual research would understand what was and wasn’t implied.
You don’t do any actual research, and in fact have no standards regarding scientific literature beyond the one criterion that it be peer reviewed in some fashion. You cite papers from journals that also publish dog astrology and UFO research. You cite papers that botch fundamental physics, and claim that it’s not your job to judge whether they got it right or wrong.
In short, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 7, 2011
at 10:19 pm
Thank you for answering my question by avoiding it. So she does not include any qualifying language in her paper that a peer-reviewed papers exists supporting skeptic arguments? That is scientifically dishonest and designed to mislead and misinform.
You are again misinformed as I do extensive research in computer science. “Standards” are subjective. I cite papers from a journal that publishes papers debunking astrology, that is correct. I also cite papers where Ph.D. Physicists present arguments questioning climate physics.
You have failed to demonstrate I do not know what I am talking about.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:36 pm
Yes, she does include that information. It’s in her method where she explains what she did.
It’s called “science”.
(You have read her paper, haven’t you?)
By: Wow on December 8, 2011
at 8:30 am
Please quote and cite this.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 6:18 pm
No, Wow, she doesn’t include that info, but look at what PT is demanding. Oreskes explicitly said she analyzed 928 papers that she got from a database search using a particular term. (She made a mistake about the term, and had to do a correction. Must be a conspiracy.) Any scientist (or reasonable person) would read that and understand that her results apply only to that sample, not to the entire corpus of scientific literature. But PT is demanding that she explicitly say that her results don’t apply to the literature she didn’t study. Yeah.
Anyway, PT–yes, JSE also publishes papers debunking astrology! Both pro-dog astrology and anti-astrology papers. Your list sounds ever-so-much better, now.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 9:17 am
There was included the info about what she did.
Since what she did didn’t require specifically looking for and finding any skeptical papers, this is as clear as possible the information needed to say “this isn’t a complete list of papers on AGW”.
It’s no different from wondering why she didn’t put a disclaimer saying “this paper will not turn up any elephants”.
Though poptart’s list needs a disclaimer “this list contains traces of nuts”.
By: Wow on December 8, 2011
at 9:30 am
So she failed to be objective with her fraudulent paper?
How do you make a “mistake” about a single search term that your entire argument is based on in a one page paper that was allegedly submitted for peer-review?
Yes Barry I cite a Debunking Astrology Journal.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 6:09 pm
“How do you make a “mistake” about a single search term that your entire argument is based on in a one page paper that was allegedly submitted for peer-review?”
This from a guy who said his list refutes Oreskes (2004), but now claims he didn’t really mean it. Anyway, the problem was brought to her attention, and she issued a correction.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 7:33 pm
Your continued out of desperate out of context claims are getting pathetic this has been clarified,
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/8892-900-peer-reviewed-papers-supporting-skepticism-of-qman-madeq-global-warming-agw-alarm#comment-31625
Clarification for those who wish to distort this comment out of context AKA Barry Bickmore.
The “claim” I am referring to is the falsely implied notion that no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments and is not a direct refutation of her biased and fraudulent paper. I am well aware that when you use arbitrary search phrases in a limited database you can get the results that you want.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 9:11 pm
Amusing.
Poptart whines about someone failing being objective when his entire appearance here on this thread has been the clearest definition of an absence of objectivity possible to get outside of a staged play.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 7:12 am
Your’s show the same trend as this one.
Since it is widely agreed among climate scientists that 2C above pre-industrial limits is the upper threshold before the climate becomes unstable, IE strong feedbacks or tipping points are reached. So there is no reason, other than distortion and deception, to use a 10C vertical axis. NASA uses a 1.15C scale because it captures the entire range of the data.
What I find very interesting about the ScepticalScience graph is that the slope of the cooling trends gets flatter and flatter as negative internal variability gets drowned out by the stronger positive forcing from anthropomorphic forcings.
By: Bob Strayer on December 7, 2011
at 10:29 pm
The same trend yes but in a realistic context,
No threshold is widely agreed upon, least of all if or when the climate becomes “unstable”. That is pure rhetoric.
By: Poptech on December 7, 2011
at 10:48 pm
Why is it a realistic context?
THIS:
is a more realistic context for how quickly we’re changing the tempeature.
By: Wow on December 8, 2011
at 8:09 am
Because people measure and refer to temperatures in degrees not fractions of a degree.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 6:11 pm
Nope. I have a digital thermometer that measures to tenths of a degree right here.
And astronomers use webcam images to get planetary images of higher resolution than the optics of the telescope can manage by creating and correlating multiple sources of the planet’s image.
I guess that “maths” is a bit hard for you, though, isn’t it.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 7:11 am
All popular weather forecasts show temperatures in whole numbers not fractions of degrees.
Huh? What does webcam images of planets have to do with this?
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 7:57 am
Yes, and this isn’t a weather report.
That you don’t understand “astronomers use webcam images to get planetary images of higher resolution than the optics of the telescope can manage by creating and correlating multiple sources of the planet’s image.” is merely proof that you are a moronic fool.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 9:47 am
I have no idea wtf you are talking about.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:48 pm
Yup, we agree: you haven’t a clue.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 6:28 am
Or you could try this one (which has a wider range of 16 degrees C between the max and min
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
By: Wow on December 8, 2011
at 8:12 am
I finished my analysis, and here are the results.
Research Articles (1993-2003) that come up searching for “climate change”: 9553
Papers on Poptech’s list that showed up in this sample: 57
Papers on Poptech’s list and in the sample that could be construed as expressing doubt about the consensus (several of these were pretty vague, though): 22
Papers on Poptech’s list and in the sample that either explicitly endorsed the consensus view or assumed the consensus view is correct in order to discuss some aspect of climate change: 18
Papers on Poptech’s list that didn’t say anything, one way or the other, about the consensus: 17
So what Poptech’s list demonstrates is that AT LEAST 0.2% of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate change is contrarian. Oh yes, there could be many more papers that he doesn’t know about. It might even raise the total to 0.4% if he’s lucky!
By: Barry Bickmore on December 8, 2011
at 8:34 pm
Your analysis is meaningless as it does not say how many explicitly endorse ACC/AGW,
How many papers show up for the results “anthropogenic climate
change” or “anthropogenic global warming”.
By: Poptech on December 8, 2011
at 8:44 pm
I guess you WILL be adding “Pooh at Pooh Corner” to your list then, since it doesn’t explicitly endorse the climate science.
