It is said that scientists are lousy at communication, lousy at telling everyone else about their science, in understandable and compelling terms.
This is of course absurd. There are tens of millions of scientists, and dozens of them are really excellent communicators!
One of the leading science communicators of the day is cognitive scientist John Cook. John is at George Mason University. He is so tightly linked to the founding and development of the Skeptical Science project that “Skeptical Science” is the name of his Wikipedia entry. This binds John and his mission to a lot of us. Where we once might have said, “I am Spartacus,” we now say, “I am Skeptical. Science!” For John, it is just “I am SkepticalScience.”
Cook is likely known to you for the Consensus project. There were two main projects, a few years back, in which scientist attempted to measure the degree of consensus over the idea that anthropocentric climate change is real. (It is real, and the consensus is near 100% in both peer reviewed literature and the conclusions of actual scientists.) John and his colleagues did one of those, and beyond that, widely promoted the results so that everyone knows about it.
“Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers
I don’t have a cranky uncle anymore (he died). But I do have a lot of neighbors who like to write in ALL CAPS. They show up when I give a talk on climate change, and they bring their conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, cherry picked “facts”, absurd expectations, and references to fake research done by fake experts. It is a lot to deal with. But now, I can use the Lewis Black technique for dealing with evolution deniers, but instead of pulling out a trilobite, holding it up and saying “Fossil!” I can pull out a copy of Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change
Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers
For completeness, here is Lewis Black demonstrating the fossil technique:
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
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A comment on Njisse et al., 2020: Emergent constraints on transient climate response (TCR) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) from historical warming in CMIP5 and CMIP6 models, Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 737–750, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-737-2020 by Nic Lewis:
https://www.nicholaslewis.org/emergent-constraints-on-tcr-and-ecs-from-historical-warming-in-cmip5-and-cmip6-models/
In which all around science denier rickA demonstrates he scans for crank denialists to support his views.
Lewis and others like him who hardly do any original research but instead function as arbiters of the veracity of other’s research IMHO are an embarrassment to science in light of actual events. We are on track for the warmest year on record. Arctic ice extent is close to minimal. Record heat and temperature extremes are occurring over much if the biosphere. The list of empirical evidence for rapid climatic warming goes on and on. Against these facts are a die-hard band of sceptics and deniers whose views are heavily contaminated by their warped political ideologies. These people cling to their long-discredited memes but are able to spread their nonsense through social media and across the internet. RickA and others like him endlessly scour the internet in search of articles and commentaries by deniers that support their pre-determined world views. They then copy-paste links to obscure posts on other blogs as ‘proof’ that climate change is either exaggerated or unproven. The story is like a broken record.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. However, many of Nic Lewis’s criticism have turned out to be correct. In several papers, the authors have acknowledged Nic Lewis’s role in pointing out their error and even thanking him for spotting it. Here is one example:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5
I will wait and see what the authors of Njisse et al have to say about Nic’s comment. Perhaps like the other papers Nic has commented on, the error (if Nic is correct of course) will turn out not to be a “long-discredited meme”.
I have a nickle on the authors admitting they made a mistake.
But never significant. He makes a lot of noise and very little actual difference. The most likely value for ECS remains somewhere close to 3K.
Lukewarmerism is rightwing denialism dressed up in sciency-sounding BS.
RickA, you just don’t get it, but why should you? You are so ideologically blinkered that actual, physical changes that are happening right before your eyes pass by. The fact is that the planet is warming rapidly, well outside of natural forcings. The world arguably just recorded its hottest ever temperature in Death Valley; the ratio of re ord warm:cold temperatures across the biosphere is 8:1 since 2000 and around 20:1 since 2014. A heat wave currently hitting the western US is unprecedented; In western Europe we have had three exceptionally hot summers in a row, breaking 40 degrees in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in 2019 and an August 2020 heat wave that obliterated existing records. Trees are dead or dying en masse across the country where I am living, and populations of vertebrates and invertebrates are in free fall.
