Mann vs Steyn Lurches Forward
UPDATE: Rick Piltz has much more at Climate Science Watch as well as having posted the ruling
UPDATED PREDICTION: Having narrowed the issue, it is Eli's considered opinion, that Judge Weisberg is going to push very hard for the parties to settle with an apology. The Judge will make it clear that he won't play with those who remain stubborn. While Steyn and Simberg are individual clowns NRO and CEI are corporate entities with much to lose. Discovery, if it ever takes place is not going to be a popcorn fest on either side because it will be tightly controlled to the one issue. Steve McIntyre can unpack. Remember tho EINAL
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In a just released ruling, Rabett Run's special correspondent reports that Rand Simberg's hero has turned against him. Bunnies may remember that Simberg danced a jig when the appeals fairy denied jurisdiction.
This has been a case run on luck so far. We've had bad luck by having the previous judge, but her incompetence has also been ultimately to our favor, and against Mann's.Today's ruling by Judge Frederick Weisberg has undoubtedly sent the National Review/Competitive Enterprise Institute team out venue shopping. Weisberg denied their motions for summary dismissal under the DC Anti-SLAPP Suit Act, but most striking was his reason for doing so
That is why we are breaking out champagne.
. . . .plaintiff alleges that CEI published, and National Review republished, the following defamatory statement: “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” The allegedly defamatory aspect of this sentence is the statement that plaintiff “molested and tortured data,” not the rhetorically hyperbolic comparison to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.with a little footnotee on the end of that paragraph
Accusing plaintiff of working “in the service of politicized science” is arguably a protected statement of opinion, but accusing a scientist of “molest[ing] and tortur[ing] data” is an assertion of fact.and sets further forth in detail
The statement “he has molested and tortured data” could easily be interpreted to mean that the plaintiff distorted, manipulated, or misrepresented his data. Certainly the statement is capable of a defamatory meaning, which means the questions of whether it was false and made with “actual malice” are questions of fact for the jury. A reasonable reader, both within and outside the scientific community, would understand that a scientist who molests or tortures his data is acting far outside the bounds of any acceptable scientific method. In context, it would not be unreasonable for a reader to interpret the comment, and the republication in National Review, as an allegation that Dr. Mann had committed scientific fraud, which Penn State University then covered up, just as some had accused the University of covering up the Sandusky scandal. For many of the reasons discussed in Judge Combs Greene’s July 19 orders, to state as a fact that a scientist dishonestly molests or tortures data to serve a political agenda would have a strong likelihood of damaging his reputation within his profession, which is the very essence of defamation.Oh yes, there will be discovery. Things just got a whole lot more serious for the defendants.
Posts
301 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 301 of 301Anon-101a here:
“We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change”—Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom;
Yes. And? Are you saying that a surface temperature average of 200C will NOT be a catastrophe for humans?
Because if not, then all the difference between you and us is how long catastrophe will take to turn up.
Please try again.
Anon-101a here:
"The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlet"
That is your opinion. However, you did used to claim that you didn't go for opinion, only evidence.
And apparently the economies and results of ANY attempt to deal with AGW is now "settled" enough for rightwingnuts to proclaim that it would be the ruination of the capitalist system, an apocalypse like those espoused by madmen who used to wander the streets with sandwich boards proclaiming the end of the world.
Apparently the fraudulent nature of AGW is so "settled" that it is routine for leaders of the developed world to go round claiming that the conspiracy is world-girdling and predicated solely to a nefarious new world order, bringing an end to western democracy.
I guess you'll be decrying those people, then, right?
Anon-101a
"if only they can tax and regulate us enough."
According to your neolibertarian screed, they ALREADY tax and regulate you too much. Moreover that they continue to extend their reach over you.
Actions done decades before AGW was a whipping boy for the neoliberal scaremongers.
Isn't this Orwellian dystopia a proclamation of armageddon of a like with those apocalyptic madmen of the kind who used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets?
Enquiring minds wish to know whether and why you make that assertion.
Oh, I will say that a surface temperature average of 200 degrees Celsius is quite probable--on Judgement Day. Read my previous comments, please.
I speak let the cat out of the bag - or perhaps we just caught a glimpse of the Snopes monkey in the room.
"...if only they can tax and regulate us enough."
Another Christian complaining about taxes. All that render unto Caesar and camels squirming through eyes of needles is just a bunch of baloney. Christ was a libertarian economist with a degree from the vM Institute!
... and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also ...
I speak has found his one true religion and it appears he mistakes Mammon for JC.
Anon-101a here:
"Oh, I will say that a surface temperature average of 200 degrees Celsius is quite probable--"
Sorry, was English not in your first three languages?
What part of " Are you saying that a surface temperature average of 200C will NOT be a catastrophe for humans?" says "is it probable?"
Please let everyone know, because if you're reading everything from an alternative universe, then we're at an impasse, since none of us occupy that personal reality of yours, hence cannot know if any claim will be copied across verbatim.
Anon-101a here:
Remember, Kevin, the loudest xtians profess to follow Christ, so they aren't following that Jewish faith thing (ptui!). They also use the "WE only follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, as portrayed in the NEW TESTAMENT", yet do not do so. Partly because their faith requires Original Sin (Old Testament), but also the teachings of JC are a bit eco-hippie communist, an anathema to the POLITICAL beliefs of the "believers".
So you'll see no "Render unto Caesar" nor "Give with both hands" and DEFINITELY no "Pray to God in the silence of your own soul".
Because the believers believe in themselves, not the religion, and edit the latter to conform to their prejudice.
Anon-101a here:
"I'm not interested in merely trading insults,"
Indeed, though it does seem that proffering insults comprise a majority of your effort, you are just unwilling to take as you dish out.
"Guthrie. Spengler wasn't so long ago"
Nobody claimed otherwise, so why bring that up? It appears that much of the rest of your time is spent inhabiting an alternate reality that contains things that no other person here could observe.
But its lack of age does not make it work to support your claims nor bolster the idea that Steyn (you) can get away with "I JUST BELIEVE!" in a court of law.
"your CAGW requires faith."
It requires your faith that CAGW is a claim made by others. Faith that requires no evidence, only belief.
"The term CAGW is not nonsense"
It is, since it only exists as a shibboleth of denierdom, never defined nor attributed in the concrete but in the indefinite and nebulous, so as to ensure that it is rumoured to exist, but never proven not to, much like Sasquatch.
"it is, in fact, what people on this site mean when they speak of the threat of "global warming""
However, if that is what you mean by CAGW, then where do you get the idea that global warming poses no threat at all?
As far as the AGW vs CAGW business is concerned, how about a new term: MAGW?
i.e. if we curb CO2 emissions sharply starting this decade, we could end up with "MAGW" (Manageable AGW).
But if we continue on our current emissions trajectory, we could put enough carbon into the atmosphere over the next century or so to send the Earth back to the Eocene. That *would* be CAGW.