Like I said: you’re a psycho.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 7:09 am
Why would I add a non peer-reviewed paper that does not support a skeptic argument.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 7:58 am
What the heck? You added papers from a journal that prints papers called “Extrasensory Interactions Between Homo Sapiens and Microbes” and “Re-Examination of the Law of Conservation of Mass in Chemical Reactions”. Oh, and don’t forget “Human Consciousness Influence on Water Structure” and “Techno-Dowsing: A Physiological Response System to Improve Psi Training”. And my favorite, “A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home”.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 8:55 am
None of those papers are on the list. I only have two climate related papers from the peer-reviewed journal JSE that includes papers debunking Astrology.
By: Potpech on December 9, 2011
at 5:18 pm
…aaaaannnnnnddddddd what ELSE does JSE include? Say it, PT. You can do it!
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:28 pm
The JSE can include scholarly peer-reviewed papers that deal with X-Files like phenomenon.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:37 pm
Can you name the X-Files episode that dealt with dog astrology? How about the episode that dealt with mysterious weight gains that happen when you suffocate a sheep? (Yes, JSE has a paper on that, too!)
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:43 pm
Season 3 Episode 13 dealt with Astrology.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:54 pm
Of the canine variety? I’m not just looking for ridiculous here. I want CERTIFIABLE NUTJOBBERY!!! Nothing less will convince me that The X-Files is in the same league.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:59 pm
Season 6 Episode 16 dealt with unusual canine phenomena.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:04 pm
And in which episode did the X-Files address methods for exploring “alternate worlds” experienced while taking psychadelic drugs? Yes, JSE has a paper on that, too!
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 6:08 pm
Season 8 Episode 7 dealt with drug induced alternate states of mind.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:20 pm
Your sole crieteria is that there must be explicit endorsement of the climate science.
You include papers that are not peer reviewed already.
By: Wow on December 9, 2011
at 9:45 am
What papers are not peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:37 pm
You have been told by Barry twice about two of them.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 6:27 am
Barry failed to show any of the counted papers were not peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:02 am
Why don’t you tell us?
My only goal was to show that your list in no way refutes Oreskes (2004). She already did the work of showing what % endorses the consensus.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 8:45 am
Barry,
How many papers show up for the results “anthropogenic climate
change” or “anthropogenic global warming”?
Your failure to answer the question destroys your entire argument.
By: Potpech on December 9, 2011
at 5:16 pm
I did the search for “anthropogenic climate change” the other day and got something like 108 papers. I fail to see why not doing your work for you “destroys my entire argument”.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:26 pm
That is 1% that supports ACC/AGW. That falsifies Oreskes’s claim that 75% endorse the “consensus” view.
Pay for access for me to the ISI and I will do the work myself.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:35 pm
This just illustrates how much you have no clue what you’re talking about. Just because a paper comes up on a search for “anthropogenic climate change” doesn’t mean it supports the theory. What if a paper mentions the phrase because it criticizes the theory? And what if some papers don’t mention that exact phrase, but still support or criticize the notion that humans are substantially changing the climate? You see, that new search is just another random sample, and we don’t know what it means until we analyze the individual papers. Happy reading. (And if you really want to do it, I can export the search results and send them to you. I’m THAT accommodating.) 😉
So what this really shows is that:
1. There are 108 research papers that show up in the ISI database when searching for “anthropogenic climate change” in the specified time period. That’s all. We don’t know without examining them what any of the papers say about the subject.
2. The search phrase you suggested gives a really small sample size, so it’s probably not as good as “global climate change” for generating a random sample.
3. Your logic chip is fried. You have no idea how to interpret this kind of information.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:54 pm
Barry you failed to apply the same standards to your other argument and just discredited it, thank you.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:00 pm
Oh really. How so?
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 6:08 pm
A search for “climate change” is meaningless in relation to the number that explicitly endorse ACC/AGW.
How do you explicitly endorse ACC/AGW without including the words in the body text of the paper?
Also while it is true that some papers in a search for “anthropogenic climate change” may not explicitly endorse it, that just makes your percentage even lower.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:12 pm
Because I THOUGHT I was just arguing that your list doesn’t refute Oreskes’s conclusions–you know, the ones that she actually stated, not the ones you falsely attribute to her. I showed that your argument that a different search term (like “climate change”) would have given significantly different results was false. All you turned up was about 0.2% of that larger sample. Arguing that only 0.2% of the literature is contrarian is far different than arguing that YOU have only demonstrated that 0.2% of the literature is contrarian.
If you would actually like to demonstrate that more than that is contrarian, I can tell you exactly how to run the study. If you want, that is.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 6:13 pm
You are still arguing the same strawman argument?
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:23 pm
More fun with the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
Poptech’s list includes a paper by David Deming called, “Global Warming, the Politicization of Science, and Michael Crichton’s State of Fear”. Deming published another paper in JSE called, “The Hum: An Anomalous Sound Heard Around the World”.
I just can’t express in words how grateful I am to Poptech for not being too snobbish to include JSE articles on his list. All I can say is that JSE is made of AWESOME.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 9:51 am
LOL. State of Fear?
I didn’t know that sci-fi was pear-reviewed. Someone should have told Isaac Asimoz.
By: Bob Strayer on December 9, 2011
at 5:07 pm
Oh no, Bob. You are not allowed to call it “sci-fi”. You must call it “X-Files like phenomena” as Poptech has commanded. No one is allowed to think his list is stupid.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:55 pm
You can “think” my list is stupid but you cannot imply that no more than 2 papers on the list come from the scholarly peer-reviewed JSE which can include topical papers on X-Files like phenomena.
Deming explicitly refers to “state of fear” as a fictional thriller and makes no claims otherwise.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 6:08 pm
Where did I say that more than 2 of your papers came from JSE? Oh, wait… you’re talking about what I “implied”. Because you can read minds. Just like you read Naomi Oreskes’s mind.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 6:44 pm
The implication was based on your biased presentation where you misrepresented the list using dishonest cherry picking.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 7:01 pm
Well, I’ll take that with a grain of salt, considering that you think a sample of 928 papers is dishonest cherrypicking, too.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 9:00 pm
I believe the method she used was both dishonest and fraudulent as her paper was published claiming to use a search phrase “climate change” when she actually used “global climate change”. The cherry picking was using an arbitrary search phrase “global climate change” to get 928 papers with ZERO dissent. The dishonesty and fraud was her publishing a paper without the actual search phrase she used but claiming something else. To this day this paper is misrepresented and used as propaganda for alarmists to claim no peer-reviewed papers exist supporting skeptic arguments.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 10:18 pm
And when you use the phrase “climate change” you get 0.02%.