Lewis, for his part, makes no contribution whatsoever to our understanding of the consequences of the human experiment, but simply sits behind his computer monitor ‘correcting’ inconsequential mathematical and statistical errors in a few prominent studies to puff up his ego. His ‘corrections’ mean diddly squat when weighed against the empirical evidence.
So you can take your elementary understanding of science elsewhere. You are so far out of your depth but don’t realize it. Lewis is as well, but he is feted upon by deniers who give him a veritable megaphone.
Jeffh:
I thought you were a scientist? If you don’t think finding errors in published scientific papers (and getting them fixed) does not contribute to science – well you are wrong.
>record warm:cold temperatures across the biosphere is 8:1 since 2000 and around 20:1 since 2014.
What is the point of this?
Take the hypothetical that global warming stopped in 2014, 2000, or now.
You would still get more record warm than cold by a substantial margin, because the average temperature is at the high end of recorded temperatures.
What is the point of that?
What utter nonsense you write by comparison Edward Lear’s ‘The Complete Nonsense’ makes more sense.
Lionel, it shows that JeffH’s stat is not useful for diagnosing global warming.
It’s heating up because of us. This is no longer a subject of debate among the non-biased and well informed.
RickA
Best cough up that nickle miser by the handle of RickA.
and
Source
Lionel:
I was talking about the author’s of Njisse, not Resplandy. I cited Resplandy as an example of where the Authors had attributed the spotting of the error to Nic Lewis.
I will wait to pay my nickel (or not) once we see what the Authors of Njisse do about Nic’s comment.
RickA, of course correcting errors is the right thing to do. But Lewis appears to pour over every climate change paper that comes out in a desperate attempt to find a glitch here or there. I wonder if he does the same thing with denier studies. Methinks not, yet there are a pile of stinkers out there.
Still, you deliberately miss the point which is that it is warming rapidly because of the human combustion of fossil fuels and urgent measures need to be taken immediately to mitigate these emissions. Lewis can whistle in the wind all day but his re-analyses cannot change that salient fact.
The question is how much of the warming is caused by humans, and more specifically because of human combustion of fossil fuels? Erroneous studies which misguide us on that issue are not helpful and in fact could actually be harmful in the long run.
As you know, I am deeply skeptical that humans have caused 100% of the warming since 1950, and in fact believe that nature has played some significant part in the warming since 1950. How much is unknown, but my belief is it is about 50% nature and 50% human.
Even though I believe ECS will be found to be low (about 1.8C) and even though I believe humans have only caused about 50% of the warming since 1950, I still think we should do something about the human portion of the warming.
My solution to reduce human combustion of fossil fuels is to build lots of nuclear power. Why? Because it provides baseload power (i.e. not intermittent because of the sun going down, cloud cover or no wind). Look at what is happening in California right now – that shows how renewable power without adequate baseload power is causing rolling blackouts.
Not having enough baseload power is no solution. Which means if you want to ramp up renewables over 30% you need backup power for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. That backup power should be nuclear power. We need 70-80% nuclear power and 20-30% renewable power.
That is my solution.
What is yours?
Until you or Nic Lewis or anybody really provides a single shred of evidence for this baseless assertion, it is mouse farts.
Evidence-based science concludes with high certainty that human activity is responsible for all modern warming.
As someone who claims to have read all the IPCC reports, you should be clearly aware of this consensus and of all the evidence that supports it.
Perhaps you were lying about having read all the IPCC reports and much else besides.
BBD:
Here is some evidence:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf
pg. 5 “The evidence for human influence on the climate system has grown since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”
More than 1/2 . . . isn’t that pretty close to about 50%? Am I really that far off from the IPCC reports? More than 1/2 covers a lot of ground from 51% to 100% – but it doesn’t say we know with absolute certainty it is 100% and not 51%.