In Richard Alley's memorable AGU Fall Meeting lecture of a few years ago, he mentioned that sea surface temperatures reached or even exceeded 100F in the tropics during the height of the Eocene.
Now, think about the implications 100F sea-surface temperatures. You'd be seeing wet-bulb temperatures (or even dew points) in the neighborhood of 100F. In conditions like that, everyone caught outside would die of heat-stroke in a matter of hours -- **everyone**.
And yes, a 100F dew-point is not compatible with human life -- consult a heat-index calculator or table and see for yourselves what the heat index is for that 100F dew-point.
Warming that would make it impossible for humans to survive outside for more than a few hours without "refrigeration suits" certainly would meet any reasonable person's definition of "catastrophic".
And no, this is not a matter of faith. As Dr. Alley likes to say, "It's *physics*".
Anon-101a here:
""it is, in fact, what people on this site mean when they speak of the threat of "global warming""
However, if that is what you mean by CAGW, then where do you get the idea that global warming poses no threat at all? "
Indeed, to follow on, if that is what's meant by "CAGW" then why not use the unambiguous term "threat of global warming"?
The only reason I see is that each one can have multivariate definitions of what THEY mean by CAGW, therefore never worry about it being debunked.
Ah, there are indeed none so blind as those who cannot see. The funny thing is that if science is so inherently Christian, why are so many people who claim to be christians against the science proving global warming, and indeed evolution?
Cool, an incompetent creationist fuckwit is calling me dishonest? All the assertions you make about it not warming and evolution not existing doesn't unmelt the arctic ice, or stop the beetles moving northwards and devouring the pine trees. Nor does it stop the viruses and bacteria evolving, or get rid of all the genetic evidence showing how different species evolved from others.
For the trifecta, please confirm whether you are an engineer or not.
Anon-101-a - actually it's a lot more complex re. christianity and science than you make it out to be. Actually for much of the medieval and post-medieval period Christianity per se wasn't a hindrance to the developing science.
And like i pointed out, some varieties were at different times and some weren't at other times. All of which suggests the case is not that Christianity gave birth/ led to/ was essential to science, rather that the right circumstances had formed in which a religion which was not so prescriptive regarding the operation of the world which gave a lot of leeway to natual philosophers to think about and look at things.
The obvious contrast is Arabic science, which basically foundered under the weight of fundamentalism after a promising start. Such outbreaks have been seen in Christian Europe, but not so large and widespread.
The end point is that you are completely wrong to say that Christianity held back science for nearly 2,000 years; not only does this deride the advances made by people who considered themselves Christian (no matter that our creationis friend probably wouldn't consider some of them Christian) in countries in which it was the official religion, but it misunderstands and misuses the term 'science'. Natural philosophy is perhaps a better way of putting it, but Christians had little to do with it during the Roman Empire, and only some afterwards, getting a good lot of information from the Arabs and Byzantium. The lack of technical and philosophical development in the later stages of hte ROman empire and the early medieval period are nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with the collapse of the economic circumstances supporting civilisation. (well okay they had slaves, so not civilisation by our standards)
Apologize for nutty false beliefs much? Religion is false for the sole reason that they can't and don't even define what it is. Any argument otherwise is just further nonsense.
Not only is religious false and a false belief, there is not even unanimous or even majority agreement on what it is that they believe in.
Let me reiterate, religious is nonsense. Certainly enthusiast cults should not be considered tax exempt.
Thanks for the clarification Speak.
Now please explain how putting the word 'Catastrophic' in front of "Anthropic Global Warming" differs in intent from putting the word 'Apocalyptic' in front of " madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets."
The final Coup de grâce in the argument that religion is false, and is indeed a false belief, is, well, it doesn't even work, bitches.
caerbannog,
I believe you asked me how to tell the results apart from a hockey stick data set and a random data set that both yield hockey sticks when run through the mannomatic. Are you telling me that the answer is that the nonrandom data set will have its hockey stick be contained in a combination of PC's? If I understand correctly, that's what non-mannomatic PCA is supposed to do. The mannomatic puts its Hockey stick in the first PC.
If I have this wrong, please enlighten me. Considering what blog this is, I'm all ears.
caerbannog,
I believe you asked me how to tell the results apart from a hockey stick data set and a random data set that both yield hockeysticks when run through the mannomatic. Are you telling me that the answer is that the nonrandom data set will have its hockey stick be contained in a combination of PC's? If I understand correctly, that's what non-mannomatic PCA is supposed to do. The mannomatic puts its Hockey stick in the first PC.
If I have this wrong, please enlighten me. Considering what blog this is, I'm all ears.
canman,
Before we go any further, can you take an honest crack at this question I asked you earlier?
Suppose you are given the full SVD output from a "random noise" data-matrix (column-vectors with little correlation) and from a "strong signal" data-matrix (column vectors that share a strong common signal).
What outputs from the SVD would you look at first? What would you expect to see from the random noise data? From the strong-signal data?
There's no number-crunching required here -- all I'm looking for is a qualitative description what you'd look for in the SVD outputs and how you'd use that information to tell which matrix contained only random noise and which contained the signal.
If you can't do that, then there's no point in spending any more time with this.
To the guy whose lips move when he tries to rationalise his existence...
Your rabidly illogical twisting of science is why I, as a seven year old confronted by hypocrisy and pseudoscience of fundamentalist relatives and religious teachers, started along the road that saw me eschew within several years Christian doctrine. Hearing now the ravings coming from your corner makes me fervently glad that I don't subscribe to your mythology - as much as I have a fascination for the subject the one in which you indulge is the most toxically-polluted ideological bilge to which I've had the misfortune to be exposed.
Tell me, what part of your faith has ever been validated? Can you point me to any example of controlled and verified testing of prayer that shows that it makes a difference to any outcome at all? Can you name anyone who has visited heaven and returned to inform the mere mortals of Earth about it? Can you name anyone who has had a visitation from a non-corporeal being and has been proven to not suffer from psychosis, psychotropic drug influence or other impairment of mental acuity?
And why do you persistently avoid addressing (even in the quiet space in your own head, when your lips still move) the many hundreds of inconsistencies in the supposedly infallible Bible?
Guthrie wrote,
Ah, there are indeed none so blind as those who cannot see.
True. From the rest of this comment of yours, I have concluded you are blind and cannot look in the mirror.
The funny thing is that if science is so inherently Christian, why are so many people who claim to be christians against the science proving global warming, and indeed evolution?
They aren't against the science; they are against the faith component of CAGW and evolutionism. And I didn't argue so much that science is inherently Christian as that science developed out of a Christian world view. And there isn't any science proving macroscopic evolution.
Cool, an incompetent creationist fuckwit is calling me dishonest?
No, a creationist is calling you dishonest.