You do understand that statistically it is still zero.
By: Bob Strayer on December 9, 2011
at 10:21 pm
No one has done a study on the 0.02% number as all the papers in the sample have not been reviewed. Barry is arbitrarily using papers off my list in a meaningless statistical exercise.
All anyone needs to know is that there are only 108 papers that that explicitly mention “anthropogenic climate change” in that sample. That means no more than 1% of that sample can be said to explicitly endorse “anthropogenic climate change”.
Fail.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 10:29 pm
Of course it has to be explicit… only you and the rest of the lunatic fringe are allowed to judge what may or may not be implied. Stating agreement with the consensus opinion does not necessarily imply support for same consensus opinion.
Black is white, peace is war, slavery is freedom, yada yada yada.
By: Bob Strayer on December 9, 2011
at 10:36 pm
I am beginning to see a behavioral trend here.
You are afraid of the details.
That is why you would rather look at 1C worth of data on a 10C scale. That way you can ignore the details.
Just like you are refusing to look at any of the details of Barry’s results. He offered to help you out, and he is a professional teacher.
What you have here is a great opportunity to become disillusioned.
By: Bob Strayer on December 10, 2011
at 10:37 am
That’s right, PT. No one has done the study that would challenge Oreskes’s conclusions even a tiny bit. No one–especially not YOU. Therefore, your constant claims that her study was fraudulent and that a different search term would give significantly different results are baseless and libelous.
On the bright side, you are right that some people (including you) misconstrue the meaning of Oreskes’s results, because they have no research experience. Therefore, I think it’s fine that you use your list to debunk that notion. I just think it’s ridiculous to impute those conclusions to Oreskes herself, when she didn’t say that.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 8:25 am
Barry, that is incorrect as this study has been done,
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/d588k23724201502/
“Fear of anthropogenic “global warming” can adversely affect patients’ well-being. Accordingly, the state of the scientific consensus about climate change was studied by a review of the 539 papers on “global climate change” found on the Web of Science database from January 2004 to mid-February 2007, updating research by Oreskes, who had reported that between 1993 and 2003 none of 928 scientific papers on “global climate change” had rejected the consensus that more than half of the warming of the past 50 years was likely to have been anthropogenic. In the present review, 31 papers (6% of the sample) explicitly or implicitly reject the consensus. Though Oreskes said that 75% of the papers in her former sample endorsed the consensus, fewer than half now endorse it. Only 7% do so explicitly. Only one paper refers to “catastrophic” climate change, but without offering evidence. There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm that now harms patients.”
You are correct that I do not challenge Oreskes’s fraudulent study because I am well aware when you use arbitrary search phrases in limited databases you can get the results you are looking for.
My claims of her study being fraudulent has to do with the fact that it was published with a search term that was not used.
It is irrefutable that using a different search term would give different results larger than ZERO. Since what is considered “significant” is subjective, I consider this significant.
As I have already explained, I have extensive research experience in computer science.
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 5:30 pm
Bob, Barry does not understand the irrelevance of his “results” and has failed to do the research needed to make a legitimate argument.
All anyone needs to know is that there are only 108 papers that that explicitly mention “anthropogenic climate change” in that sample. That means no more than 1% of that sample can be said to explicitly endorse “anthropogenic climate change”.
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 5:32 pm
That is just very poor math and insane logic.
108/928=11.6%. To conclude that all one need know is AGW is mentioned in order to form an opinion is evidence of your cognitive shortcomings.
By: Bob Strayer on December 10, 2011
at 7:06 pm
Thanks for the link, PT. I expect it to be plagued by the same lack of science reading skills as Benny Peiser exhibited, but it’s worth looking at.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 6:25 pm
Oh, yep. Schulte’s list is at least as bad as Peiser’s, and he plagiarized it from Monckton. See this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/naomi-oreskes-consensus-on-global-warming.htm
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 6:34 pm
Could you tell me what Peiser “misread” from her paper?
Do you have a valid reference site? I do not reference websites written by cartoonists,
“I’m not a climatologist or a scientist but a self employed cartoonist” – John Cook, Skeptical Science
http://wayback.archive.org/web/jsp/Interstitial.jsp?seconds=5&date=1197566946000&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skepticalscience.com%2Fpage.php%3Fp%3D3&target=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20071213172906%2Fwww.skepticalscience.com%2Fpage.php%3Fp%3D3
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 6:42 pm
Peiser admitted that his 34 papers that went against the consensus didn’t really go against the consensus. In other words, he didn’t know enough about “the consensus” to tell what went against it.
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1777013.htm
The same can be said of Schulte’s list of 6 articles. E.g. the first one on his list by Cao et al. (2005) just says that uncertainty in the carbon cycle makes climate change hard to predict accurately. That says nothing about whether humans are responsible for significant climate change already. We know how much CO2 has stayed in the atmosphere to date.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 6:55 pm
Oh, and BTW, Cao et al. are right, and the IPCC already takes that into account. If they include uncertainty in the carbon cycle in their projections, it biases the temperatures HIGHER. So yeah, Schulte (and Monckton) didn’t know what he was reading.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 6:58 pm
Barry this is incorrect, Peiser’s initial criticism was based on Oreskes’s lack of a clear explanation of her methodology in her paper. So it has nothing to do with him “misreading” anything,
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060627/20060627_18.html
“While Oreskes did not specify the method she applied in her study, she later confirmed that she had limited her search to “articles”, while I included “all document types” in my initial assessment. This difference appears to explain the discrepancy between the “928” abstracts Oreskes claims to have analysed and the 1117 documents I found and considered, although her figures don’t add up, one way or another.”
This did not affect his other very significant argument,
“However, as I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the ‘consensus view.'”
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 7:16 pm
Bob, I was not dividing by Oreskes’s number but Barry’s.
You cannot claim explicit endorsement of something without explicitly saying so.
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 7:19 pm
That doesn’t change the insane logic,
By: Bob Strayer on December 10, 2011
at 8:59 pm
What is insane? The claim is there is a “consensus” on “anthropogenic climate change” in the peer-reviewed literature. You cannot begin to make this claim unless you demonstrate a majority of papers explicitly endorse “anthropogenic climate change”. How can a paper be said to explicitly endorse something it does not mention?
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 9:04 pm
So if a paper does not use the term AGW or ACC, by your rules a paper that agrees that doubling atmospheric CO2 will increase surface temperature by 3C cannot be an endorsement the consensus position. Even if the same paper attributes the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide with human emissions?
That is simply parsing words and phrases to fit your predetermined outcome.