Lying about reading the reports – that is pretty funny. Perhaps it is you who are not familiar with what the reports say.
I would say about 50% is a lot closer to more than 1/2 than 100% is. Of course that is just my opinion.
RickA, more than half does not mean 51% – 100%. It can be anything over 50%, including 50.1%.
I kid, I kid.
What I mean to say is it includes numbers over 100%. That the earth would be cooling if not for human caused global warming. We are overdue for an ice age.
FIne. List all the known natural and anthropogenic forcings, their magnitudes, and explain to us how you arrived at your belief.
Bernard says “FIne. List all the known natural and anthropogenic forcings, their magnitudes, and explain to us how you arrived at your belief.”
First, I am not trying to prove anything to you. I am simply telling you my opinion.
Second, I cited the IPCC, which says at least 1/2. Not at least 75% or at least 90% or 100%. So my opinion is not inconsistent with the consensus as defined by the IPCC.
Third, you act as if I have the burden of proof here. I do not. The null hypothesis is that all warming (and cooling) which occurs happens naturally. It is the burden of climate science to prove how much of the warming which has occurred since 1950 is not natural. Of course they haven’t proven anything yet – but their opinion is that at least 50% of the warming is not natural. Not very different from my opinion that about 50% of the warming is not natural.
All we know if that it is warming. We know that CO2 and other gases like methane, all things being equal, should cause warming. We know there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. We assume all the excess is caused by humans – but is that really true? Isn’t it true that more CO2 will come out of the ocean as the Earth warms? How do we know that all of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is from humans and not natural? The answer is we don’t know.
Or if not from CO2 coming out of the ocean naturally, how do we know that the solar minimum, which allows more cosmic rays to impact our atmosphere, leading to changes in cloud cover, isn’t causing warming? Well, we don’t know.
Probably humans are causing at least some part of the warming – but it could just be a giant correlation and a giant coincidence that CO2 levels are going up and it is warming.
So based on my reading, and the massive uncertainty in the field, it is my lay opinion that humans are causing about 50% of the warming we have seen since 1950. That is my opinion. And I have provided my basis for it.
What is your opinion and the basis for it?
Lying by omission, Ricky:
Read it until you understand it, then apologise to the forum for misrepresenting the IPCC AR5 wg1 attribution statement, which actually says that all observed warming is caused by us.
For someone claiming to have read all the IPCC reports your understanding of what they say is abysmal. Perhaps you lied about having read them. Either that or you are deliberately lying by omission (selective quotation) in order to misrepresent their findings.
As I just said:
Until you or Nic Lewis or anybody really provides a single shred of evidence for this baseless assertion, it is mouse farts.
Evidence-based science concludes with high certainty that human activity is responsible for all modern warming.
You have absolutely nothing except political bias and lies.
RickA, I could not care less what you think is the human contribution to the recent warming because you are a total layman, a neophyte. You aren’t a scientist, you don’t understand the field much at all, you don’t do any relevant researtch, and your view therefore is meaningless.
The fact is that humans have caused virtually all of the warming. There are no ands, ifs or buts. This is by now a rock-solid fact. By this I mean 100% of the recent warming is anthropogenic. Not 50%, not 75%, but 100%. Science has moved on, whether or not you like it. Furthermore, the science was discussed and debated way back in the 1970s by the Jason Organization and and by the Charney Committee. Only a few years later scientists employed by Exxon-Mobil accurately predicted what the effects of the burning of fossil fuels would be on atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and on surface temperature over the course of 40 years. All of them said the same thing and were correct.
The real victory of the well funded climate science denial lobby is to have kept the public debate stuck on process or causation (Chapters 1 and 2 of the IPCC reports). The scientific community moved on from this over 20 years ago. There is virutally unanimous agreement over attribution. Again, the planet is warming and humans are the cause – not 50%, but 100%. We are now focused on Chapter 4: What should be do about the problem?
