Okaaay, well, I’m the person you’re talking to. So shall I retort that I’m not interested in your level of interest over my lack of, impressedness, either? Then given our mutual disinterest, shall we discontinue the discussion?
Look, what are you doing here, exactly? If you’re defending your intercession on Fred’s behalf, please, just give it up. It was a cop-out. Maybe the models aren’t “statistically significant” (I’ll try to touch on that later) but he never made that argument. All he did was throw down an article from The Economist… and it wasn’t only in response to the point about models, but a number of points. If we’re going to argue that way, I think I’ll just start copying and pasting the entire text of SkS, RealClimate articles and so on and not bother to write anything.
Like I said, if you want to have this discussion about models with me, I will do my best. But please at least acknowledge my humanity a bit; give a nod to my disgruntledness over the rather strange way in which your recent decision to become a “buffer” took place. Because it didnt seem much like that to me - a buffer, I mean. More like you jumping in on the side of the aggressor (sorry, Fred). Ok, enough back-seat modding and touchy-feely stuff.
Sorry I haven’t had time to read it; apologies but I suspect you haven’t read my articles either. The name von Storch rings bells, but as for the “character assassination” on Lindzen, look: the guy has done what he’s done and said what he’s said. Far as I’m concerned (though I realize you don’t care what I think) the guy assassinated his own character. He’s been political since the nineties, and the reason you gave is exactly what I’m talking about. Global warming denialism is mainly about ideologically-motivated reasoning - and you just described that reasoning to a T.
But set that aside - assume it’s irrelevant that the guy falsely accused NASA in front of government or hung around with scientific patsies for the cigarette industry. One way for a non-expert to get an idea who’s right in a scientific controversy is to look at what other scientists think about what they say. The info I posted from SkS about the research he did with Choi got simply ~ripped~ into by his peers for a large number of what they apparently consider serious mistakes. The journal wouldn’t publish.
On this question, there’s also the article of the group response to Lindzen I posted. Or recently he did a stint in the WSJ defending Willie Soon - that name ring any bells? In that piece, he had a huge number of demonstrably-false statements that he is quite famous for. Now everyone gets stuff wrong - even geniuses like Lindzen. But mistakes are normally scatter-shot. When they all happen in the same direction, that’s a huge red flag for bias-driven reasoning. I guess you’re still not impressed. Maybe all those “mistakes” were actually not mistakes; I simply took the word of experts whose opinions I prefer over his. Well, maybe. I’ve looked up a few of the issues and it doesn’t seem that way to me.
But I should be skeptical of myself. I’m biased too. So, such a quandry. What to do. I hate to tell ya, it’s the same cop-out answer I’ll give for the discussion that could happen over von Storch or any other research we might dig into: I go with the aggregate, to the best I’m able to determine what that is, because that’s the safest bet for the inexpert. As I told you, I’m not deluding myself that I’m a scientist, or that I’m particularly skeptical. I’m gullible as all hell. That’s why I’m interested in skepticism. And, since I have to beware of the reality that there’s an awful lot of research out there that I haven’t read the pop-science version of, let alone the actual paper (Kahneman calls this the “What you see is all there is” effect), I look to sources that I basically trust. I try to nail down what sources they should be by looking around in the skeptical movement and seeing which sources get the most respect - places like Science-Based Medicine, and yes, RealClimate.
One would expect them to be able to do that, given that they are climate scientists. Also, I hope the snark in that sentence doesn’t have something to do with “Climategate”. And regarding honesty, far as I can see, you dismissed Rahmstorf and Tamino out of hand and called me a denialist (for about the fifth time). So again I ask, what is this really about? Are we having a discussion, or are you mad about something else? I’ve aired my feelings - care to air yours?
No, I definitely can not. I also can’t say that Hansen is wrong when he says the opposite. Can you? There are many climatologists (I can give you a list) who say the IPCC is shell-shocked from all the denialist attacks and has gotten way too conservative (ironic, if true). What about all those scientists and ~their~ life’s work? They’re also ‘rugged individualists shouting against the tyranny of the collective’ so-to-speak.
So my answer to this confusing situation is the same I’ve given above. The bulk of the research points to four degrees, so that’s what Vegas would probably go with, and that’s what I go with. It’s the answer I’m going to stake my family’s future on.
I don’t want to be rude, but you said with the same confidence that the IPCC had “walked back all its predictions”. The graph posted by you showed that to be incorrect. I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m pretty confident in my recollection that the predicted range for 2100 in AR5 is wider in both directions -which doesn’t equal “walking back”, either. So forgive me if I don’t just take your word for this. Direct me to by whom we were told this and when and how that got turned on its head again, please. If I’m going to read something heavy, it might as well be that.
I’m sure you are aware there’s a lot of stuff out there that you haven’t read as well. There was a recent paper by Kevin Cowtan etc. - and no, I didn’t just dig this up in response to this argument; it was part of my regular news feed - stating that the difference between models and observations is 38% less than previously thought:
Climate models are even more accurate than you thought
And Rahmstorf’s / Tamino’s allegedly “dishonest” discussion of “the Pause” have been the subject of a couple studies recently as well:
The alleged hiatus in global warming didn’t happen, new research shows.
I’ll admit these are recent studies and I only read the pop versions. Nor do they necessarily represent the current prevailing understanding. But they corroborate what sources I trust say- and are in accord with my admittedly primative level of understanding. One more thing on the point - just a footnote really - but I found it clever back in the day. A few years ago, denialists were again claiming cooling based on “the pause”. So the AP did this:
[quote]The Associated Press conducted [b]the blind test by sending global temperature data from NOAA and NASA to four independent statisticians who were not told what the data represented, but simply asked to perform a common statistical analysis to look for trends in the data.
The statisticians “found no true temperature declines over time,” and in fact identified “a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers,” the AP reports.[/b][/quote]
desmogblog.com/statisticians … eptic-spin
That was in 2009, way before the current upswing which I’d be willing to bet is only beginning, based on things I’ve read about a coming “regime change” in climate. And it perfectly corroborates what Rahmstorf, Tamino and the above studies are saying.
Ok this is way too long, so about statistical significance: thank you for clarifying. All I’ll say is this: technically I know what it is: I know P values mean the probability of the data, given the null hypothesis. I also know that it’s falling out of favor in scientific journals because it’s something of an arbitrary cut-off and P values have been shown to be un-replicatable. Effect sizes and Bayesian techniques are the talk of the skeptical community as the potential better ways to talk about actual significance of research. There’s a good video out there called “The Dance of the P Values” which is partly about this, if you’re interested.
But, like with climate science itself, I’m just faking this “knowledge”, because if you’d ask me to calculate P for a set of data I’d have no clue how to go about it. Someone once showed me how statistic significance for the IPCC conclusion in AR5 WG1 was calculated and I was like, uhhhhh…okayyyyy… So showing me that someone thinks the IPCC’s model performance to date isn’t “statistically significant” - if that’s even the claim - is going to lead me back to the same problem I mentioned above. So I’ll just have to give the same answer - is this view widely held among pertinent experts? And is statistical significance even a standard that is used when making public policy decisions? Is that what the CDC uses when making decisions about curtailing epidemics? On that last point I really have no idea.
Have a good one.