Like Barry, I am growing weary of this. But I would like to thank you for demonstrating just how one uses narrowly defined criteria in an attempt to bias the results. You have demonstrated to the 95% confidence level how to do what you mistakenly accuse Oreskes of.
By: Bob Strayer on December 11, 2011
at 11:43 am
“You cannot begin to make this claim unless you demonstrate a majority of papers explicitly endorse “anthropogenic climate change”. How can a paper be said to explicitly endorse something it does not mention?”
If it says the same thing, but doesn’t use that exact phrase.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 9:08 pm
It can use a slightly alternate phrase such as “anthropogenic global warming” but it still has to explicitly state this.
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 9:13 pm
Of course.
Rather like the really weird funtamentalists, poptart hears voices in his head and then assigns their words to people. If they were his own thoughts, rather than yours, he would have told himself that.
As RPSr knows, poptart is ALWAYS willing to hear what you say.
Just unwilling to do anything about it.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 6:25 am
I am religiously agnostic so I have no idea what you are talking about.
Where did Roger Pielke Sr. state that his papers cannot be used to support a skeptic argument?
I see you are still with the childish name calling because you cannot form a logical argument.
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:21 pm
You don’t have to be religious to hear voices, poptart.
And you don’t need to be religious to be a fundamentalist.
PS you’ve said yourself before:
“Dr. Pielke Jr. never suggested any papers be removed. He merely inquired that his papers do not refute AGW and if that is what the list is about then they do not belong.”
But you have said here in “defense” of your pathetic list: “You are making a meaningless comparison between papers that explicitly reject ACC/AGW alarm”
And on his blog:
‘Andrew, I’d be interested in your definition of #1 [supporting skepticism of “man-made” global warming] which is neither a scientific term nor meaningful in any way.’
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:15 am
More Ad hominem. Anyway I am not religious nor a fundamentalist.
Roger Pielke Jr. is NOT Roger Pielke Sr.
Can you even get basic facts like this straight?
You are confusing mutually exclusive conversations between Barry and myself with Roger Pielke Jr. and myself.
In regards to Roger Pielke Jr.,
To make the title more scientifically accurate it was changed from “man-made global warming” to “ACC/AGW” and to make it more clear to the intent it was changed from “supporting skepticism” to “supporting skeptic arguments”.
Again which one of his papers cannot be used to support a skeptic argument?
Regardless you can stop with this charade as you do not agree with Pielke Jr.’s papers.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:34 am
Nope, still not ad hominem.
Go read a dictionary.
OK, so RPJr did. Big deal. His papers still there, though.
You’re a lunatic, poptart.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:38 am
All you have is ad hominem.
Of course his papers are still there because they were NOT listed for the reasons he falsely assumed.
Again which one of his papers cannot be used to support a skeptic argument?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:55 am
Deming’s other paper is not on the list but sounds like something you would find in an X-Files episode.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 5:59 pm
That would be an ad hom, then.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:39 am
Only he can make that claim in this instance.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:59 am
Interesting my comments are now being moderated, no problem. I have screen captured this post and will post any comments to my website that Barry censors.
By: Potpech on December 9, 2011
at 5:21 pm
I didn’t change any settings. WordPress did that by itself.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 5:26 pm
Let’s pause the conversation here and consider a couple facts.
1. My original argument was that Poptech’s list was subjected to so little quality control that he could include papers from a journal that publishes dog astrology.
2. Now I have him scrambling to show how said journal isn’t really so bad, because lots of the subjects it covers (or similar ones) might have shown up in episodes of The X-Files. Apparently, THAT is his standard of excellence. If The X-Files covers it, that’s good enough science for Poptech!!
By: Barry Bickmore on December 9, 2011
at 6:42 pm
1. Quality control exists on the list as all counted papers must be peer-reviewed. Only two papers on the list are from the scholarly peer-reviewed JSE which publishes papers debunking astrology and on other X-Files related subjects. Both papers on the list from the JSE are about climate related subjects. No other journal on the list is remotely related to this journal or the topics it covers.
2. It demonstrates that credentialed scientists have an interest in investigating X-Files like phenomena. None of those topics however appear on the list.
By: Poptech on December 9, 2011
at 7:00 pm
QC is nonexistent on your list since you disregard any controls that would reduce your list.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 6:22 am
It is a lie that quality control does not exist on my list as all the counted papers must be peer-reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed journal. This is explicitly stated on the list,
Criteria for Inclusion: All counted papers must be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal and support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm.
Why would I use your biased criteria for what appears on a resource for skeptics? That would be illogical.
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:01 am
No, it’s fact.
Just one that is devastating to your case.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 8:58 am
So counted papers can be listed that were not peer-reviewed?
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:16 pm
So counted papers can be listed that were not peer-reviewed?
It appears you are a liar.
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:18 pm
Try that again in English, poptart.
You can count papers if you can list them.
Listing papers doesn’t mean they’re peer reviewed, however.
So what does “So counted papers can be listed that were not peer-reviewed?” mean? Do you want me to say “papers that were not peer reviewed can be listed and counted”?
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 6:29 am
Again, which counted papers were not peer-reviewed? Barry has not shown any counted papers on the list to not be peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 7:18 am
G&T’s paper wasn’t peer reviewed for one.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 7:51 am
Plimer himself denies your attribution of his paper, among others.
Another failure of any quality control.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 7:52 am
I already went over this with Bob, G&T’s paper while invited was still peer-reviewed. I confirmed this with the editor of the journal.
There are no papers on the list from “Plimer”.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 8:03 am
Invited reviews do not go through the same process as refereed research.
G&T are commenting on a field they know nothing about.=, as evidenced by their gross misunderstanding of thermodynamics. Scientists measure and monitor atmospheric back-radiation with instruments. Yet G&T say this is impossible because it violates their interpretation of the second law opf thermodynamics.
Yea, G&T is a prime example of just how irrelevant and silly your list really is.
By: Bob Strayer on December 13, 2011
at 8:20 am
That is incorrect, the peer-review process is the same.
They clearly understand physics as they have Ph.D.’s in the field.
G&T is an example of the existence of peer-reviewed papers that do not support your views.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 8:28 am
“G&T’s paper while invited was still peer-reviewed.”
Peer review doesn’t mean “The editor read it and put it in”, poptart.
There were errors that a 14-year-old schoolkid wouldn’t make.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 10:51 am
And RP Sr’s work doesn’t say what you say it does, even the author agrees.