All the assertions you make about it not warming and evolution not existing doesn't unmelt the arctic ice, or stop the beetles moving northwards and devouring the pine trees. Nor does it stop the viruses and bacteria evolving, or get rid of all the genetic evidence showing how different species evolved from others.
I don't think that I have made any such assertions--except in this present comment with regard to macroscopic evolution. Please point them out, and then I'll maybe affirm or correct them as needed.
For the trifecta, please confirm whether you are an engineer or not.
It seems you will accept my word as credible. That's good, anyway. I'm not a train engineer, sanitary engineer, domestic engineer, or professional engineer. I did study civil engineering, and I do have a degree in applied science. So I know enough to know that I don't know very much. I also know that while you know something, you certainly do not know everything, and a little common sense, humility, and respect would go a long way.
To the guy whose lips move when he tries to rationalise his existence...
Are you saying that you reject "macroscopic" evolution but that you accept 'microscopic' evolution?
If so, what distinguishes one from the other? Where is the boundary between the two? What is the cause of this boundary, and what is your evidence for any or all of the above?
I speak not knowing the difference between faith and reason says:
"... common sense ..."
Another allusion to my man Paine.
But I'm displeased you have not explained how this concern of yours over increased taxes is a core belief of Christianity. I missed out on reading the Gospel of von Mises in catechism classes. Here I thought all this money-grubbing was the influence of dear old Lucifer - or Mammon. But please do enlighten us.
For example, human beings who for generations have lived near the equator tend to have darker skin whereas those closer to the poles have lighter skin. That's micro-evolution. When God made the world, he made each living thing capable of reproducing "after its own kind." I think scientists refer to this concept as genetics.
caerbannog,
I believe you asked me how to tell the results apart from a hockey stick data set and a random data set that both yield hockeysticks when run through the mannomatic. Are you telling me that the answer is that the nonrandom data set will have its hockey stick be contained in a combination of PC's? If I understand correctly, that's what non-mannomatic PCA is supposed to do. The mannomatic puts its Hockey stick in the first PC.
If I have this wrong, please enlighten me. Considering what blog this is, I'm all ears.
Sorry abut the repeats. Didn't see the older 201-2xx of 2xx buttons.
wascowy wabbit hole!
Caerbannog wrote,
As far as the AGW vs CAGW business is concerned, how about a new term: MAGW?
It still implies unManageable or catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, as you indeed go on to say:
But if we continue on our current emissions trajectory, we could put enough carbon into the atmosphere over the next century or so to send the Earth back to the Eocene. That *would* be CAGW.
Your could is already conditional. Because of my faith in God, I see the probability as nearly zero. Or Judgement Day will come first. Certainly CAGW is not a priority problem.
In any case, you seem to have already assumed that global warming, such as it is (because some are talking about another mini ice age possibly coming) is mostly anthropogenic. That's your faith supplying what's missing, isn't it? And you have faith that the trend will continue, but extrapolation always has more uncertainty. And you have faith--as evidenced in your term MAGW--that we can do something about the supposed problem, too. I would say that the link from CAGW to its basis in science is tenuous.
In Richard Alley's memorable AGU Fall Meeting lecture of a few years ago, he mentioned that sea surface temperatures reached or even exceeded 100F in the tropics during the height of the Eocene.
The Eocene epoch--or its dating, at least--is not a part of my faith. I realize that it is part of the faith system of most scientists today. But they were not around to observe it, and they adhere to the presupposition of uniformitarianism.
Now, think about the implications 100F sea-surface temperatures. You'd be seeing wet-bulb temperatures (or even dew points) in the neighborhood of 100F. In conditions like that, everyone caught outside would die of heat-stroke in a matter of hours -- **everyone**.
And yes, a 100F dew-point is not compatible with human life -- consult a heat-index calculator or table and see for yourselves what the heat index is for that 100F dew-point.
Warming that would make it impossible for humans to survive outside for more than a few hours without "refrigeration suits" certainly would meet any reasonable person's definition of "catastrophic".
Makes sense to me.
And no, this is not a matter of faith. As Dr. Alley likes to say, "It's *physics*".
What's the this? That we would all die at 100F sea-surface temperatures? Or that this situation will become reality within the next one hundred years unless we reduce carbon dioxide emissions?
"Your could is already uncertain" instead of "Your could is already conditional"
"For example, human beings who for generations have lived near the equator tend to have darker skin whereas those closer to the poles have lighter skin. That's micro-evolution. When God made the world, he made each living thing capable of reproducing "after its own kind.""
If living things reproduced "after [their] own kind" why are dogs not wolves? Why are cattle not aurochs? Or chickens jungle fowl? Why are llamas and alpacas not guanaco and vicuña?
How did Triticum urartu progress to Triticum diccocoides and thence to both Triticum durum and Triticum aestivum)?
Are these "micro-evolution"? If so, I ask you again, where does "micro-evolution" stop and "macro-evolution" start? I suggest that you don't know, because you either don't understand or won't understand the genetic processes that underpin evolution. You can't refute small changes that are immediately visible and undeniable so you change from "immutable" to "micro-evolution" in the hope that you don't need to think any further. It's the classic god-of-the-gaps gambit, and the only person you are fooling is yourself.
Just as you are fooled by your gaps in - nay, your complete absence of - knowledge of even the basics of the physics that are the foundation of climate.
Bernard, you're making genetics unnecessarily complicated.
Sexual reproduction allows for amazing diversity within a kind, but there are limits. When a wolf and dog mate, their offspring can also reproduce (I think). But when a horse and donkey mate, the resulting mule is sterile. And a dog and a horse cannot even produce offspring.
Microsoft Windows is customizable, but it will never become Unix unless the source code is changed. Viruses (mutations) only result in harmful changes.
mutations only result in harmful changes?
Why is anyone continuing to bother to engage with this moron?
What's the this? That we would all die at 100F sea-surface temperatures?
Not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?
Actually, if you were completely immersed in 100F water for a long enough period of time, you'd die of heat-stroke. Ditto for the 100F wet-bulb atmospheric conditions that would accompany those sea-surface temperatures.
Or that this situation will become reality within the next one hundred years unless we reduce carbon dioxide emissions?
Those extreme conditions would likely be over 100 (but probably not more than 200) years off if we continue the current emissions trajectory.
Folks, this is for the lurkers -- I'm simply using this troll as an educational prop.
Caerbannog wrote, "Those extreme conditions would likely be over 100 (but probably not more than 200) years off if we continue the current emissions trajectory."
And you don't know the amount of the anthropogenic component to the warming. Or other factors that enter into climate change. Or whether we realistically can do anything appreciable to change it. And you continue to ignore Judgement Day, a much more important concern.
In short, you believe in CAGW.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that there is a high correlation between right-wing ideology, self-professed Christianity, and anti-science attitudes. 'I speak so I am' is rather typical of the breed.
Looking at just two of his beliefs tells us all we need to know:
1)Religion is reason-based and science is faith-based.
