Wednesday, November 18, 2009

No honor among bloggers

While Wm was doing his grumpy young man bit over at Stoat, grousing about the APS Climate Change Statement that it added nothing new, Arthur Smith has something interesting to say. Arthur did not put it on his blog, so Eli thought he would "borrow"

No, the statement certainly doesn't add anything to the scientific discussion of the matter; it's relatively conservative compared to AGU and AAAS etc. But it does put the reputation of yet another well-respected scientific organization on the line in essentially an endorsement of the IPCC.

The only way our honest "sceptic" friends can maintain their belief system is to also believe in the corruption, mal-intent or incompetence of all those scientists who have been pointing out the real serious problems with our fossil carbon emissions. They have to pretend that the numbers on the "pro" side are small, that the numbers on their side are large. The effect of statements such as this from the APS is to tear away at that belief system - or else to succumb to an ever-expanding conspiracy. Which you can see in the various reactions out there.

16 comments:

Arthur said...

To see the expanding conspiracy mindset in action, just check out this comment thread at WUWT, which finally posted a note on the rejection of the change - pasting in a complete Physics World article in the process.

My good friend Joel Shore has been doing yeoman's work there pointing out their internal contradictions and need for large-scale conspiracy thinking.

Webmaster said...

No. The Warmers AKA Socialists, have the same problem as said Commies. They confuse "Good Intentions" with "Good Outcomes", they like noble ends, and think that any means are justified therefor. That's how you get so many mass murderers from the Socialists. They figure it's all for the best.

Sad the Warmers by diverting Billions of recources have caused more deaths than they can count.

The road to Hell is truly paved with good intentions.

John Mashey said...

1) There seems to be a concerted effort to chase various societies.

2) Some folks at ACS are expecting a petition from Heartland at next ACS meeting. Does anyone know what's in that one? Id Eli happen to photogrpah it?

3) Singer has an alternate statement for the Geological Society of America.

4) Although I have yet to see any activity, I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of the societies in letter to Senators get targeted as well.

Magnus said...

Who is up for replying to this nonsens then?

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r

Anonymous said...

From Ad-homimouse:

Gonna be a busy day:

The breaking story at CAudit, WuWT and Lucia:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/real-files-or-fake/

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7801#comments (see further down)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/

should be an interesting day - hoax, implosion or what?

Anonymous said...

should be an interesting day - hoax, implosion or what?

My guess is that someone's managed to hack the files - but has had fun editing some of the e-mails to make it appear on the surface that people like mann, briffa, and jones are "conspiring" to foist a "fraud" on mankind.

All in time for copenhagen.

The sheer size of the files and content argues against all of it being made up.

Of interest is the glee being seen over what in most countries is a very series crime, breaking into a government computer and stealing files.

Anonymous said...

Publishing stolen property and copyright infringements. Whatever next?

Cymraeg llygoden

Arthur said...

Magnus - "Energy & Fuels", huh? And right above that it says "ACS Journals: High Quality, High Impact".

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ... as a stoat might say...

Marion Delgado said...

The residence time of atmospheric CO2 is not unchangeably one number of years, set in stone, is it? It depends on the solubility of the water, on forestation, etc. And the reservoirs are affected by temperature and pollution and so on. There shouldn't be orders of magnitude difference, but over time the residency will change and if you only want to consider one factor at a time you'll get incomplete numbers.

Also, is that anthropogenically sourced part meaningful? If some volcano really was pumping out as much extra CO2 as people were, and so the same net amount was resident, would the picture on residence in the atmosphere change?

That struck me as odd, Magnus. Are you already replying to it?

Magnus said...

Tried my part in Swedish... however it would be nice if some one with authority sent an update to the journal or something like that. (to point out the big things)

related:
Reconstruction of the history of anthropogenic CO2 concentrations in the ocean:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7271/full/nature08526.html

c14: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/volltexte/2006/6712/pdf/NaeglerJGR2006.pdf

Arthur said...

if anybody has any real questions about how our input of CO2 to the atmosphere decays over time, David Archer's book "The Long Thaw" describes the processes in complete and exhaustive detail. Suffice to say, this paper (at least the abstract) is horrendously misinformed on the actual scientific question relevant to atmospheric CO2 concentrations, here.

Hank Roberts said...

Thanks for the pointer to Arthur Smith's 'Not Spaghett' -- which I'd missed up til now.

This, for example, is the clearest writing I've seen about the difficult "how can something colder transfer heat to something warmer" question:

"..unlike the molecules of air, most of the photons have very long mean-free-paths and can travel from their emission point to an absorption point that is at a different temperature.....
...
... Molecules don't know what the local temperature is, so "hot" molecules happily travel from cold regions to hot ones, and vice versa. ... For radiation it's the same issue - the individual photons don't know whether they're going from a hot place to a cold one or vice versa."

Always remembering the national reading level is: 7th grade.

http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/the_arrogance_of_physicists#comment-4228

John Mashey said...

Essenhigh:
I keep a little spreadsheet with names of certain people.

Essenhigh is on it for;
CATO2009 ad
Heartland "expert", which says of him:

"Bailey Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The Ohio State University. Areas of research include heterogeneous reaction kinetics; pyrolysis and combustion of coal particles, polymers, carbon, paper, oils, gases, corncobs, solid waste; pyrolysis and gasification of carbonaceous solids; ignition of particles and flammability of particle clouds; flame spread over surfaces; ignition and flame propagation in dust clouds; coal structure; diffusion flames; radiative heat transfer; stirred reactor and thermal explosion behavior; aerodynamics in combustors; combustion engineering and applications of Furnaceand Engine Analysis; incineration and solid waste disposal; air pollution, and formation and control if pollutants."

Anonymous said...

Arthur Smith says: "The only way our honest "sceptic" friends can maintain their belief system is to also believe in the corruption, mal-intent or incompetence of all those scientists who have been pointing out the real serious problems with our fossil carbon emissions."

How timely then the CRU revelations which appear to confirm exactly that.

Anonymous 97

Hank Roberts said...

Yessssss
http://carbonfixated.com/newtongate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-renaissance-and-enlightenment-thinking/

Marion Delgado said...

Energy and Fuels' mission statement:

Energy and Fuels is a journal that gives energy to science denialists, and fuels false controversies.