Again, your quality control is absent.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 10:52 am
Plus you should remove papers that are shown to be incorrect:
Click to access 0802.4324v1.pdf
Another element of quality control, otherwise you have, as in your list, GIGO.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:00 am
I am well aware of what “peer-reviewed” means as it is defined on the list,
Peer-Reviewed: (defined) “of or being scientific or scholarly writing or research that has undergone evaluation by other experts in the field to judge if it merits publication.”
The paper under went scholarly peer-review not simply the editor going over it.
Which paper by Roger Pielke Sr. cannot support a skeptic argument? Where does he even mention the list?
Quality control exists on the list,
Criteria for Inclusion: All counted papers must be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal and support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm.
The non-peer-reviewed paper by Smith was rebutted,
Click to access 0904.2767.pdf
No paper will be removed because you believe it is incorrect.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:22 am
“of or being scientific or scholarly writing or research that has undergone evaluation by other experts in the field to judge if it merits publication.”
Except that hasn’t happened.
“Which paper by Roger Pielke Sr. cannot support a skeptic argument? Where does he even mention the list?”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-recheck-that-list.html
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:28 am
No paper will be removed because you’re a lunatic, poptart. Reality has no hold over you.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:29 am
Yes it did happen, the paper was peer-reviewed. You will have to deal with it.
LMAO, that is NOT Roger Pielke Sr. that is Roger Pielke Jr. – this is getting embarrassing for you.
All that nonsense is refuted here,
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=4019
Again, which of his papers cannot support a skeptic argument?
Why would I remove a peer-reviewed paper that exists simply because you only know how to make ad hominem arguments?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:39 am
Nope, Zebe’s paper shows that the sensitivity required to get the PETM would need to be higher than the IPCC sensitivity to explain the PETM.
Additionally, since it was a catastrophe, doesn’t dismiss AGW alarm.
Loon.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:46 am
Zebe’s paper clearly supports skeptic arguments, in this case CO2 as a primary climate driver since up to 89% of the observed warming in the time period studied cannot be explained by CO2 forcing. The paper explicitly mentions that other forcings would have to account for the discrepancy,
“If the temperature reconstructions are correct, then …forcings other than atmospheric CO2 caused a major portion of the PETM warming.”
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:13 pm
False.
The current IPCC best guess sensitivity of 3C per doubling can only account for 70% of the warming seen.
Therefore supporting the IPCC’s range of sensitivities.
The event was also a climate disaster therefore also proving such catastrophe can happen.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 7:45 am
Are you mathematically challenged? What I stated meant that CO2 could only account for 11% of the warming.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 8:04 am
What the paper you linked to stated was that 70% of the warming would be explained by 3C per doubling of CO2 climate sensitivity.
Of course, being a fundamentalist in your soul, you don’t know what a paper means, all you know is that it MUST be saying that AGW is false because it’s saying that past warming isn’t explained by the IPCC current processes.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 8:28 am
The paper explicitly stated that up to 89% of the observed warming in the time period studied cannot be explained by CO2 forcing. Take 1 C and divide by 9 C equals 11% caused by CO2 that leaves 89% NOT caused by CO2.
I made no claim that the paper says AGW must be false only that it supports skeptic arguments for CO2 to not be a primary climate driver.
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:18 pm
LOL. You are such an idiot.
Since the paper uses the same climate sensitivity as the IPCC, it does not support an argument that CO2 is not the primary driver of modern climate change.
You are so stupid and eager to pad your numbers that you cannot even see how absurd you really are.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 10:20 am
It supports skeptic arguments that CO2 has never been a primary climate driver and thus would not be one today.
Bob if you were properly educated you would be able to make a rational argument but sadly you are not capable.
I understand how much the existence of the list bothers you just remember there is nothing you can do about it. I mean absolutely nothing, yet it gets referenced more and more and more.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 12:00 pm
You are deluded. Your list is a great example of the sheer ignorance of the denier position.
You are one to talk about proper education. If you actually paid for a proper education… you should ask for a refund. Because you are an idiot.
You are saying that temperature changes due to increases of CO2 cannot drive climate change. But temperature changes from other sources can.
You are so stupid that you will now argue that is not what your saying.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 5:40 pm
The list is a great example of something you can do nothing about despite your incessant whining.
Clearly you never received a proper education.
I am saying that their are peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments that CO2 is not a primary driver of climate.
Your lack of a proper education has led you to believe in your own strawman arguments.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 5:49 pm
And using as evidence peer reviewed papers that do support CO2 being the primary driver of modern climate change.
You are just to stupid to realize it.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 6:02 pm
The paper does not support CO2 being the primary driver of modern climate change since the analysis does not cover modern climate change.
Your lack of a proper education is why you believe otherwise.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 6:12 pm
They measure climate sensitivity as 3C per doubling of CO2, which is the driver of modern climate change. That is the foundation of the AGW theory and their analysis accounts for it.
But again, you are too stupid to grasp the scope of your own ignorance.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 6:20 pm
They simply reference that as part of their historical analysis and demonstrate that CO2 is not a primary driver of climate in their historical analysis. Alarmists have claimed otherwise.
CO2 is not the driver of modern climate change, that would be the sun.
Let me know when you have received a proper education.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 6:30 pm
The Sun?
I have enough education to know that as the Sun’s energy weakens, as it has for the past 50 years… temperatures drop.
So enlighten us oh learned one… how is a weaker Sun warming the planet?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/this-just-in-the-sun-affects-climate.html
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 7:29 pm
I don’t get my science off of a cartoonists website.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 8:40 am
You don’t have any science. You admit you don’t understand physics. All yoiu have is a specious argument you cling to for dear life.
By: Bob Strayer on December 19, 2011
at 9:22 am
That is a lie as I have admitted no such thing. All of my scientific arguments are supported by peer-reviewed papers.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 11:15 am
You have yet to make a scientific argument. When I asked you to express your understanding of the second law of thermodynamics, you answered with an appeal to authority, a red herring fallacy. Since you refuse to make a scientific argument and demonstrate an extreme ignorance of basic physical processes. One is left but one conclusion…you are actually as stupid as you appear.
On this thread alone you have demonstrated your inability to reason, by:
1. Refusing to believe that Josh Halpern and Eli Rabbett are the same person.
2. Believing that Wow and I are the same person.
You are of course wrong in both cases, but there is no way to prove it to you because like your AGW conspiracy belief, you want it to be true. Therefore, you believe it, regardless of the reality.
The very existence of you and your list is a devastating indictment of the denier mindset. Keep up the good work.
By: Bob Strayer on December 19, 2011
at 4:29 pm
I have no interest in discussing the scientific content of any paper with you since you do not have the proper education to have such a discussion.
