Thursday, July 22, 2010

Judy, Judy, Judy



Shortly before his untimely death Steven Schneider sat down with Climate Science Watch's Rick Piltz and Rebeka Ryvola. When Andregg, et al., Schneider being the final al., was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the tutt tutting reached a wonderful crescendo. Lots of oxen were Gored. Ethon reports that talk of blacklists and never being able to see someone's name quoted in the New York Times again filled the air in Colorado. The Pielkesphere was outraged, and it was only when Judith Curry started spewing nonsense that calm returned.

It was unfortunate that Schneider was out of the country at the time. His access to the media, which the other authors did not have, would have made a difference.

Since that was at least four Climategate like events ago, perhaps a reminder of the paper's conclusions is in order

A vocal minority of researchers and other critics contest the conclusions of the mainstream scientific assessment, frequently citing large numbers of scientists whom they believe support their claims…This group, often termed climate change skeptics, contrarians, or deniers, has received large amounts of media attention and wields significant influence in the societal debate about climate change impacts and policy.

Despite media tendencies to present ‘both sides’ in ACC debates [anthropogenic climate change], which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding regarding ACC, not all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise in the climate system. This extensive analysis of the mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic climate change.
Eli would encourage the bunnies to go read the whole interview or listen to it. It is the shoe that did not drop at the time. CSW has posted video. There is one interchange which demonstrates Schneiders ability to strip a duplicious argument bare. He will be missed.

CSW: I believe Judith Curry argued that, on your various lists, under “convinced of the evidence” you were including people who are ecologists and biologists, and who aren’t really experts in the climate change detection and attribution research. So that somehow skews your notion of how to sort people out in terms of credibility. What’s your response to that?

Schneider: Well, there are two responses. First of all, there are a couple dozen people in the world that work in ecology – that includes people like Terry Root, Camille Parmesan, and myself, among others – who actually look at the bloom dates of roses in your grandmother’s back yard and when birds come back. We do detection and attribution studies. Those people are in the IPCC and they are legitimate experts and they have published research in Science and Nature and PNAS and places like that. There was an entire chapter on it in [IPCC] Working Group II and those people, again, like Cynthia Rosenzweig, were included in the IPCC database.

But she does have a point, that not everyone in IPCC is an expert in detection and attribution. That’s certainly true. But when she said that the IPCC group that we used in our PNAS study should be cut down to something like 20% of the original. That’s hundreds of people, that’s still quite a lot of people. If you look at the “unconvinced of evidence” group, virtually nobody in it has ever published a paper on detection and attribution. So, by Judy’s own logic, that means it’s virtually a null set. That means there’s almost nobody in the unconvinced category who has any expertise whatsoever in detection and attribution. So, if you take her logic, and apply it symmetrically to the “convinced” and “unconvinced” you narrow the “convinced” group down to a smaller but still clear and robust population and the “unconvinced” has virtually no expertise, and their opinion becomes completely irrelevant.


39 comments:

Steve Bloom said...

Doubtless as a consequence of the well-known Steve Synchronization Effect, my thought when I saw the comment from Judy was that she had just neatly removed herself from a position of credibility along with pretty much every other contrarian. Really, it's yet more evidence that these days she says a lot of things without having thought them through very well.

Horatio Algeranon said...

Clearly, some people can't tell the difference between a "Black-list" and a "Black-eye-list"

Jim Bouldin said...

Freakin' ecologists, who needs 'em.

Alastair said...

I get the distinct impression that Dr Judith Curry is in denial.

Steve Bloom said...

IMHO she's politically very unsophisticated (lots of evidence for that) and (now the speculation) went native once Bill Chameides wasn't around to keep her grounded in reality. The general atmosphere in Atlanta is bad enough, but I expect that as a department head she would have to interact a fair amount with GT alums and donors (correct, Eli?), and mere imagination is probably insufficient for describing how reactionary and denialist that crowd is likely to be.

Anonymous said...

Have you seen Judith's comment at RC (The Tamino post)?

OMG.....it is like watching an accident.....

Watch for BBC soon interviewing/quoting Curry along with Piekle Jnr and McIntyre. Right Mr. Black and Mr. Harrabin (aka BBC's AGW/ACC deniers in residence)?