You can wallow in your little bubble of denial and ignorance all you want. As I have said, your views on warming are seriously contaminated by your right wing political ideology. This is why your opinion means nothing.
I should have read this years ago, it was on my to get list at one time but drifted down the list because my interests are wide.
A quote from Jonathan Haidt via Chris Mooney’s ‘The Republican Brain’
2012 Page 32.
Source.
We now know much of how RickA happened.
I need to get that one read too… Thanks for the reminder. As one good turn deserves another, I think you would enjoy Derek Lundy’s The Way Of A Ship which I am re-reading now, on a secluded Cornish beach – weather permitting 🙂
Although now so beaten up by a couple of hours in the monster surf off Storm Ellen I can barely type 🙂
I thought this was a good article:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/denial-and-alarmism-in-the-near-term-extinction-and-collapse-debate/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=denial-and-alarmism-in-the-near-term-extinction-and-collapse-debate
I admit that the climate changes and that the globe is warming. However, I think the warming is partly natural and partly due to humans, and don’t believe we actually know how much of the warming is due to humans (although my guess is 50/50). So I reject the label denier when it is put on me.
I am certainly not a climate alarmist, although I see a lot of climate alarmism here.
So I guess that puts me in the middle.
So from my middle of the road position of mild warming caused by humans, but still wanting to contribute to a positive solution for the problem – I advocate the following:
Lets solve the problem of human caused warming with nuclear power for baseload (say 70%) and renewable power (say 30%). Until we invent grid level power storage or fusion or space based solar, nuclear is the best solution. We can reprocess our spent nuclear fuel, which still has most of its energy remaining. Kill two birds with one stone – get free energy and reduce the amount of nuclear waste. Reprocessing reduces the volume of waste and drastically reduces its half-life, while generating carbon free electricity. It is a no brainer.
Drastically increasing renewables, like California is the worst possible idea. California is about 48% renewable currently. The more renewable power, the more instantly available baseload backup power is required. If the backup is not nuclear, the more fossil fuel power that is required and used to keep the backup power plants instantly available for spin-up. 30-35% is about the most intermittent power our grid can tolerate currently – because we don’t have grid level power storage available, to cover the periods when there is no wind and no sun. With California as an example, if anything goes wrong at 48% renewable, boom – rolling blackouts.
So the solution to climate change is nuclear power (until fusion is fully invented and produces more energy out than goes in).
If people are not willing to increase the amount of nuclear power available, they are just not taking climate change seriously (in my opinion). If nuclear bombs are a concern, we should develop reactors that use thorium as the fuel source. We know it can be done, because a reactor operated from 1965 to 1969 at Oak Ridge. I am sure a passively cooled fourth generation safer design could be developed to utilize thorium.
In the meantime, remember that we don’t know what will happen in the future. We don’t know what ECS will turn out to be. We don’t know how much warming humans caused from 1950 to the present. We don’t know what caused the MWP and we don’t know what caused the LIA. We don’t know what caused the warming from 1905 to 1945. We don’t know how much it will warm the rest of this century. We don’t know how much the sea will rise during the rest of this century. We don’t know if we fully understand all aspects of the climate. There is a lot we don’t know and even though I have opinions on what I think will happen, I fully admit I could be wrong. Which is why I always say we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Good night everybody.
So many lies.
You deny the entire body of scientific evidence which indicates that climate sensitivity is ~3K without presenting a single scrap of valid supporting evidence for your lukewarm counter-claim. This is denialism. You also incessantly advocate for nuclear as a solution despite the industry’s own club, the WNA, stating that at best – at best – no more than 25% of global electricity generation can come from nuclear by mid-century. When made aware of this fact recently, you explicitly dismissed it. That is denialism. So, you are a denier.
Please cite a few examples.