1. You have failed to provide irrefutable evidence that the bunny rabbit blog is Joshua Halpern. When you can do this let me know. Your failure here as in each other case is fully documented.
2. I do not have admin access to this site so I cannot verify it one way or another.
I understand your frustration knowing that there is nothing, I mean absolutely nothing you can do about the list.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 6:20 pm
It is not my education that is the problem. I can articulate a scientific argument, as I have demonstrated here on this blog. You refuse because you are afraid of swimming in the deep end.
You even passed on an offer from Barry for a real education.
You are grossly ignorant, and likely to remain that way for the rest of blissful life.
By: Bob Strayer on December 19, 2011
at 6:48 pm
You are incapable of supporting basic arguments let alone articulation more advanced arguments. The only answer is you lack a proper education. My swimming skills are excellent as I was trained as a lifeguard when I was younger.
Barry made various elementary mistakes that I corrected.
My depth of knowledge in computer science is something you can only dream of.
If I had more time I would tutor you.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 7:15 pm
Poptech said:
“This did not affect his other very significant argument,
[Quoting Peiser] “However, as I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the ‘consensus view.’”
Get it through your head. Peiser misread the 34 papers he thought contradicted the “consensus view”. They did NOT contradict it, as he later admitted. In other words, he MISREAD those papers, so why on Earth would I think his reading of the other papers is valid?
Anyway, this conversation has been fun, but I’m checking out. Got better things to do.
By: Barry Bickmore on December 10, 2011
at 9:12 pm
Get it through your head Peiser only withdrew that part of his criticism including those 34 papers after Oreskes said she used a different search strategy.
By: Poptech on December 10, 2011
at 9:27 pm
And since the dataset was only 37, the point was that he was 92% wrong.
By: Wow on December 12, 2011
at 6:21 am
What are you talking about?
By: Poptech on December 12, 2011
at 8:21 pm
Yes, what ARE you talking about?
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 6:27 am
What was 37?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 7:16 am
I am beginning to believe “Wow” is someone’s sockpuppet likely Bobs since that account is doing all the ad hominem.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 8:30 am
Ah, you’re meds are failing.
No, it’s not a grand conspiracy against you, poptart.
PS it’s hilarious when you whine about “ad hominem” when you obviously have NO IDEA what it means. You’ve just been told it can be used as verbal adamantium armour. Just claim it and you can ignore everything you don’t want to answer.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 10:50 am
To much of a coincidence how Bob and your comments are timed.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:53 am
Nope, it’s completely a coincidence.
It’s also fruitcake-loopy to require it be a conspiracy.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:56 am
Sure.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:10 pm
Barry, you can find other people’s work (and tiring work it is too) on poptart’s fallacy over here:
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:30 am
That is completely refuted here,
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=3595
Try harder next time.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:42 am
“I refuse to believe you are right” is not a refutation, poptart. It’s merely another example of your psychopathy.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:43 am
Lets see what Greenfyre’s agenda is,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/truth-about-greenfyre.html
Please prove me wrong Wow, did Greenfyre lie and claim that I counted “submitted” papers?
Lets see who the real liar is or did you just learn how to use Google?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:50 am
Let’s see what poptart’s agenda is.
Full-on denier.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:55 am
So you keep citing lies from a radical environmentalist who is directly associated with an eco-terrorist organization? Too funny. Keep citing him, it really makes your case LMAO.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:06 pm
Prove it, you lying scumbag.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 10:27 am
I have already proven it,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/05/truth-about-greenfyre.html
Mike Kaulbars does not deny he is directly associated with Earth First.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/514460971.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Dec+01%2C+1990&author=Tom+Spears&pub=Waterloo+Region+Record&desc=Earth+First!+takes+protests+to+new+level+Public+arrests%2C+office+invasions+all+part+of+group%27s+quick-hit+tactics&pqatl=google
“Mike Kaulbars, a founder of the Earth First! chapter in Ottawa, says his group has about 20 “hard-core” members, and perhaps 80 who are drawn in for special events such as protests.”
Earth First is a known Eco-Terrorist organization,
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7229
I would watch out who I associate with.
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:24 pm
You counted a paper AND IT’S RETRACTION as pro your idiocy.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:56 am
There are no retractions on the list.
The following are not counted liar,
Counting Method: Only peer-reviewed papers are counted. Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Rebuttals, Replies, Responses, and Submitted papers are not counted but listed as references in defense of various papers or as rebuttals to other published papers.
Counting Method: Only peer-reviewed papers are counted. Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Rebuttals, Replies, Responses, and Submitted papers are not counted but listed as references in defense of various papers or as rebuttals to other published papers.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:09 pm
Yes, we KNOW there are no retractions.
Proof that you have no quality control at all in that lists’ construction.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 7:43 am
PS hilarious again when you’ve spent hours arguing with Barry that Oraske’s method “insinuated” something else.
Why doesn’t your method insinuate?
Loon.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 7:44 am
You just lied and claimed I counted a retraction – name it.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 8:00 am
Nope I told the truth and said that you NEVER made a retraction.
Are you now claiming that 100% there is not one retraction of a paper counted in that list?
When I show you wrong, will you enact any quality control?
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:14 am
Which paper was retracted from the journal it was published in?
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 2:14 pm
You lied above that “You counted a paper AND IT’S RETRACTION”
What paper did I count and what retraction did I count?
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 2:20 pm
I asked you if you’d do something about quality control when I show you.
Otherwise it’s not worth my time: you’ll pretend that it doesn’t count and continue with no quality in your list, just a pointless count of papers you have in a list.
I can make a list of 900 papers too.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 10:27 am
As usual you have nothing.
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:19 pm
In other words: you won’t apply any quality control to your list.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 11:43 am
Quality control has been applied to the list as all the counted papers must be peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 5:20 am
The journal’s editor, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, a reader in geography at the University of Hull, in England, says she sometimes publishes scientific papers challenging the view that global warming is a problem, because that position is often stifled in other outlets. “I’m following my political agenda — a bit, anyway,” she says. “But isn’t that the right of the editor?”
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:32 am
That nonsense is refuted here,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/04/correcting-misinformation-about-journal.html
“My political agenda is simple and open; it concerns the role of research ambitions in the making of policy.
I concluded from a research project about the IPCC – funded by the UK government during the mid 1990s – that this body was set up to support, initially, climate change research projects supported by the WMO and hence the rapidly evolving art and science of climate modeling. A little later the IPCC came to serve an intergovernmental treaty, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This enshrines in law that future climate change would be warming caused by greenhouse gases (this remains debated), is man-made (to what an extend remains debated) as well as dangerous (remains debated). It became a task of the IPCC government selected and government funded, to support the theory that this man-made warming would be dangerous rather than beneficial, as some argue.
