Thanks, kimstu. My “Communications Arising” was definitely independent research, that’s why they published it, because it contained new independent findings. And it was definitely peer reviewed, and quite strictly. I also have another peer-reviewed research article in Energy and Environment, the journal that you all love to hate. Their peer review was equally as stringent as that of Nature. Are either of them “significant”? Heck, I don’t know, somewhere between earthshaking and totally trivial, I’d say.
How is that not “denying the science behind AGW”? I’ve been making that exact same claim on this board for years, and have been roundly reviled for it. Now it’s suddenly mainstream, suddenly it’s not denying what’s being the AGW claim??? I have said many times that there is very little evidence, only models behind the AGW claims, and people here have called me all kinds of unflattering names for saying exactly what she said … but now you think that I was “not denying the science behind AGW”?
The only way to keep up a hoax like that running for so long is with a…
Well I can trust that anybody else can guess what word is most appropriate to use here.
And I don’t think I need to post the previous examples * were I found the sources of your cites proposing that a conspiracy is the best explanation on how items like the “hockey stick” and the researchers involved with it continue to be well respected in academia and continue to research and get more evidence.
As someone who went to the First Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, and later that day drove my motorcycle full speed into the Pacific Ocean under the influence of an entire psychedelicatessen, I clearly qualify as a hippie. And I agree with much of what you said. We need to invest in “no-regrets” options. These are actions that will be of value whether or not GHGs are the secret thermostat that sets the planet’s temperature.
One of these is certainly cheap non-polluting energy. However, as the corn biofuel debacle has shown, not everything “green” is beneficial. In a world short of food, cutting down trees to grow energy may be a bad idea™. Investing in basic energy research, however, seems like a no-brainer to me.
The main problem as I see it is that climate is the cause of human misery in a host of forms, from droughts and floods and excess heat and excess cold, from too much water and not enough. My “no-regrets” advice is that we promote ways to deal with those problems today, not in 50 years. Here’s a couple of examples.
I read a lovely story about how a guy in India has found out how to make “artificial glaciers”, by diverting water into ponds in flat areas and letting it freeze.
In Peru, they are using “fog nets” to capture water out of the air.
Both of these are what we need, low-cost ways to solve today’s climate related problems.
So rather than spending billions on reducing CO2 in the hope that it will somehow prevent dry conditions in 50 years, I say we should put money into developing more things like fog nets and artificial glaciers now. Whether or not CO2 is the secret global thermostat, those kinds of things will provide benefits now.
The problem with the ‘let’s bring down CO2 to maybe possibly reduce future climate problems’ scheme is that people are dying today, right now, from the exact same climate problems you are saying will be occurring 50 years from now. We don’t have time for “might work in 50 years” solutions when people are dying today.
Yes, fog nets are a hippy solution, and I’m proud of it. Groovy indeed.
Nope, that’s not correct; you’re the one who is (still) misusing the concept of ad hominem. The logic goes like this:
Senator Inhofe is the named author of the Senate minority report including the list of 700 “scientists”.
The issue of whether a work’s author is a liar and/or an idiot is relevant to the trustworthiness of the work as a credible source on expert opinion in climate science.
Consequently, claiming that Inhofe’s list is unreliable because Inhofe is a liar and/or an idiot is not an ad hominem attack.
Whether or not Inhofe actually is a liar and/or an idiot, it is not an ad hominem argument to say that if he is, then his list should not be considered a credible source.
Now, you can certainly object that just calling Inhofe a liar and/or an idiot is not as convincing an argument as factually rebutting one of his specific claims. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s an ad hominem argument.
I didn’t see anywhere you explicitly said there was a conspiracy, but you do give the impression that you are receptive to some conspiracy-theorist types like Lawrence Solomon, whose disparaging article on William Connelley you appear to endorse.
Solomon is notorious for misrepresenting the opinions of climate scientists on climate change and trying to present so-called “deniers” as having been “persecuted” for dissenting from climate “orthodoxy”. jshore pointed out to you an instance of the debunking of Solomon’s work in post #124 of this thread just last month, and I’m rather surprised that you’re still relying on Solomon as a source.
The context is “a vocal minority of scientists so mistrusts the models and the complex fragmentary data, that some claim that global warming is a hoax.”
And the last line mentions that:
“Global warming impacts appear much more severe in polar latitudes than in tropical regions.”
She complains against both extremists, until you show me other places where she going against all of the science I will assume that she is more in agreement with most of the meteorologists that accept AGW.
Huh? Back in the May 2006 thread, you seemed to be saying that E&E was not a peer-reviewed journal and that you had never claimed it was:
Do you have a cite for the claim that articles in E&E are in fact peer-reviewed? Their home page and instructions for authors do not appear to indicate that this is so.
Not that something in a non-peer-reviewed journal is necessarily bad or substandard in any way, of course. But if we’re giving special credit to peer-reviewed publications, then it’s good to be clear on which ones they are.
Solomon got one thing wrong, and suddenly he’s “notorious”? Really? And Connolley’s actions on Wikipedia are egregious enough that he is currently the subject of an internal Wikipedia discussion on whether he is too opinionated to be an administrator, so it’s a long, long way from being just Solomon’s opinion. I know what Connolley is capable of, because he’s reverted some very innocuous changes that I made, so I speak from personal experience … do you?
The Inhofe logic goes like this:
Someone on Senator Inhofe’s staff posted a list of scientists and quotations from what they have said.
I point people, not to Inhofe’s web site, but to the list of scientists and quotations.