MapleLeaf

Anonymous said...

Black isn't a denier. I'm less certain about Harrabin. But both of them suffer from the BBC false balance syndrome, and the climategate postscripts to every article are beyond tiresome.

Didactylos

carrot eating cockroach said...

The following needs to happen:

The sceptics need to bumble into some field in which Curry is active and knowledgeable, and do their usual bull in a china shop routine - loudly getting things wrong, insulting people, accusing people.

It's utterly bizarre how uncritical Curry is in accepting or at least repeating any old thing the sceptics are saying these days. I'm not a specialist in any of these fields either, but about ten seconds of investigation brings the context the sceptics don't give. So presumably, if the sceptics starting doing their thing in her own domain, she'd see their quality.

Phil Clarke said...

Actually Schneider stole this argument from me, at Keith Kloor's place:

Dr Curry. “I define the 20th century detection and attribution field to include those that create datasets, climate dynamicists that interpret the variabiity, radiative forcing, climate modelling, sensitivity analysis, feedback analysis. With this definition, 75% of the names on the list disappear. If you further eliminate people that create datasets but don’t interpret the datasets, you have less than 20% of the original list.”

Quick question – would it be correct to assert that the proportion of ‘convinced’ in this core ‘qualified expert’ group is 100%?

One wonders at the reception that headline conclusion would have evinced..

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/06/21/the-climate-experts/#comment-8903

I am of course, kidding. RIP Dr Schneider.

dhogaza said...

Here is a link to Curry's comment at RC, in which she lectures us as to what she learned from Montford's book.

Comment #3 makes it clear that she's not read the NAS North report, only Montford's inaccurate description of it. Quote: "How the hockey team interpreted the North NAS report as vindicating MBH, seems strange indeed."

Not so strange when North himself made clear that the report did, indeed, largely vindicate MBH '98.

Comment #7 makes it clear that she hasn't read Mann '08, because she repeats a couple of outright lies made by Montford which a cursory skimming of the paper would demolish.

And, no, it doesn't get better in the rest of her comment.

dhogaza said...

Oh, meant to add in my previous post ...

Curry's comment at RC is worth reading for Gavin's inline responses, which rip Curry multiple new anal orifices.

SteveF said...

Here's Judy's response to Gavin's evisceration:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/comment-page-4/#comment-181940

It's really rather pathetic.

Steve Bloom said...

That's OK, Phil, we'll just make you an honorary Steve.

AnnieNomNomNom said...

My gawd. A new emeritus has been born. Been interesting watching it in real time the last few months.

Steve Bloom said...

Just to mention, Eli, that some, including me I would hasten to say, appreciate your most recent comment over at RC.

carrot eater said...

Oh dear, oh dear. Curry is imploding before our eyes, and it's not pretty.

So is she just 'reviewing' the book and passing on what it says, or agreeing with, accepting and angrily defending what it says? It doesn't appear that she even knows.

As for calls to read the book.. how about you read anything at all not written by McIntyre or an acolyte. Read the actual primary documents being discussed.. do a bit of work, instead of taking spoon feeding, and then angrily proclaiming to the world how good the spoon is..

David B. Benson said...

That thread on RC is exactly like watching a drive-by accident.

Complete with a policman with intials GS...

J Bowers said...

Will the aliens who abducted Dr Curry please return her immediately.

Anonymous said...

Apologies Earthperson, our MindRay technology is producing unpredicted results at this time. Your patience is appreciated.

aliens

carrot eater said...

I see the aliens have mastered written English.

I re-read Curry's comeback several times, to make sure I wasn't reading it wrongly. And each time I read it, it actually got worse.

Unreal.

Is that thread being moderated more tightly than usual? It hasn't drifted off to nuclear energy or whatever else, yet.

Former Skeptic said...

In a way, I'm pleased Ms. Curry decided to (figuratively) come out of the contrarian closet as McI's no.1 emeritus fangirl. Now, there's no need for me to give her views on climate change any credibility after her bizarre posts on RC.

What I want to know is why - why the volte-face? Why the change from someone who saw through Lomborg's BS and chided RPJr's superficial hurricane analysis a mere three years ago?