2)Viruses (mutations) only result in harmful changes.
#1 can only result if you twist and convolute the meaning of words until they bear no relationship to their actual meanings. For all intents and purposes this person lives in an alternate reality where black is white and up is down.
#2 shows another trait with high correlation - ignorance. 'I speak so I am' simply doesn't know he is just flat out wrong. 30 seconds on Google could show him the error of his ways, but do you expect that to happen?
I make fun of most Christians precisely because I *respect* the teachings of Christ. Unfortunately most show little exposure to his teachings. And when one of them -- like 'I speak so I am' -- starts ranting on taxes all they deserve is sarcasm and scorn. Since this attitude is antithetical to the teachings of Christ, as in #1 above, we once again find ourselves in the land where black is white and up is down.
It makes no sense to me, but there must be some evolutionary advantage to keeping this mindset in the gene pool. I wonder what that advantage is?
Folks, I know that canman and "I speak..." are trolls who will gain nothing from this discussion thread.
But that doesn't mean that they can't be used as "straight men" or educational props for "teachable moments".
So skim over the troll posts and read the replies. There's lots of good educational material here for lurkers/visitors who stop by here...
Kevin, I never wrote #1.
#2 isn't clear outside of its context. Naturally occurring mutations are always to an organism's disadvantage.
Or whether we realistically can do anything appreciable to change it. And you continue to ignore Judgement Day, a much more important concern.
As Mark Twain used to say, "Heaven for the weather, Hell for the company."
'I speak ...' you have said that Christianity is a reasonable faith (in the context of logic and reason).
You have said science must rely upon faith.
The paraphrase is clear - religion is reason-based and science is faith-based. Black is white.
Beneficial mutations do occur in nature. Viruses can also be beneficial. So you're doubly ignorant on the subject. I suggested you wouldn't use the Google and apparently you haven't.
Yes, I say Christianity is a reasonable faith. And from my interaction with some people on this site, I have found CAGW alarmists to be very unreasonable and faith-driven. Regardless, because of all the uncertainties, CAGW prophecy requires faith (whether reasonable or not).
Did I write that science relies on faith? In which comment? As everybody learns by high school, the scientific method requires reproducibility of observed results. It results in empirical knowledge.
Your inference from my comments that "religion is reason-based and science is faith-based" is not justified. Eastern religion is full of contradiction. Christianity requires a lot of faith--and so do CAGW and evolutionism.
Evolutionism is not a natural science; like creationism, it is a philosophy. Scientific evidence can be found for both the theories of evolution and creation, but both require basic assumptions or presuppositions that are accepted by faith. My understanding is that theories are an attempt to explain observations and make the particular general. As we do not see new species coming into existence, the theories of creation and evolution are difficult to test.
Viruses have only some of the characteristics of living things; I don't think they are classified as organisms. (When I used the word virus in a previous comment, I was talking about computer viruses.)
I found that you are right about the occurrence of a few advantageous (beneficial) mutations. So I used Google to find a creationist comment I would agree with (by an Andrew Lamb):
To date over 10,000 specific disease-causing mutations of the human genome have been identified. In contrast, only a handful of beneficial mutations have been discovered, none of which involve an increase in genetic information as required by evolution. All this is highly consistent with the biblical account of a very good creation followed by the Fall, and a subsequent six millennia of cumulative physical degeneration. However, it clashes irreconcilably with the evolutionary view that the accumulation of mutations over time brings about upward evolution (increasing functional complexity).
"So I used Google to find a creationist comment I would agree with"
Read that comment closely, "I speak" has just declared their belief that the earth is only 6000 years old.
Kevin, if I sound a bit confused about the difference between evolutionism and the theory of evolution, then here's the reason why:
http://www.icr.org/article/nature-science-theories-origins/
Perhaps their only difference is one of scope--if there is even that difference.
Speak--your visit to the creationist mothership has produced a comment that is a load of crap.
The information content of the genome is determined by the number of genes. If the number of genes doesn't increase, the information content stays the same. Evolution doesn't posit that the information content increased, though, so your argument is a straw man.
If you keep going to creationist wabsites, all you will come away with is straw. However, as you've been grasping at straws since you arrived, perhaps you won't mind.
'I speak ...' "Naturally occurring mutations are always to an organism's disadvantage."
"I found that you are right about the occurrence of a few advantageous (beneficial) mutations. So I used Google to find a creationist comment I would agree with ..."
In short - I was wrong, but I found somebody else's word salad that says it's OK. :)
*****************
'I speak ...': "As we do not see new species coming into existence, the theories of creation and evolution are difficult to test."
Again - you'd be best to try the Google before regurgitating pablum from the echo chamber. Try:
'observed instances of speciation'
"Scientific evidence can be found for both the theories of evolution and creation ..."
Is that right? We have evidence for creationism? You mean the one that took place on October 23, 4004 BC? I'd be really impressed to read it.
I see the George W. Bush "if you aren't with us you're against us" attitude still prevails at Rabett Run.
Irony, love it.
1
What was that "somebody else's word salad" about mutations if not scientific evidence for creationism?
Dilbert, how does upward evolution happen--from one species to another--if there's no increase in genetic information?
Thanks, Kevin. Species wasn't the right word. Here's something by Dr. Gary Parker:
Evolutionists are often asked what they mean by “species,” and creationists are often asked what they mean by “kind.” Creationists would like to define “kind” in terms of interbreeding, since the Bible describes different living things as “multiplying after kind,” and evolutionists also use the interbreeding criterion. However, scientists recognize certain bower birds as distinct species even though they interbreed, and they can’t use the interbreeding criterion at all with asexual forms. So, both creationists and evolutionists are divided into “lumpers” and “splitters.” “Splitters,” for example, classify cats into 28 species; “lumpers” (creationist or evolutionist) classify them into only one!
I drool therefore I must eat and poop until I can regurgitate. Goo goo ga ga. Give it up people. This is worse than Bill Nye debating a profiteer. At least that promises entertainment.
'I speak...':" What was that "somebody else's word salad" about mutations if not scientific evidence for creationism?"
Umm, do you know the difference between opinion and evidence?
A) Lamb says the earth is only 6000 years old. All evidence points to far older. He gives no evidence to support this claim.
Lamb contradicts himself in the same paragraph, admitting there are beneficial mutations, then claiming 6 millennia of cumulative degeneration.
No evidence is given for the claim of cumulative degeneration. In fact, the evidence for the lactose persistence mutation in humans is dated by multiple lines of evidence to approximately 7500 years ago and is considered a major step in the human civilisation of Europe. That one mutation contradicts all three of Lamb's points by itself.
There are thousands, tens of thousands, of lines of evidence that point to the earth being older than 6000 years. There is *no* evidence the earth is 6000 years old.
It's easy to say the earth is 6000 years old. Finding evidence for it is impossible.
Taxman, taxman
Don't tax me
Tax that man behind that tree...