Rather than deal with the list and the quotations therein, you attack Inhofe.
Let me say again, it doesn’t matter if Inhofe is an axe murderer. That is immaterial to the question of the scientists on the list and what they said. Did they say what they said? Did they mean what they said? Have they been misquoted? Is it true what they said? Those are relevant questions. Does Inhofe beat his meat in public and lie to his wife? Irrelevant. You persist in attacking the messenger … which says something about the message …
E&E only peer-reviews some of the articles it prints, which is why I said it is not peer reviewed. I see I was not clear, I should have said sometimes the articles are not peer reviewed. I have had two articles published there, one of which was peer-reviewed and one of which wasn’t. The peer review for the one was as stringent as that of Nature.
This scientists comments either lend themselves to misinterpretation, or she is willfully misinterpreted. Either way, wouldn’t she be likely to have some further clarification as to her opinion available? Seeing how she is being misinterpreted one way or the other. Now, my google-fu is weak, but it shouldn’t be a problem for one of you smart guys.
It does matter if he specifically gathers a list of misleading information and outright lies. Yet you persist in pointing to lies to shore up your story.
Since you’ve been shown that some of your key evidence is worthless and you’re unwilling to cop to it, that sort of says something about your debating style, doesn’t it?
She says the AGW theory is based on models and not evidence. Some of you have repeatedly excoriated me for saying exactly the same thing. She says she mistrusts the models, although not as much as some scientists. She specifically says she is skeptical about AGW theory, but thinks we should act anyway. Not exactly middle-of-the-road.
Part of the problem with her statement is that she does not distinguish between “global warming” and “anthropogenic global warming”. So it is unclear whether she thinks some scientists are saying GW is a hoax, or AGW is a hoax. The same is true regarding her statement about the polar regions.
In the event, recent warming from 1980 to about 2000 has been more severe in the Arctic, while the Antarctic ice has reached the highest level since satellite measurements began … go figure.
Because I would have described your contribution as definitely an original criticism of a new research finding, but not as a “new independent finding” in its own right. It appeared to be based solely on the data in the other authors’ published article.
Not that there’s anything wrong with contributing a publishable original criticism of other people’s research, which is a valuable thing to do in the service of science, but I find the style of your description of it a bit confusing.
If the list is misleading and contains outright lies, then the list is misleading and contains outright lies, whether Inhofe is an axe murderer or not. So whether he is an axe murderer or not is meaningless.
What “key evidence” has been shown to be meaningless? There are a host of climate scientists out there who say that the AGW theory is incorrect, that GHGs are not the secret climate thermostat. You have attacked Dr. Simpson’s statement, but she said specifically that she is sceptical about the AGW theory. But even if you have dismissed Dr. Simpson’s statement, what about the other 699? What about the scientists of the APS I cited above? What about the Japanese scientists I cited above? What about the sixty climate scientists who recently wrote the open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada?
And as Dr. Simpson points out, the AGW theory is not based on evidence, it is based on climate models. So what “worthless evidence” are you talking about?
Man, you are too much. You attack and discuss one scientist out of seven hundred, ignore all the other scientists I cite, attack the person who published the list, and sit back and congratulate yourself on winning the debate … pathetic.
So the answer is, no, she did not follow with more support for the denier’s cause.
You see that is typical, if Inhofe was correct you would see much more coming from the people cited on the list, In this peculiar case, I would expect to see at least her **complaint **to the Meteorological society for giving a price to Hansen.
Great. Now you want to argue semantics. I went out and did original research that disputed their facts. Nobody had done that research before, that’s why it’s called “original research”. I didn’t say it was a “new independent finding”, putting that in quotes is bullshit designed to deceive the reader.
But so what? How many other amateur scientists have been published in Nature lately? I consider it an achievement. When and if you do the same, so will you … no matter what someone wants to say to denigrate it.
Finally, you are so inutterably foolish and unaware of Nature’s policies that you think that what I published was three sentences, oh, that’s just precious … sorry, that’s only the opening, the rest is behind the Nature firewall. To show how stupid your “three sentence” claim is, I just posted it up here specially for you. Have at it.
:dubious: “Got one thing wrong”? He portrayed a scientist’s views on climate science in a way that the scientist himself in a letter to the editor described as a “slanderous fabrication”, and then failed to apologize for or retract the portrayal, and you shrug it off as just “getting one thing wrong”?
At any rate, it’s hardly just getting “one thing wrong” in Solomon’s case. As has been frequently pointed out, the most egregious misrepresentation in his book The Deniers is the fact that many of the scientists he profiles aren’t actually climate-change deniers:
Getting things wrong is not just a one-time oopsie but an essential part of Solomon’s stock in trade as a climate science journalist. You should not be expecting your readers to consider him a credible source.
Okay, but I think you’ll have to forgive us if we don’t immediately assume that Connelley’s disagreeing with your climate-change views, even on statements that you consider “very innocuous”, must be a sign of his bad faith. There might possibly be other reasons why somebody would disagree with you.
Mind you, I know nothing of Connelley myself and do not, AFAIK, rely on his edited articles for any climate science information. But I certainly wouldn’t automatically distrust him based on the word of Lawrence Solomon, or for that matter on yours.
Huh? You said right in post #182 of this very thread:
That’s why I put “new independent finding” in quotation marks, because I was directly quoting you.
Indeed it is, as I already said. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings by implying in any way that you shouldn’t be proud of it.
I wasn’t sure, which is why I asked you if there was any missing information there. Thanks for the link to the full seven paragraphs of your communication and the authors’ response.