The solutions to this assumed problem were worked out by IPCC working group three, which worked largely independently of the science working group one and consisted primarily of parties interested in a ‘green’ energy agenda, including people from environment agencies, NGOs and environmental economics. This group supplied the science group with emission scenarios that have been widely criticized and which certainly enhanced the ‘danger’. From interviews and my own reading I concluded that the climate science debate WAS BY NO MEANS OVER AND SHOULD CONTINUE. However, when I noticed that scientific critics of the IPCC science working group were increasingly side-lined and had difficulties being published – when offered the editorship of E&E, I decided to continue publishing ‘climate skeptics’ and document the politics associated with the science debate. The implications for energy policy and technology are obvious.
I myself have argued the cause of climate ‘realism’ – I am a geomorphologist by academic training before switching to environmental international relations – but do so on more the basis of political rather than science-based arguments. As far as the science of climate change is concerned, I would describe myself as agnostic.
In my opinion the global climate research enterprise must be considered as an independent political actor in environmental politics. I have widely published on this subject myself, and my own research conclusions have influenced my editorial policy. I also rely on an excellent and most helpful editorial board which includes a number of experienced scientists. Several of the most respected ‘climate skeptics’ regularly peer-review IPCC critical papers I publish.”
– Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment
Keep trying. Google harder next time.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:47 am
Nope, she requested the G&T paper.
She asked who would review it.
They were NOT scientific peers, they were ideological peers.
Loon.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:48 am
G&T was not published in Energy & Environment WTF are you talking about? Do you even understand what you are arguing?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:51 am
It was published there.
Loon.
It was also published elsewhere.
And several other of your papers were, likewise, published in that rag.
Additionally, you have letters and opinion pieces which, even when appearing in a peer reviewed journal do not have to be peer reviewed.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:53 am
It was NOT published in E&E. Please provide the citation liar.
“Letters” are a scientific type of publication and have nothing to do with “letters to the editor” are you really that scientific illiterate?
Prove that any of the papers were not peer-reviewed.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:04 pm
Yup, it was.
And it’s hilarious to hear you, of all people, demanding a citation.
The only person who backs you up is, well, YOU.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 7:42 am
So where is the citation? Prove it. G&T was never published in E&E.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 7:58 am
It was first shown in E&E.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:12 am
Cite it.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 2:19 pm
PS that doesn’t refute it.
She confirms it!
“I myself have argued the cause of climate ‘realism’ ”
Of course, the “reality” is that AGW is a scam.
This is why she politically accepts bogus papers as long as they say AGW is false.
She’s an ideologically driven nutcase.
As are you.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:49 am
What is her political ideology then?
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 11:52 am
Denialist.
By: Wow on December 13, 2011
at 11:54 am
That is not a political ideology.
Her position on climate change is agnostic as she explicitly stated.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:01 pm
I note you didn’t manage to deny it.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 7:41 am
I refuted it.
Again what is her political ideology?
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 7:56 am
She is a Plutocrat.
plutocrat – someone who exercises power by virtue of wealth
If anyone should need more evidence that Andrew is prone to conspiracy theories. His theory that Wow and I are the same person should convince you.
The “AGW is a hoax” conspiracy theory has no more evidence to support it than your “Wow is Bob” theory.
By: Bob Strayer on December 14, 2011
at 10:07 am
You merely called it not a political ideology.
That’s not a refutation.
At least not amongst the sane portion of the planet.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:11 am
Bob her political ideology is not plutocracy. The answer is available online if you are intellectually honest enough to search for it.
Again, what is her political ideology?
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 3:14 pm
The refutation was already posted when she explicitly stated she was agnostic on climate change.
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 3:23 pm
Her language is that of a free market fundamentalist, poptart.
By: Wow on December 21, 2011
at 9:35 am
Again, what is her political ideology? Please enlighten us.
By: Poptech on December 13, 2011
at 12:14 pm
denialist, poptart.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:16 am
PS “Agnosticism” is NOT “Believes it’s wrong”.
By: Wow on December 14, 2011
at 9:16 am
“Denialist” is not a political ideology it is something children like yourself use to ad hominem others. Political ideology would be – liberal, conservative ect…
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 2:17 pm
I am also well aware of what “agnosticism” means,
agnostic (defined) – “a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic
By: Poptech on December 14, 2011
at 3:27 pm
Yes it is.
Denial of facts inconsistent with their worldview.
This could be because they’re Free Market Fundamentalists. It could be because they’re Young Earth Creation Fundamentalists. It could be because they’re fundamentally retarded.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 8:25 am
She is neither a free market fundamentalist nor a creationist.
Again, what is her political ideology?
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:07 pm
She’s a lunatic using her “science paper” to peddle snake-oil because it makes her ideology sound rational and real.
By: Wow on December 21, 2011
at 9:34 am
And when she says “I myself have argued the cause of climate ‘realism’ ”
By “Realism” she means “AGW is not a problem, even if it exists”.
Ergo she HAS taken on a position: one of denial.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 10:40 am
She explicitly says,
“As far as the science of climate change is concerned, I would describe myself as agnostic.”
Her position has nothing to do with your childish ad hominem.
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:34 pm
And deniers describe themselves as skeptics.
This doesn’t make it so.
By: Wow on December 19, 2011
at 8:32 am
You repetition of smears against someone does not make them true.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 8:38 am
Funny that you whine about “smears” after so long slagging off Oraskes.
By: Wow on December 19, 2011
at 10:59 am
I am not the one who published a fraudulent paper that did not include the search term that was actually used. Oreskes has long engaged in smears of skeptical scientists, a recent example is her smear book “Merchants of Doubt”.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 11:19 am
Indeed, you haven’t published a fraudulent paper. You’ve just posted a fraud on your own website.
And why do you have two sentences that have nothing to do with each other?
However, you delusional conspiracy theory has been noted.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 9:54 am
I haven’t posted any fraud on my website.
I don’t believe in delusional conspiracy theories like the JFK assassination or 911.
By: Poptech on December 20, 2011
at 10:00 am
No, you believe in other delusional conspiracy theories like the climate science is suppressing information that proves AGW false.
You are deluded and believe that the IPCC is alarmist.
You are deluded that your list has any worth whatsoever.