Still waiting for excerpts from the Gospel of von Mises.
OK, Speak, are you going to tell me that your deity created in its present form the Aye Aye, a lemur that has evolved to fill the ecological niche normally filled by woodpeckers (which are absent on Madagascar)?
And while we are at it, is your deity responsible for the very poorly designed human back and human knee? That is an example of "Stupid Design".
caerbannog,
I don't understand all the details of PCA and SVD all that well, but to answer your question, I would guess that component signals get assigned a rank called an eigen value or something. My understanding of PCA is that the data gets represented in a multidimensional space and the signals are distributed among the various dimensions.
From Montford's "Hockey Stick Illusion", Mann's shortcentering will take the offset in the short 20th century blade portion of a hockey stick signal and add it over the long handle of the rest of the data. This causes the method to overweight hockey sticks. Can this be compensated for by including more PCs? How did Mann decide how many PCs to keep? I don't think the answers are clear.
Some points I'd like to make.
1.) This is a previously unknown method.
2.) Should PCA be used at all?
3.) Why are climate scientists still defending this?
At the risk of pulling a "Tamino", don't just take my word for it. Take the word of Ian Jolliffe:
1.) "I don’t know how to interpret the results when such a strange centring is used? Does anyone?"
2.) "Of course, given that the data appear to be non-stationary, it’s arguable whether you should be using any type of PCA."
3.) "It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics."
Here's the excellent Climate Audit post, where I got these quotes:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/09/08/ian-jolliffe-comments-at-tamino/
'I speak ...' - I'm not sure what Parker's word salad was supposed to add to the discussion. It's nothing more than a very generalized statement on the definition of 'species' that omits more than it tells us. For a much more detailed description of the biological ideas of speciation visit http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
"...how does upward evolution happen--from one species to another--if there's no increase in genetic information?"
Mouse and human genomes each have approximately 3 billion base pairs and 25,000 genes. Some plants have 25,000 genes. Some micro-organisms have larger genomes than humans. Again, try the Google. Or just go read the Wiki.
"Some points I'd like to make.
1.) This is a previously unknown method."
It's a modification of a well-known method, i.e. standard PCA analysis.
Analysis of the data using "traditional" PCA yields almost exactly the same results.
"2.) Should PCA be used at all?"
Researchers have used a variety of statistical approaches to reconstructions using the available proxies, and still get hockey sticks.
"3.) Why are climate scientists still defending this?"
Because the results are still robust, and the field has moved on. The only people who care about this 15 year old, obsolete research are screaming mobs of denialists, quite a few of whom continue to label as guilty of scientific fraud.
This includes people like yourself who, as you admit, wouldn't know the first thing about PCA.
Or linear algebra ("called an eigen value or something").
You obviously are a denialist, not a skeptic, because you show absolutely no skepticism towards Montford's book.
You show no skepticism towards McI's work which "proves" that Mann's short-centered PCA "always" generates hockey sticks. It is clear you haven't read McI's R code and that you don't understand why McI did not share that code for years (because it makes clear that he, not Mann, is the fraud).
Yep, denialist, not skeptic.
Mann responded to criticisms of his short-centered PCA approach by abandoning it. All of his work for years depends on much more mainstream statistics, and like everyone else who has worked on the data … the results fit MBH 98 very closely.
"Sexual reproduction allows for amazing diversity within a kind, but there are limits. When a wolf and dog mate, their offspring can also reproduce (I think). But when a horse and donkey mate, the resulting mule is sterile. And a dog and a horse cannot even produce offspring."
Congratulations - you have managed to simultaneously introduce a straw man and a red herring.
I have made no comment about genetically distant species breeding to produce infertile hybrids, or not interbreeding at all. Nor is distant-species hybridisation that produces sterile offspring the same thing as the processes of mutation, migration, natural selection, and genetic drift that drive evolution.
You are struggling with this argument about evolution aren't you? That's a rhetorical question by the way...
It is logically fallacious and scientifically invalid to compare different genetic processes. Just because some species are not able to successfully interbreed, it does not mean that other genetically diverse individuals are prevented from doing so, or that their offsprings' compositions cannot change over time to give rise to effectively different species. In fact I would suggest that you are not even aware what a species actually is, in the context of an ecosystem or of an evolutionary process.
Let me repeat that for you: just because some species cannot produce fertile offspring at one instant in time, it does not mean that individuals within a species cannot reproduce over generations to give rise to genetic subpopulations that constitute new species, or indeed that certain identifiably separate species cannot interbreed to produce new species.
In fact you completely missed the significance about my wheat example above, because if you were clued in you'd know that Triticum urartu interbred with a close relative of Aegilops speltoides in the first step to producing the modern wheat species. It's more complicated than that though, because there are other species involved as well - for some fun facts about the plastic nature of the wheat genome track down Dubcovsky and Dvorak (2005).
And these changes are not minor, "micro-evolution" changes at the level of a single or a small number of alleles, they're profound changes to the overall genomes of wheat species. Further, there's no finish line for these changes - they can and will keep on occurring for as long as human and/or natural selection push them in particular directions.
I have news for you, whose whose lips move when you try to rationalise your existence. The world was not created in 6 days by a sky fairy - it's been around for many billions of years, and the process of evolution itself has been occurring for billions of years too. You may put your hands over your eyes and ears, and try to (ir)rationalise your way back to your fairy story, but closing the door doesn't make reality go away.
When you die there will be no heaven with streets paved with gold and an eternal party of all your friends. There will be no angels with birdie wings, no prizes for believing a book of mythology. Nothing. Your best legacy would be to live well, to live with awareness, and to live such that future generations appreciate the efforts you made to leave the world in the best condition possible for them and their descendants.
That would be the Christian thing to do.
Heh, I refreshed and found that many of my previous points have already been raised by others. Nevertheless, some things need to be repeated, and repeated again, when there are dunces in the class...
"Naturally occurring mutations are always to an organism's disadvantage."
This is utterly wrong, and demonstrates your profound ignorance of genetics, including the process of mutation.
"... how does upward evolution happen--from one species to another--if there's no increase in genetic information?"
Find the wheat reference I mentioned in my previous post - it will give clear examples. I could actually just tell you, but you need to stop being so damned intellectually lazy and learn to teach yourself.
Frankly though I don't think that you will. Your brain is frozen in immobility as a result of indoctrination and fear of your own mortality, but perhaps a lurker here might benefit from knowing that your tripe is just that - execrable superstition that might make you feel better about yourself but that harms many others to which you are completely oblivious.
Kevin, that "somebody else's" word salad which you so despise gave scientific evidence for creation. It was empirical evidence. That there are over ten thousand specific disease-causing mutations of the human genome but only a handful of beneficial mutations, none of which increase genetic information, is "highly consistent" with creation but "clashes irreconcilably" with evolution.