That is an egregious attempt to drag the Overton window in your direction. It is also a lie. You are not in the middle. You are a denier from way off to the right. The scientific consensus is in the middle and you deny a key finding upheld by this consensus – that ECS is most likely ~3K. Remember Ricky, science deals in probability, so pretending that because we do not yet have observational data we can know nothing is a childish evasion deserving all the contempt it routinely recieves here.
RickA
Well you best get used to wearing that label ‘denier’ because once again you demonstrate that you own it.
Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans
Indeed a case can be made for the human component in elevated temperatures being >100% could be made when the effects of aerosol cooling is taken into account.
RickA, you have been told this time and again, now stop being a stubborn Republican Brain. Have you read that book BTW, you should but I doubt you will—too much cognitive dissonance.
That last sentence sure covers you. Source Wiki.
Again RickA, your elementary school waffle means nothing. The scientific community is in broad agreement. Humans are responsible for the recent warming – all of it. Not 50%, not 75%, but 100%. The planet was not undergoing a longer-term warming trend in recent decades. All of the recent forcings that account for the warming are anthropogenic. There is absolutely no dispute over this among the overwheliming majority of scientists. Lionel’s excellent link explains your mindset perfectly. You are a denier – lukewarmers deny that there is a problem that needs urgent attention. Again, your views are not based on science but on politics. You seek out information wherever you can find it to support the link between your libertarian, right wing views and science. The empirical evidence has rapidly left you and others like you behind, but you cling to outdated memes.
Time to cross the streams:
RickA has been promoting Nic Lewis, but somehow missed this:
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/
MikeN:
Thank you for the link. I did miss this update. 6 to 21% – hmmmm. I wonder what R0 is right now in New York City? Is each sick person getting less than 1 other person sick? Or more than 1? Very hard to tell from looking at the data (for me at least).
Judith curry deserves to be missed — at least if you have any understanding of science.
And why would someone look at a liar about climate science for insight into covid 19? (Rhetorical question: we see the type of people who do it.)
dean – yes you should not read Curry’s site. You should keep your head in the sand and avoid seeking out any information which could cause cognitive dissonance. Because that is how science is properly done. You should only read those items which confirm your bias.
Yes, Lewis has been banging on about this nonsense since April when one of his useless models suggested the herd immunity could be reached at much lower thresholds than 60%. As far as I am aware, he was even arguing that it might be as low as 12%, but his model was very quickly debunked. Sweden is nowhere close to herd immunity, and even there the infection rate is rising again.
Clearly Lewis appears to be a sad man who has too much free time on his hands. Of course he scurries over to Climate etc. to promote this nonsense. Why doesn’t he see how far it would get in a peer-reviewed journal, instead of writing these worthless screeds on blogs?
“es you should not read Curry’s site. You should keep your head in the sand ”
Reading material by repeat liars is counter productive. There’s no reason to read the latest stuff from the discovery institute either. Once people like curry have shown that they are willing to cherry pick data and do biased analyses they remove themselves from consideration as serious people (that happened to you a long time ago, with your racist bullcap and your whinging on about Mann’s hockey stick being wrong).
We get that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about — it also seems you don’t like having that pointed out. Too bad.
” Because that is how science is properly done”
Says the person who lies about established results.
RickA, Bernard’s question stands. There are absolutely no natural forcings that account for even a fraction of the recent warming. Not the sun, not Milanokovitch cycles, indeed, nothing accounts for it except the rapid increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2. This was settled two decades ago. The warming is 100% anthropogenic. At scientific conferences I attend, sessions exploring the ecological effects of warming take as given the absolute human fingerprint. My colleagues do not imply that there is a natural component involved. We do not dilute causation to placate those like you who are master procrastinators.