That you don’t buy in to every lunatic conspiracy theory does not mean you have no delusional conspiracy theory and that you’ve been unable to deny it is merely your accession to that fact.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 11:01 am
Climategate proved that dissent had been suppressed, that is not a conspiracy but a fact.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/300ubchn.asp?nopager=1
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/climategate-part-ii_610926.html?nopager=1
Parts of the IPCC report are alarmist.
The list has an enormous amount of worth which is why it is frequently cited and referenced.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 5:19 am
Further to poptart’s denial of any control of what he lists, he only complained about this:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/better-recheck-that-list.html
by finding it funny that I mixed up Junior and Senior RP.
But since there are still papers that should not be in his list, this proves two things:
1) No quality control in the list
2) Will ignore any evidence of #1
and will continue to insist that there’s some beef in the load of donkey carcasses he’s faffing on about here.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 10:32 am
More childish Ad hominem,
No I completely refuted that and posted the refutation on December 13, 2011 at 11:39 am but I will post it again,
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=4019
You have failed to demonstrate that a single paper cannot support a skeptic argument.
You have failed to provide any evidence even after it is repeatedly asked for.
Your continued failure is noted.
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:27 pm
No, “refute” means “show evidence it’s wrong”. Not “I refuse to accept it”.
RP Jr the author himself wants you to remove his papers because he doesn’t agree with your inclusion of them and he’s not someone who you can claim is part of a grand AGW conspiracy, so that doesn’t work.
PS why do you whine about ad hom’s when
a) you don’t know what it means
b) you use them liberally against everyone else
By: Wow on December 19, 2011
at 6:15 am
His initial assumption for why they were included was false. Roger Pielke Jr. wanted it made clear that his papers do not argue against ACC/AGW nor does he and I made that clear with the disclaimer. His papers however can be used to support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 8:37 am
The papers are still not to be included because you’re still misrepresenting them.
By: Wow on December 19, 2011
at 10:58 am
That is absolutely false, none of his papers have ever been misrepresented and all support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW Alarm.
By: Poptech on December 19, 2011
at 11:11 am
It is absolutely true, poptart.
You’re a faker and a liar, poptart, and you include anything under any pretenses and insist that they’re relevant papers. Not even Roger believes you.
By: Wow on December 21, 2011
at 9:33 am
Sockpuppet,
Which one of Roger’s papers does not support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW Alarm?
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 1:26 pm
PS poptart is still wrong about Sue being agnostic.
You don’t see agnostics going and showing papers proving god doesn’t exist.
Agnostics don’t go and accept anything that says some proposition is wrong.
Agnostics don’t drop any quality control about crackpot theories just because they disagree with the consensus.
And Sue, like poptart, isn’t an agnostic, they’re contrarians at best, denialists at heart and completely 100% heart-and-soul sold on the idea that AGW is wrong but the “truth” about it is being suppressed.
By: Wow on December 16, 2011
at 10:36 am
More childish ad hominem,
Who is Sue?
By: Poptech on December 16, 2011
at 1:29 pm
Bob did you figure out what Dr. Boehmer-Christiansen’s political affiliation is yet? I will be glad to educate you on this.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 12:07 pm
I am little concerned with how she labels herself. She serves a global plutocracy, that is all I need to know.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 5:31 pm
So since you do not know you just lie? I am not surprised.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 5:35 pm
You serve the same masters. In your case however, doubt you share the wealth.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 5:42 pm
Your delusional conspiracy theories are noted.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 5:46 pm
She serves them knowingly. You are just an idiot living out your liberals are going to eat the world fantasies online. An unwitting servant.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 6:00 pm
Please provide evidence for your delusional conspiracy theories.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 6:02 pm
You are the evidence you idiot!
Read your blog.
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 6:03 pm
Still no evidence? If you had received a proper education you would have known you are supposed to support your delusional conspiracy theories.
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 6:15 pm
You are the evidence. Your list and blog are the evidence. You are just too stupid to understand that you are the joke!
By: Bob Strayer on December 17, 2011
at 6:23 pm
Where does my list mention who she “servers”? Are you off your medication?
By: Poptech on December 17, 2011
at 6:31 pm
Highly amusing. poptart, who is wailing about how there’s a conspiracy to hide the “truth” about AGW, condescendingly notes:
#
Your delusional conspiracy theories are noted.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 5:55 am
Quote where I state – “there’s a conspiracy to hide the “truth” about AGW”.
By: Poptech on December 20, 2011
at 7:47 am
Quote where Bob names a conspiracy…
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 9:53 am
No problem,
“You serve the same masters.”
“She serves them knowingly.”
By: Poptech on December 20, 2011
at 9:57 am
Nope, I asked where he names a conspiracy.
Go on.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 10:59 am
The language is clearly conspiratorial.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 5:14 am
Funny how that doesn’t work for you, poptart.
I asked where he names a conspiracy.
You have admitted that you lied.
By: Wow on December 21, 2011
at 9:31 am
Sockpuppet,
I already posted it above try reading.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 1:27 pm
Seems poptart is fine with calling other frauds but screams like a baby with their bottle taken from them when a denialist is called a denialist.
The double standard is, appropriately enough, a standard amongst deniers.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 9:56 am
More ad hominem.
By: Poptech on December 20, 2011
at 9:58 am
Yes, you keep complaining about ad hominem when it’s not.
And whining about how bad it is to call people names when you’re so very free with it.
You’re a denier troll poptart.
By: Wow on December 20, 2011
at 10:58 am
Again, more ad hominem.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 5:12 am
So when pointing out that you don’t know what ad hominem is is an adhominem in your dictionary?
Stale, poptart.
Very stale.
PS at least I’m not making fraudulent claims on blogs, unlike you, poptart.
By: Wow on December 21, 2011
at 9:30 am
Sockpuppet,
You have no arguments which is why you can only post ad hominems.
By: Poptech on December 21, 2011
at 1:25 pm
[…] kind… But first, used with permission, here is Barry’s own introduction, as quoted from his own WordPress blog on 11 Nov 2011: I gave a talk called “How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change” for the College of Science […]
By: How to Avoid the Truth About Climate Change | Lack of Environment on February 8, 2012
at 6:11 pm
[…] is your answer to Utah-based Professor of Geological Sciences, Barry Bickmore, who recently suggested that today’s so-called climate “sceptics” are not like […]
By: An open letter to Richard Lindzen | Lack of Environment on February 28, 2012
at 3:01 pm
[…] change.” [See the last few minutes and/or last two slides of the presentation embedded in this post on Bickmore's […]
By: WUWT attempts to debunk William Nordhaus « Lack of Environment on January 31, 2013
at 12:13 pm