Creationism doesn't say that the earth is millions of years old; evolutionism says that. If anything, the number and nature of mutations so far agrees with the creation model, not the evolution model.
You are free to disagree with the evidence but not to deny its existence. Then you are being dishonest. To take the topic which is the topic of this Rabett Run website, there is evidence for CAGW. I don't think there's enough. Neither does Dr. Richard Lindzen. Speaking in the UK on January 28, he said,
"Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate but will have a profound impact on your economy. [It's] trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy."
"I speak ... ' HOW is it the word salad evidence against evolution? How is it evidence FOR creationism?
Evolution says that mutations occur. Most will be disadvantageous. Some will be neutral, a few will be beneficial. That is exactly what we see.
Creationism, says NOTHING about mutations. How does it logically follow from 'God created all animals' to 'these animals will then mutate'? It doesn't it's a non-sequitur. Indeed, if anything creationism says that all creatures are fixed and that no speciation can occur.
As I have already stated, saying something is evidence doesn't make it so. You have to show how it supports or contradicts the theory. Many of these mutations are *more* than 6000 years old - how can that agree with creationism?
BTW, where *is* your evidence that the earth is 6000 years old? It contradicts geology, genetics, physics, thermodynamics, and virtually *every* physical science. Come now it's a reasonable faith - where is the logic that supports the claim and proves every physical science wrong?
I also notice you simply can't make an argument to support your rant about taxes.
Since you've dropped the 'genetic information' canard can we assume you now realize how foolish the argument was? Some salamanders have genomes 40 times the size of the human genome - does that make them 40 times more complex? Some protists have genomes larger than the human genome - does that make them more complex?
'I speak ...' you come to this conversation and virtually *everything* you know turns out to be *wrong* - at some point you need to acknowledge this fact. If not here in public - at least to yourself. I suspect that everyone here that has disagreed with you can actually make *better* arguments for your position than you do :)
The term CAGW is not nonsense; it is, in fact, what people on this site mean when they speak of the threat of "global warming" and doing something about it.
No, O unspeakable one , it is disinformation,
As it is perverse and prevaricative to append an adjective of your own invention to words that don't belong to you, you really ought to pray the Lord fogives you for having born such false witness against your neighbors.
Catastrophic is what many people here mean (on this thread):
Caerbannog: Actually, if you were completely immersed in 100F water for a long enough period of time, you'd die of heat-stroke. Ditto for the 100F wet-bulb atmospheric conditions that would accompany those sea-surface temperatures... Those extreme conditions would likely be over 100 (but probably not more than 200) years off if we continue the current emissions trajectory.
Metzomagic: One of the worst side effects of all that extra CO2 mankind is dumping into the atmosphere is that the oceans absorb a lot of it, making them more acidic... many species of shellfish won't be able to form their little shells... And that's only one example of the kind of havoc we're going to wreak on plants and animals with our continuing pollution of the atmosphere. We've already driven many species to extinction just by increasing the average global temps as much as we have from pre-industrial.
Dhogaza: Just because a phenomena can be caused naturally doesn't "prove" that humans can't cause the same or similar phenomena, on a devastating scale.
Thomas Lee Elfritz: "CAGW has not been proven"--the anti-science siren of the creationists.
Kevin: The scientific literature covering phenology contains dozens - if not hundreds of examples that also depict a hockey stick trajectory for global temperature over the last 1000 years. The hockey stick is ubiquitous. Pretending it doesn't exist is delusional.
Susan Anderson: What's in a word? The full strength might look like this: climate change due to global warming caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases... Note that time does not stop at 2100, and the way we are going may indeed induce more catastrophe
Michael Mann (not on this thread but in the New York Times on Jan. 17): Dr. Hansen recently published an article in the journal PLoS One with the economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and other scientists, making a compelling case that emissions from fossil fuel burning must be reduced rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate change... The urgency for action was underscored this past week by a draft United Nations report warning that another 15 years of failure to cut heat-trapping emissions would make the problem virtually impossible to solve with known technologies and thus impose enormous costs on future generations. It confirmed that the sooner we act, the less it will cost.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/12/03/the-science-of-global-warming
The ‘science’ of global warming
These leaked documents reveal the greatest scientific scandal of our times—and a tragedy
by Mark Steyn on Thursday, December 3, 2009
“The gravest challenge that we face is climate change . . . Every one of our compatriots must feel concerned”—Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic;
“The climate crisis threatens our very survival”—Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe”;
“We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change”—Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom;
“Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children . . . this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”—Barack Obama, president of the United States.
The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of—to pluck at random—enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching “youths,” are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens—if only they can tax and regulate us enough. As they will if they reach “consensus” at Copenhagen. And most probably even if they don’t.
How did we reach this point? Ah, well. Like the proverbial sausage factory, you never want to look too closely at how the science gets settled. The other day, a whole bunch of electronic documents most probably leaked by a disaffected insider from the prestigious Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia were posted online. Given that the CRU has conceded their authenticity, they provide a fascinating glimpse at the science underpinning the calm measured statements of Sarkozy, Brown, Obama, and wossname, the Belgian bloke—as well as of Kyoto, Copenhagen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the “carbon credits” scam, the U.S. “cap and trade” monstrosity and every other major “climate change” boondoggle this century. They confirm what the soi-disant “skeptics” have long known:
1) The Settled Scientists have wholly corrupted the process of “peer review.”
Phil Jones, director of the CRU, writing to Michael Mann, creator (le mot juste) of the now discredited “hockey stick” graph, about two academics who disagree with him:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Professor Mann on an academic journal foolish enough to publish dissenting views:
“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”
Professor Jones’s reply:
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
And you’ll be glad to hear they did!
2) The Settled Scientists have refused to comply with Freedom of Information requests by (illegally) deleting relevant documents.
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on Feb. 3, 2005:
“The two MMs [McKitrick and McIntyre, the latter the dogged retired Ontarian who runs the Climate Audit website] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
And, indeed, the CRU subsequently announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” the requested data.
3) The Settled Scientists have attempted to (in the words of one email) “hide the decline”—that’s to say, obscure the awkward fact that “global warming” stopped over a decade ago.
Phil Jones, July 5, 2005:
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
4) The Settled Scientists have tortured the data into compliance with political requirements.
From the computer code for one of the “Mann” models:
“Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions of growing season temperatures. Uses ‘corrected’ MXD—but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”
Yet perhaps the most important revelation is not the collusion, the bullying, the politicization and the evidence-planting, but the fact that, even if you wanted to do honest “climate research” at the Climatic Research Unit, the data and the models are now so diseased by the above that they’re all but useless. Let Ian “Harry” Harris, who works in “climate scenario development and data manipulation” at the CRU, sum it up. Mr. Harris was attempting to duplicate previous results—i.e., to duplicate all that science that’s supposedly settled, and the questioning of which consigns you to the Climate Branch of the Flat Earth Society. How hard should it be to confirm settled science? After much cyber-gnashing of teeth, Harry throws in the towel:
“ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?
“OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”
Thus spake the Settled Scientist: “OH F–K THIS.” And on the basis of “OH F–K THIS” the world’s enlightened progressives will assemble at Copenhagen for the single greatest advance in punitive liberalism ever perpetrated on the developed world.
Back in the summer, I wrote in a column south of the border:
“If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None. Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.”
In response to that, the shrieking pansies of the eco-left had a fit. The general tenor of my mail was summed up by one correspondent: “How can you live with your lies, dumbf–k?” George Soros’s stenographers at Media Matters confidently pronounced it a “false claim.” Well, take it up with Phil Jones. He agrees with me. The only difference is he won’t say so in public.
Which is a bit odd, don’t you think?
Phil Jones and Michael Mann are two of the most influential figures in the whole “climate change” racket. What these documents reveal is the greatest scientific scandal of our times—and a tragedy. It’s not just their graphs but their battle lines that are drawn all wrong. Science is never “settled,” and certainly not on the basis of predictive models. And any scientist who says it is is no longer a scientist. And the dismissal of “skeptics” throughout the Jones/Mann correspondence is most revealing: a real scientist is always a skeptic.
It may well be that Warmergate has come along too late. I won’t pretend to know the motivations of Jones, Mann and their colleagues, but judging from recent eco-advertising their work appears to have driven worshippers at the First Church of the Settled Scientist literally insane. A new commercial shows polar bears dropping from the skies onto city streets and crushing the cars below. To those of us who still quaintly recall 9/11, it evokes grotesquely those poor souls who chose to jump from the Twin Towers and die in one last gulp of air rather than perish in the fireball within. But who cares? Their plight is as nothing next to that of the polar bear. Why are they plummeting to their deaths from the heavens? As the ad explains, “An average European flight produces over 400 kg of greenhouse gases for every passenger. That’s the weight of an adult polar bear.”
Oooookay. It’s A Warmerful Life: every time they call your flight, a poley bear loses its wings.
Some in the political class go along because it’s too much effort to resist. A few are presumably true believers. But what a lot of the rest like about “global warming” is the “global” bit: you can’t do anything about it at town or county or even national level. No, sir, we need a “global” response. Fortunately, as Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe,” puts it: “2009 is the first year of global governance.”
That’s great news, isn’t it? I would urge the delegates at Copenhagen to listen to the experts and issue a comprehensive statement fully reflecting the rigorous scientific evidence. Here’s my draft:
“OH F–K THIS.”
Keep the faith, everyone!
dhogaza,
""1.) This is a previously unknown method."
It's a modification of a well-known method, i.e. standard PCA analysis."
A previously unknown modification makes it a previously unknown method.
"You obviously are a denialist, not a skeptic, because you show absolutely no skepticism towards Montford's book."
I read all the critical reviews I could find including Tamino's and Alistair McIntosh's. They ignore many of the book's main points such as the refusal to release R2 values and horrendous practices of Wahl and Ammann in their replication of Mann's HS.
"You show no skepticism towards McI's work..."
I came over here to see what the rabett and his bunnies had to say, didn't I?
"Yep, denialist, not skeptic."
I have not denied AGW anywhere, and have gone out of my way to say Montford's book does not refute it. I've merely asserted that Mann's hockey stick science was crap.
2) The Settled Scientists have refused to comply with Freedom of Information requests by (illegally) deleting relevant documents.
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on Feb. 3, 2005:
“The two MMs [McKitrick and McIntyre, the latter the dogged retired Ontarian who runs the Climate Audit website] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
And, indeed, the CRU subsequently announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” the requested data.
OK, here's an excerpt from the Muir Russell investigation report re: the CRU data
Critics have alleged that the unit's scientists withheld temperature data from weather stations and also kept secret the computer algorithms needed to process the data into a record of global temperature.
The review concludes these allegations are unfounded.
"We find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it," it says.
"We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station data directly from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis".
Writing computer code to process the data "took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this".
Sir Muir commented: "So we conclude that the argument that CRU has something to hide does not stand up".
Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: "It's very clear that anyone who'd be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it.
This is absolutely correct -- confirming the validity of the CRU global-temperature results is something that a competent programmer/analyst can do in a matter of *days*. And that can be done without *any* access to CRU data/code.
I know this for a fact because I did exactly that myself. I was able to replicate the CRU global-temperature results quite closely by running publicly-available raw temperature data through a straightforward program that I coded up myself, and I didn't have to file a single FOI demand to get the information I needed to do that.
I even bundled it all into an easy-to-use package that allows others to do the same: Go to http://tinyurl.com/NASA-HANSEN4 to get the whole thing (including instructions).
If M&M were really unable to verify the CRU's work with the data and code already available to them, then one must conclude that they were incompetent or dishonest (that's an inclusive-or BTW).
Lawks, we poked it and the pus burst out.
Saintly pus, of course...
'I speak ...' resorts to the last refuge of creationists everywhere - the Gish Gallop.
Will he read about the wheat genome?
Will he consider the C-value enigma?
Will he reconcile beneficial mutations with 'cumulative degradation'?
Will he reconcile the lack of population bottlenecks in the scientific record with the mythical biblical flood?
Will he reconcile his avid materialism with the teachings of Christ?
Alas dear reader it is our unfortunate experience that the 'I speaks ...' of the world have a peculiar propensity for amnesiac episodes. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, he will blithely forget all the holes in his beliefs and soldier on spreading the same manure once again. Back in his echo chamber he will feel safe, secure, and cheered by the lack of conflict (excepting the occasional rabid brawl over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin).
A man not of infinite jest, but we knew him, Horatio.
So, the person who flaps his lips in an attempt to rationalise his existence has a bee in his bonnet about the word "catastrophic"...
It's important to note that the Denialati use this word with implicit 'scare' quotation marks, and they do so with an implied breathiness and shaking of the shoulders and a rolling of the eyes. Oh, and a supercilious curling of the mouth. You know, the typical tools of the propagandist who seeks to commandeer his target's territory by constructing negative association with the object(s) most representative of his target.
I've quite happily gone on the record as saying that if humans persist with business-as-usual emission of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, the results will be catastrophic in one way or another. To some extent it depends on the definition of such, but by any rational definition continued warming of the planet will have catastrophic consequences.
To help the person who only exists when he babbles I offer the following hierarchy of catastrophe - various peoples' mileage may vary, but by any scientific standard I suspect that it would not be by very much:
1.5 °C - warming dangerous to Arctic ice cap and ecosystems, dangerous to psychrophilic and sub-psychrophilic species and ecosystems, dangerous to human populations susceptible to extremes of heat, drought, and storms. Catastrophic to those species and populations that would otherwise not have been affected had not humans added to the atmosphere have as much again carbon dioxide compared to its pre-Industrial concentration.
