Tol vs Curry

KK reports on the Tol vs Curry fight. Tol is complaining that Curry is doing her usual: posting about septic junk and then saying “oh but I’m just asking”. Tol may have long hair but, unlike Curry, he isn’t a bozo, or irresponsible (he did call me rude things in an email once, but I forgive him).

[Update: incidentally, there is an interesting exchange between KK and RP Jr (!) in the comments:

KK> Do you assign lousy, error-riddled textbooks for your class to read?
RP> Yes, absolutely. The Skeptical Environmentalist was a core reading…

It is interesting only because that was a silly question from KK, and a failure-to-think response from RP (or rather, a point-scoring response). The point is, within a managed class structure with someone guiding the discussion, it is fine to discuss flawed texts, for the reason given: it encourages critical thinking. That wasn’t what Curry was doing. There was no guidance at the start, nor does she guide the subsequence discussion.

Also, Gavin’s point]

[Updated again: this turned in the comments into McShane and Wyner and the “Lasso” method. So I’ve added a pic of Lasso being a bit crap, from Gavin et al.’s reply.]

Refs

* Question of the Week; from which “There’s no scientific evidence”
* Bart’s view

William elsewhere: planet3.0

In Memoriam, John McCarthy.

Eeee, those were the days.

[Late update: I’ve just gone through and re-read that P3 post. To anyone who knows my style and mt’s, its pretty obvious who wrote which bits. But anyway, I’ve found my original email so this was my version:

An appreciation of John McCarthy from sci.environment

Recently two major figures from computing have died: Dennis Ritchie (C) and John McCarthy (LISP). As far as I know, DR had nothing special to do with the environment, but John McCarthy was a denizen of the usenet group sci.environment in the days when usenet was the premier online discussion forum; the days before blogs (before the web even) and the days before the signal to noise ratio in sci.environment itself collapsed and everyone left (or at least, I did. I may not have been the last out). All the old fogeys were there, including mt.

JMC was a technological optimist. At times this could become indistinguishable from a belief in magic. But more often he had valuable things to say, and would temper the overenthusiastic but underoptimistic Green Folk. He was well known for a couple of his .sigs (these and others are available from his sayings), which form a neat summary of his style:

During the second millenium, the Earthmen complained a lot

and more importantly

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense

The first, of course, expresses his techno-optimism. But (since planet3.0 is at least in part about presenting ideas in a way that they can be accepted) it can also be read as a criticism of people whose apparent reaction to almost any change is negative. The US is famous for its “yes we can” attitude, which is a powerful force. In contrast, “um, no, don’t like the sound of that” can be very weak. But more often he used the second; and from what my fallible memory calls forth, his ability to puncture nonsensical arguments with trivial arithmetic was his most notable contribution.

A good example is a discussion of shipping costs:

Someone speculated that increasing oil prices might force countries that import grain to grow their own because of the cost of transportation… About 1600 tonne-miles/gal for a large dry bulker carrying grain.

Now we can do some arithmetic using the following facts.

There are 37 bushels of wheat per tonne.
There are 42 gallons of oil in a barrel.
Oil costs $12 per barrel at present.

…

Wheat costs something like $2.00 per bushel at present, but that’s an exceptionally low price because of bumper crops.
Sometimes it’s $4.00 per bushel. I’m not sure I have those prices right, so someone may want to correct me.

Imagine an average journey of 5,000 miles.

The arithmetic gives us

transportation cost per bushel =

(/ (* 5000 12.0 ) (* 37.0 42 1600)) =>0.02413127413127413,

i.e. the fuel cost to transport a bushel of wheat 5,000 miles is $.024.

Multiplying fuel cost by 100 would add a substantial cost to shipping wheat, but it would destroy the rest of the economy.

Conclusion: The cost of shipping grain long distances won’t force countries to be independent in food.

That was written in 1999. Oil is now ten times that price, and grain about three times the price, so the argument is still valid. Perhaps more to the point, it is still meaningul and you can check it yourself.