You therefore have no empirical basis whatsoever on which to suggest that it us 50/50 natural:anthropogenic. Your belief is merely a semantic camouflage for your political ideology. Most far right conservatives worship at the alter of neoliberal capitalism. They see regulations limiting the use of fossil fuels as a threat to the neoliberal system, so they oppose drastic measures to rein in their use. However, they rarely, if ever, admit, that their ‘science’ is in any way influenced by their political beliefs. They are of course lying, as you are here. You have no scientific expertise whatsoever, but miraculously you ‘believe’ that there is a significant natural component in the recent warming episode. Again, your belief is merely a smokescreen. We can all see it, so why do you continue with this farcical charade?
From the IPCC, 2013: “Their best estimate is that humans account for 100% of the recent warming”.
This was seven years ago, before the five warmest years on record by a considerable margin. Before a spate of high temperature records have been set in countries around the world. Before Australia’s crippling heat and bushfires, before even more mass coral reef bleaching, before Europe’s 40 plus-degree heatwaves, before some of the most powerful hurricanes and typhoons on record. Indeed, 2013 was at the end of the illusory ‘hiatus’ that deniers were ranting on and on about until 2014, 2015 and especially 2016 obliterated it. This little meme has since disappeared from their playbooks.
Pretty much says it all. This is indeed profoundly alarming. As a result of three searing summers in a row, trees are dying en masse in parts of Europe. Symptoms of rapid warming are manifesting themselves everywhere.
BBD
Thanks for the pointer to The Way of a Ship which got my memory banks going by having read similar in the 1970s (when I was into sailing [1] – my wife gets the wobbles on the Gosport ferry besides with a rapidly expanding family—from bachelor to married with four in a little over two years—my time was taken up elsewhere, so that fell by the wayside.
I had read another about windjammers rounding The Horn, may still have it, I’ll have a look.
If you are fascinated by sail as I am ISTR you were into O’Brian (shame that Weir only got one movie out of all those books) then this book is a must:
Seamanship in the Age of Sail: An Account of Shiphandling of the Sailing Man-O-War, 1600-1860 by John Harland. This is a later edition than my copy.
[1] Sailing mostly dinghies but occasionally a 55 ft timber hulled Bermuda rigged beauty called Merlin (used by FAA from Hornet), with a tiller. She and her sister ship Maribou (used by the salties at Vernon), similar hull but ketch rigged with a steering wheel. Hauling on that tiller one night from St Peter Port, Guernsey (had fun with a big cruiser we had to berth alongside having been delayed by adventures on the way) to Cherbourg in a Force 8 and thunderstorm was interesting.
The ‘sailor’ of the big cruiser with two thumping great diesels in its engine room had fouled mooring lines on entry, could not get his winches to work or his radar and nav’ kit. Noticing the ‘Blue Duster’ at our stern he asked if anybody knew anything about hydraulics. Being familiar with hydraulic systems of various aircraft types I volunteered figuring I could work it out. So he gave me a guided tour, stepping over the young lovelies sun bathing on the foredeck. It was dead simple, the mangled excuse for a split pin had fallen out of a cotter pin connecting a governor linkage to the gearbox. Went aboard Merlin and with a few tools and a suitable split pin fixed it. Meanwhile one of the others was cutting the prop free and the radar/nav’ problem turned out to be finger trouble. We were ‘in like Flynn’.
🙂
I’ll add Harland to the endless stack…
But really must get Republican Brain under my belt between now and Christmas. No further excuses will be acceptable 🙂
The climate reality:
Greenland’s melting ice sheet – in pictures
Change your information sources RickA and learn how to parse with honesty.
I’ll add another recommend BBD.
‘Passage To Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning’ by Jonathan Raban
The narrative is from the author as he sails along the coast from Seattle to Juneau describing interesting historical events and the fortunes, or misfortunes, of the indigenous as they suffer exploitation at the hands of big corporations.
I’ll add another recommend BBD.
‘Passage To Juneau: A Sea and Its Meaning’ by Jonathan Raban
The narrative is from the author as he sails along the coast from Seattle to Juneau describing interesting historical events and the fortunes, or misfortunes, of the indigenous as they suffer exploitation at the hands of big corporations.