Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Electric Kooling-Aid Denialist Test.

Tamino has a New Year's post on Stupid, you know, Stupid, the guy who tells you that it's been cooling since 2007. Tamino is a nice fella, but he believes that if he carefully shows how this is wrong, he might get through. He misunderstands what is happening. These things are not errors, they are tests of who belongs. If you don't drink the electric kool-aid kid, you ain't a denialist, it's kind of Jonestown with mind altering drugs.

A nice example of this can be found at the Marohasy Estate. On Christmas Jen received a visit from denialists past, S. Fred threw a sooty note down the chimney describing the climate

OK; let’s check out the data since 1958. But we don’t want to rely on contaminated surface data – which IPCC likely used – although they omitted to say so. . . . .

1958 – 2005: Total warming of +0.5 C (But how much of that is anthropogenic?)
1958 - 1976: Cooling
1976 – 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to GHG.)
1977 – 1997: No detectable trend
1998 - 1999: El Nino spike
2000 – 2001: No detectable trend
2001 – 2003: Sudden jump of +0.3 C (Cannot be due to GHG.)
2003 – present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling

sod pointed out this was Stupid (Stupid hitched a ride south on Santa's sleigh that night)

Gordon Robertson opined

sod “1976 – 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to GHG.) sorry, but this is simply stupid”.

Stupid?? Fred Singer is far more qualified as an atmospheric physicist than you’ll ever think of being. That applies to all the wannabees at RC as well.

definitely a member of the tribe. oil shrill posted

from the beginning of this graph:
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/temp-data.jpg

the temps leap about 0.4degC or so
why is it “simply stupid”?
the only stupid I see is those who believe in AGW, despite the total absence of evidence.

Another. cohenite is always good for spreading cheer and irrelevance
a temperature trend between 2 points is a temperature trend period; however, a trend doesn’t tell you the rate of change nor does it tell you whether that rate of change is correlated with a causal factor; what Singer is showing is that an overall trend between 2 designated points cannot be causally connected with CO2; the overall trends are a product of sudden and large steps; look at this;
Eli is working on a book proposal. The Electric Kooling-Aid Denialist Test is a work of literary journalism by Eli Rabett describing the travels of S. Fred Singer and his band of Merry Emeriti in their coal shuttle, "Our Thing" and how they reach personal and collective revelations through fantasy and science affliction. It covers their cross country road trips, as well as the Acid Tests for True Believers, and for light relief, 9 track tapes of early performances by the Marshall Institute Trio. Eli is concerned not with yuks, although they are appreciated, but with relating the Emeriti's intellectual and quasi-financial experiences. Large advances are respectfully requested.

14 comments:

  1. I don't know why you bother with all that ancient history Eli, it's been on a cooling trend since 1998, and you will doubtless freeze your bunny buns off unless the Sun decides to turn its spots back on.

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  2. The difference in radiative forcing from a the sun being "stuck" in a minimum (~.15 W/m^2 relative to mean solar forcing) is more than made up in just five years of additional GHG forcing (at 2003 levels ~.3 W/m^2). And suffice to say, unfortunately we aren't and won't be emitting back at 2003 levels any time soon.[1][2]

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  3. > We need to move out more into the
    > dens of denialism (you know where
    > they are, saddle up). True the
    > style required there is different
    > and each of us has a place we will
    > not go, but there are
    > opportunities).

    Okay, I have heard the trumpeter's call.

    http://goosie.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/harry/bio/zoo/swantrum.wav

    I do better where there are some people already making sense, so I can help out by doing what I do well; not so well solo diving in the septic tanks. Invitations welcome. You know how to find me.

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  4. Disproving theories is fun!

    1958 - 1976: Cooling
    1976 – 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to solar)
    1977 – 1997: No detectable trend
    1998 - 1999: El Nino spike
    2000 – 2001: No detectable trend
    2001 – 2003: Sudden jump of +0.3 C (Cannot be due to solar.)
    2003 – present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling

    Now, I'm tired, but I might be able to disprove cosmic rays after The Transformers is over.

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  5. A trend line where the X-axis is "time" doesn't tell the rate of change? Hokey smokes - somebody fell asleep in linear regression class.

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  6. Sometimes I feel like the denialists exclude me from their club. but I am a very good denialist. Also on JustOneMinute they call me liberal since I say Likbby lied.

    It's not right.

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  7. OT: A reliable source informs that in the Discworld universe this is the Year of the Pensive Hare. The Century of the Fruitbat continues unabated as far as I'm aware.

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  8. The question that mainly interests me is why we should expect the the response to a more or less smoothly increasing forcing to be so stop and start. Either there must be important feedback mechanisms that modulate the heating or the heat is being sequestered, perhaps in the ocean. Does anybody have any idea which?

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  9. CapitalistImperialistPig writes:

    The question that mainly interests me is why we should expect the the response to a more or less smoothly increasing forcing to be so stop and start. Either there must be important feedback mechanisms that modulate the heating or the heat is being sequestered, perhaps in the ocean. Does anybody have any idea which?

    Neither. CO2 isn't the only thing that affects the global temperature.

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  10. Methinks the Pig's point was greenhouse gases are the only forcing that is increasing strongly (roughly linear)

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  11. I'd claim that one should:

    1) Watch OHC (Ocean Heat Content) first, since that's most of the variable heat content of Earth.

    2) It happens that we care most about surface temperature, because that's where we are, but atmospheric heat content (and thus temperature) gets jiggled around by all the ocean jiggles like ENSOs.

    3) Energy is conserved, temperature isn't, and conservation laws are exceptionally useful in understanding physics.

    delta(Earth HC) = incoming-outgoing

    i.e., the energy goes somewhere, mostly in the ocean. It is very easy for there to be a wide range of surface temperatures associated with a total HC.

    4) The old advice to defensive football players holds: "Watch the belt-buckle, not the head-fakes." In the long term, the belt-buckle (OHC) and head (surface temperature) go the same direction, but not necessarily in the short-term

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  12. I strongly suspect the Denialists are trying to use Stupidity like Luke Skywalker uses the Force.

    Fred Singer does look a lot like Obi-Wan, the Stupid is strong in that one!

    Berbalang

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  13. A side comment - it would be nice not to confuse folks about the difference between Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters (& Tom Wolfe's book about the electric kool aid acid test) on one hand, and the Jim Jones / Guayana / Jonestown catastrophe of another decade and culture. All they have in common is that the latter used kool aid to distribute poison at the end, and the same product name shows up in the book title. While your indiscriminately mixing the references in your satire isn't malicious, at least younger readers are likely to conflate the two. Keeping the cultural memes clean may not be as crucial as AGW education, but it's cheap so why not (no kool aid tax credits needed). Thanks!

    (If I post again it will probably be under a different name to separate science and culture anyway, so anonymous will do here. Keep up the good work in cleaning up AGW meme space!)

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  14. hello Eli,

    "1958 – 2005: Total warming of +0.5 C (But how much of that is anthropogenic?)
    1958 - 1976: Cooling
    1976 – 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to GHG.)
    1977 – 1997: No detectable trend
    1998 - 1999: El Nino spike
    2000 – 2001: No detectable trend
    2001 – 2003: Sudden jump of +0.3 C (Cannot be due to GHG.)
    2003 – present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling"

    :-D, they really are not willing to learn what drives the climate. I'm glad to see they recognize el nino. i'm terrified to see they are sun-worshippers, i thought those were all christianized in the 1000s, because it was getting too hot (MWP).

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