JMC was clever, but there are hints of the arrogance, and disinterest in the actual science, which swirl around folk such as Muller. An example begins with JMC asking “Do you think humanity can or should prevent the next ice age?” This is not a scientific question; what JMC is fishing for is either “Yes we should” (in which case he will say “Aha! You approve of human intervention”) or “No we should not” (in which case he will say “Aha! You want to kill millions”) or “I don’t know” (in which case he will say “Aha! You’re useless”). Nonetheless, JMC gets a scientific answer we already have. The point being, of course, that we have already emitted sufficient GHGs to overwhelm the natural Milankovitch forcing. We could perhaps have had an interesting discussion around that topic. But that was not at all what he wanted so he pushed for more, but was disappointed.

There is much much more in the treasure trove of old sci.env posts. Alas, quite apart from the unrestricted posting which eventually killed usenet, the problem was that it was fundamentally a discussion forum, and didn’t allow a corpus of ideas to be built up. So this interesting discussion of “lawyers science” lies forever lost. If only it were not just as relevant today. But since this is about JMC, I should point you to his reply.

People mourn when a person dies, but no-one mourns the billions of intestinal bacteria that his death dooms. Speciesism, I calls it.

Refs

* It turns out to be possible to get a posting history for JMC out of
google
groups.

Congratulations to Gavin

I know, I know, I’m late. Never mind. Gavin Schmidt has won the inaugural “AGU Climate Communication Prize“; RC has a nice toast.

He looks pretty sexy, I think we can all agree, though not well centered (sometimes he looks more like some street crazy). He is clearly right-leaning, unless its a mirror photo. What little hair he has is off the top of the shot; I think they need a better photographer.

I remember now, there was a reason why I wrote this: to point to A Conversation with Gavin Schmidt at Climate Sight. Notice how measured Gavin is about the impacts.

Morgan Griffith is a tosser

Time for some more insult-throwing. And Morgan Griffith is a deserving recipient of just about any insult you might care to throw. As the youtube video is so correctly titled: Climate Zombie Morgan Griffith: Vikings, Mars, And Global Cooling (uploaded by climatebrad, which leads off to the Wonkroom). And indeed, there he is, brain entirely dead, reading out a list of “questions” he has been supplied by some lobbyist, all of which have been answered long ago.

The bit I like is at about 2:00 in, where he says that when he was taught in high school, his text book told him that increasing GHG’s was going to lead to a new ice age. Has he got a ref for this? Is it true? Very dubious. Even if it was true, would it be of the slightest relevance? No.

Just to prove that he is a real idiot, he goes on to talk about global warming on Mars. I only wish our politicians were competent, so I could pour scorn on you colonial types in general for electing such fools.

Refs

* The Climate Zombie Caucus Of The 112th Congress
* tossers on site:http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/

Can’t think of any more amusing Curry jokes

Not that any of the existing ones are that good, either. Anyway: I slagged off her post on attribution a while ago, and then forgot (or couldn’t be bothered) to slag off the nonsense she wrote about uncertainty (although my Judith Curry is now blogging, which is probably a good thing, because now instead of nitpicking other people’s blogs she is now attempting to say what she thinks. Unfortunately this results in some very strange things is becoming every more clearly correct. Having to make a coherent argument is quite hard; Curry needs someone to read her stuff before she posts it). Anyway James (who can do the probability stuff better than me, and is certainly more authoritative than me or Curry on whether it makes sense) is unimpressed, and conveniently points to mt quite forthright.

But since I’m here, I wanted to talk about Heresy and the creation of monsters wherein Curry talks about Climate Heretic: Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues which plaintively asks Why can’t we have a civil conversation about climate? And the answer, at least in Curry’s case, is that she often doesn’t know what she is talking about (see the above) but has frequently seen fit to say it in various blog comments, and subsequently failed to apologise for her errors. The ones that stick in my mind is Currygate and her denigration of DC’s charges of plagiarism against Wegman, for which she now looks very stupid (there are far more, those might not even be the most exciting, but they are the ones I can remember). It is very difficult to have a “civil conversation” if people have, effectively, no honour – if they feel able to make false statements and then run away from them. In fact this is very much a divide between the “skeptic” and “science” blogs – all the “science” ones I know of, and bother read, make an effort to be accurate and correct errors.

So, to conclude: of course Curry is happy to attack and discuss the SciAm article – because that article has completely missed the point of the criticism of her. Whether Curry has, and is evading it, or it has just passed her by, I don’t know.