Did she, like RPSr., not get funding from NSF/NIH for her pet project? Was she ostracized from some NAS get together?

Anonymous said...

It's all horrified fascination for me watching the slo-mo wreckage scattering and spiralling though the air at RC.

I don't know what, if anything, has happened with Judy, Judy, Judy, but she's clearly lost the plot recently. But this one is so calamitous I doubt she can do anything to retrieve anything from this lot.

MinniesMum

Deech56 said...

I am not sure that Curry has backtracked from her previous writings (the hurricane writings were within her area of expertise), but I think this has more to do with her self-identification with the CA tribe, which is obsessed with paleoclimate temperature reconstructions (Mann, Briffa, etc.)

What I think is stunning is that she has entered the fray ill-prepared to take on Tamino's analysis.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

a_ray_in_dilbert_space,

Judy gives all the signs of adulation addiction. For the most part, scientists are not a worshipful bunch. I remember from my days in particle physics that a collaborator said "All the guys on your experiment are jerks. All the guys on the other experiments are assholes. The highest praise you can give is, 'He doesn't do too bad for an asshole.'"

If a scientist--or in Judy's case, erstwhile scientist--feels their work has not been adequately appreciated, it is easy for them to succumb to the sort of flattery she receives over at CA and other denialist blogs. There she's a rockstar. In climate science, she's at best an also-ran, and more likely a left-far-behind.

The problem is that in succumbing to such flattery, you have to leave the science behind, because it shows clearly that those praising you are incompetent, nutjob ideologues. Judy has chosen to desert her position as a trooper in the army of science in favor of taking the position of the Duchess of Sycophancy.

Anonymous said...

Maybe Eli could mail Dr. Curry a nice compass?

MapleLeaf

John Mashey said...

Without claiming I have any real information, people might try:
catalog of reasons, and matrix of reasons X people&organizations. Row B4 is for field scientists.

David B. Benson said...

MapleLeaf, too late for a compass. That ship is already being pounded to pieces and breaking up on the rocks.

[Word verification entones "loglog".]

Carmen S said...

@David B. Benson

"That thread on RC is exactly like watching a drive-by accident.
Complete with a policman with intials GS..."

Respect for a bent Copper?

David B. Benson said...

Carmen S --- I don't suffer fools gladly.

Steven Sullivan said...

I remain far too lazy to mine the quote, but I am quite sure that Dr. Curry has cited the libertarian bent of her school's alumni, as a reason why she feels safe being a 'questioner' nowadays.

Rattus Norvegicus said...

The train wreck gets even better. She points readers at RC to a post by Stevie the first point of which is that teleconnections in climate are BS. I point out at least three TC's for El Nino that I am aware of. A subsequent poster points to Google Scholar and a raft of articles on TC's, some of which she is an author of!

Can anyone really take her seriously? How does she deal with the cognitive dissonance? Or is it just sexual attraction?

Anonymous said...

Rattus,

Train wreck indeed. Dr. Curry refers to the AO and PNA teleconnections in this paper:

http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Lynch_BAMS85.pdf

So McIntyre says TCs are BS, yet she continues to believe, defend and support him and not the real climate scientists?

MapleLeaf

SteveF said...

Judy has now used the phrase "settled science". This is the final, definitive, proof that she has jumped the shark. Shame.

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/7/25/mcintyre-on-rc-on-bh.html#comment9125911

David B. Benson said...

Auto wreck.
Ship wreck.
Tain wreck.

Is airplane wreck the next analogy?

Rattus Norvegicus said...

David,

Train wreck is the appropriate analogy. I rarely pay much attention to car wrecks, but a good train wreck (and we've had a couple of good coal train wrecks here in the last few years) is something you can't take your eyes off of. It's huge, it's ugly and it spreads pollution of a wide area.

On the other hand, Colbert might prefer a good "taint wreck".

Rattus Norvegicus said...

In the last comment "of a wide area" should have been "over a wide area". My typing sucks.

David B. Benson said...

Rattus Norvegicus --- Ship wrecks are worse.

carrot eater said...

Fascinating - She went back to RC for more. Curry has turned into that starling-bye-bye troll who comes by here sometimes. Here, here is something that has nothing to do with anything... ok, gotta run, bye.

J Bowers said...

Head wreck.