[I had hped not to have to say this: but this and its comments is not the place for PA’s on Curry]

Refs

* Attribution errors
* Round in circles with Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice?
* Currygate, part 3: the key papers exposed
*(S)He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense
* Nice comment at RC
* Judith Curry goes from building bridges to burning them
* And even “Jugular” Zorita
* apsmith
* Gf thinks I’m too kind to Curry / SciAm

Mann cleared, again

RC has said this already, but perhaps you want to talk about it here. Not great surprise I think; see the press release or the final report.

The Investigatory Committee, after careful review of all available evidence, determined
that there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University. More specifically, the Investigatory Committee determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities. The decision of the Investigatory Committee was unanimous.

Just to prove I’ve read, or at least skimmed, it: Lindzen’s bit is jolly.

[Update: that was a bit of a boring post (JA doesn’t manage any better) so how about some more Tiljander? I only mention it because someone manages to say William Connolley’s position is too subtle, nuanced, and complex for me to summarize – isn’t that just what you’d like *your* position to be? Anyway, I don’t think anyone has managed better than me, in this post. AGW Observer has a go, and while I’m happy to quote his “Looking at McIntyre’s claims on this and the real situation descibed above shows that McIntyre’s claims are false” I didn’t read carefully enough to work out what McI’s claims might be. Unfortunately Ari seems to have missed a very fundamental point – the sign-invariance one even though I hammered that several times. Oh well. APS also has a post with loadsa comments (I’m sure I left him one too but I see it not, never mind, it was only to point to my post and explain, yet again, why the Tiljander series don’t matter much in the reconstruction). Apart from that it looks like cue the go-round-in-circles-again kind of stuff we’ve come to know and move on these kinds of issues]

Eric Fnorrd and his Ouija Board?

SEPP has alwys been a one-man-band, that one man being Fred Singer of course (Do you know the dirt about Singer? He was once sane. BTW, if you’re here from wiki, don’t miss a post I did on Lindzen).

But being a one-man-band makes it look like you’re a wacko (err…) so obviously you need an organisation, and obviously that organisation needs a board of directors, science advisors, you know the kind of thing: pad it out with some names to look impressive. So Singer did, the SEPP website proudly proclaims:

The following serve on the Board of Directors of The Science & Environmental Policy Project:

* Frederick Seitz, Ph.D. (Chairman)
* (etc)

(see http://sepp.org/about%20sepp/boarddir.html. Note to SEPP: I’ve saved a copy, and so has the internet archive, so don’t bother trying to change it and pretend there was no problem).

There is only one problem with this (well, other than that Seitz was also a bit of a wacko on GW, but let’s skip over that): Seitz is pushing up the daisies. It must be true wikipedia says so.

And: The following individuals serve on the Board of Science Advisors of The Science & Environmental Policy Project:

* Bruce N. Ames
* C.J.F. Böttcher
* Tor Ragnar Gerholm
* Michael J. Higatsberger
* Henry R. Linden
* Sir William Mitchell
* William A. Nierenberg
* Michel Salomon
* Chauncey Starr

Again: nice people, kind to children and animals, a bit loopy perhaps, but suffering from a major problem: most of them are six feet under (fun game for a wet half-hour: work out which few of them *aren’t* stiffs).

However, it was suggested that they might be contactable via Ouija Board, so I’m wondering if any of the more cartoon-ly talented would care to try their hands at a Viz style strip. Unfortunately “Singer” doesn’t rhyme with “board” and that is an absolute requirement. You’ll never get close to the heights of Mickey’s monkey spunk moped but it might be fun anyway. Alas I can’t find a reprint of that cartoon on the web anymore.

[Current best version is “Septic Fred, he talks to the Dead” slightly modified from the comments]

Curry, part 4

At last! I have a chance to be nice to Curry, which I’ve been waiting for. This opportunity is her comment reply to my comment question over at c-a-s, viz:

I find the main text of the WG1 Report to be an accurate assessment of the science. The problem that I have with the WG1 Report is the summary narratives (executive summary, summary for policy makers) where all this is integrated and summarized. My main issue with the WG1 report is that I think that many of confidence levels are too high: there is inadequate scientific uncertainty analysis, and lack of accounting for known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I have substantial issues with the WG2 report and the impacts.

So what does all this add up to? A moderate warmist that sees very large uncertainty with regards to hypothesized catastrophic impacts

Regarding your list of skeptics on the wikipedia (ed: I’d pointed her at [[List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming]]): I don’t align myself with any of them, but some of their statements cannot be refuted with a high level of certainty and there are other skeptical points that are not covered on your list.

So I think there are a lot of important things in there, and it helps to understand Curry’s position. Just to ram home a point I’ve made elsewhere in relation to another comment she made, I find the main text of the WG1 Report to be an accurate assessment of the science is not a comment you’ll find the septics making. As to her assertion that the confidence levels are too high: I don’t have a strong opinion on this. She might be right; likely she is wrong. There is room for debate. The problem comes with how you phrase that kind of comment; wrapped up in loaded words like “corruption” is becomes unhelpful. As for WG2, I sort-of used to agree with her, but people have slightly taken me to task for dissing WG2 so I’m not so sure any more (is that kind of woolly enough for you?). That she thinks that “catastrophic impacts” are uncertain is fine with me. I’m also very happy with her characterisation of the wiki list.

UEA circus, continued

The HoC inquiry into the CRU hack has reported. Judging from BBC radio 4 this morning (which interviewed Acton and then Lawson, no, not the wobbly one) the results are good: I say this because Lawson showed a distinct disinclination to talk about what the report actually said :-).

I’ll expand this post later with more, so don’t complain if it changes. My initial impression is that is is fairly good, and certainly provides the right headlines, but I can’t yet endorse it whole-heartedly – it looks like they have made some errors (in the matter of blaming Jones for the data sharing). But I need to read the thing (courtesy CP) before saying more.

Milambre, Octagon has spoken though, and the headline says it all “Phil Jones exonerated”. HT goes for the same. Eli also opines and has some more useful links. Romm too.

And the current version of the wiki page says The first review to become available, conducted by the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, largely vindicated Jones and the CRU (and no, I didn’t write that). That is sourced to yahoo news (are they a WP:RS?); James prefers The Times. The Grauniad isn’t quite so fulsome: Climate researchers ‘secrecy’ criticised – but MPs say science remains intact.

[Update: those toads at the IOP have the gall to trumpet this as Climate science must be more open, say MPs. Evil slimey little toerags. JA points out why they are wazzocks, without actually talking about them.

Moah: does this report pass the “Wattsupwiththat? test”? – yes, with flying colours. Watty can’t even bring himself to make any comments on it, and all his commentators hate it :-). McI hates it too, which is a bonus. Anyone else got any nose-out-of-joint septic blogs to link to? But I did learn that the division of the committee members is interesting. Look at p56, for the votes. On all issues, “Graham Stringer” stands alone (on the septic side). Who is he? I don’t know (uupdate: Fred Pearce clearly doesn’t know either: in his latest rubbish the best he can do for a link to GS is this fairly useless comment).

Speaking of slimy toads, if you look at the inquiry video around about 31:38 you see Benny Peiser complinaing that the satellite records don’t make thier methodologies fully available! Yes, that’s right – he is (although he is very careful not to do so by name) attacking UAH and Spencer and Christy. They are eating themselves -W]

* Deep Climate – Climategate investigations, round 1: CRU exonerated – has some interesting dissection of Stringer.
* Nurture wades in with “Parliament committee calls for more transparency in climate science” which is crap.
* Cruel Mistress goes for “Data Valid”, which is what the NYT said and I think this is a good headline – it is, after all, the fundamental point. Transpancy and reputations matter, but the bottom line is, was the research valid, and the answer is “yes” (ah, and as I can see that could easily be misinterpreted, whilst I’m happy that the HoC have said that, I don’t really think they are a competent authority to decide that. Who is competent? Probably the overall scientific community via peer review, who have said the same thing, implicitly).

Who is William A. Sprigg, Ph.D.?

Well, he is this one. But not this one. In the news, he is Former IPCC Leader Says Climategate Scientists “Manipulated data.” and the “head of the International Technical Review Panel for IPCC’s first report”.

The latter is what interests me. What is it? I am just about old enough to remember IPCC ’90, and indeed I have a paper copy, WG I of course, provided free of charge by the nice Hadley folk. I should have got them to autograph it. In it I find no mention of the said panel. There was the WG I core team co-ordination, who were at the Hadley, but what is the panel? A search of http://www.ipcc.ch finds nothing.

So, any ideas?