2.5 °C - warming dangerous (at equilibrium) to much global ice existence, catastrophic for many temperate, polar, and alpine species and ecosystems, catastrophic for many countries and human populations, whether currently vulnerable or not to extremes of heat, drought, and storms. Serious risk of disintegration of a stable global geopolitical equilibrium, and hence of a cohesive global society.
3.5 °C - warming catastrophic for many species and ecosystems, catastrophic for many human populations, and very dangerous for coherent global human civilisation.
4.5 °C - warming catastrophic for a significant proportion of current global biodiversity, cohesive global human culture disintegrating if not already lost.
5.5 °C - warming catastrophic for most current regional human populations. Major extinction event progressing.
6.5 °C - warming catastrophic for continued human existence - remaining human populations now highly vulnerable to extinction over coming millenia.
7.5 °C - warming completely catastrophic. Humans extinction except possibly in high-tech enclaves which are vulnerable to complex systems failure.
The effects may manifest from direct climatic events, or from climate events in concert with other human-caused phenomena.
Perhaps a time-line suits rather than a temperature scale? As chance would have it I've just knocked out one of those too.
So, pick your favoured eventual temperature as a result of the warming to which you think humans can legitimately commit the planet in their pursuit of truth, happiness and the Western Way, and let's see how catastrophic you think it will be...
Please wait until I get my popcorn before connipting.
Anon-101a here:
"Anon-101-a - actually it's a lot more complex re. christianity and science than you make it out to be."
I'm afraid you'll need to show that there was no hindrance. I gave several examples of how belief in god held back science for nearly 20 centuries until the Renaissance where the hold of faith was almost entirely dropped from society, allowed people to freely think and ask questions.
Even with some of the most prominent cases of *seriously religious* people who were brilliant and inarguably scientists (Kepler), his faith HELD HIM BACK.
You haven't anything other than "It's complicated".
Anon-101a here:
"When God made the world, he made each living thing capable of reproducing "after its own kind.""
Please list the kinds. If we can find a form with the characteristics of both kinds, then your assertions have been proven false.
Please list the kinds.
Anon-101a herE:
"And a dog and a horse cannot even produce offspring."
However, this doesn't stop horse and dog being different lines from a common ancestor. It just means they are not common ancestors to each other themselves.
You need to show that the kinds of "dogs" and the kinds of "horse" never had a common ancestor, yet the kinds of "horse" and the kinds of "donkey" did not.
And do so for all other kinds you propose.
Anon-101a here:
"Looking at just two of his beliefs tells us all we need to know:
1)Religion is reason-based and science is faith-based.
2)Viruses (mutations) only result in harmful changes."
Though a third shows that his beliefs are not those he profess:
3) AGW is a method to tax and control him.
cf "Render unto caesar" and the caretaker job given to man by his faith's overlord (who controls him, but he has no problem with that. Is that because the controller "just happens" to want him to do what he himself would like to do? What's the chances of that being true..?).
Anon-101a here:
"Creationism, says NOTHING about mutations. How does it logically follow from 'God created all animals' to 'these animals will then mutate'? It doesn't it's a non-sequitur. Indeed, if anything creationism says that all creatures are fixed and that no speciation can occur."
Well, Genesis has something about it.
The snake.
Punished to walk on its belly all its days after its naughtiness.
Therefore hinting that the snake was a lizard and walked like a lizard, since snakes HAVE TO walk on their bellies, lacking legs.
But we still have lizards, and snakes, so if the snake was told it would walk on its belly all its days, why do we have lizards? And since snakes and lizards don't interbreed, they must be different "kinds", so snakes must have evolved from lizards.
So either genesis does proclaim evolution between kinds, therefore the "Why do we still have monkeys?" is bullshit, or it doesn't, and the question needs (and has) an answer.
Anon-101a here:
"This is absolutely correct -- confirming the validity of the CRU global-temperature results is something that a competent programmer/analyst can do in a matter of *days*. And that can be done without *any* access to CRU data/code."
Hell, didn't the court do exactly that: reproduce the data and results, something they have had no specialist training (nor standing as experts for), yet McIntyre, despite claiming expertise, was incapable of doing for YEARS?
When a court appointee can manage a better job than the self-described expert, how expert is that person really?
Hell, didn't the court do exactly that:
Actually, it was an outside panel of experts. But none of the members of that outside panel had access to anything that anyone of us could not find with Google.
And that outside panel, using only publicly-available info that anyone could Google up, was able to replicate/confirm the CRU work in less than 2 days. All with bog-standard programming/analysis techniques.
Of course, the fact that incompetent know-nothings haven't figured out how to do the same is proof that the investigation was a whitewash. ;) ;)
That's what prompted me to take a crack at the temperature data myself. Starting from scratch, and using publicly-available temperature data, I was able get "in the ballpark" global-temperature results with a crude averaging program I cooked up over a rainy weekend.
When I refined that program a bit to add simple area-weighting, I found that I was able to replicate the NASA/NOAA/CRU global-temperature results amazingly closely, with adjusted *or* raw data.
And I did it all with techniques that are typically taught to first-year programming students.
When I found out how easy it was to replicate the published temperature results, and how amazingly robust those results were (results can be confirmed with fewer than 1% of the global temperature stations), I set about putting together a package that anyone could use with just mouse-clicks (as opposed to dealing with a Unix command-line environment).
What I came up with was an "improvised" solution, where I followed the path of least resistance by borrowing as much already-working software as possible. Improvised it may be, but It works pretty darned well, and will run on almost any newer (5 years old or less) Windows/Mac PC/laptop.
It's available at http://tinyurl.com/NASA-HANSEN4 -- full documentation is available on the right side of the download page. It's a bit of a big download (a virtual-machine file of about 500MB), but if you have a decent internet connection, you should be able to get the whole thing in a few minutes.
Try it yourselves (be sure to RTFM first), and you will be able to get more global-temperature analysis work done in a few minutes than AGW "skeptics" like Anthony Watts have managed to do in a decade.
Anon-101a here:
"Actually, it was an outside panel of experts."
But wasn't it a panel brought together by the court? I may be getting slightly mixed up with a judicial slapdown of some copyright issue too, but I believe that the court got a panel of (not climate, just programming, IIRC) experts to do the work to see if the claim that it was too hard to roll your own had any standing at all.
I had to do a bit of Googling to refresh my memory, but it looks like the Muir Russell review was called for by the University of East Anglia itself.
Its work/findings were independent; Muir Russell, the leader of the investigation was at the time chairman of the Judicial Appts Board for Scotland, and was in no way beholden to the UEA.
The Muir Russell report itself can be found at: http://www.cce-review.org/About.php
Money quote (one of many):
33. Finding: The computer code required to read and analyse the instrumental
temperature data is straightforward to write based upon the published literature. It
amounts a few hundred lines of executable code (i.e. ignoring spaces and
comments). Such code could be written by any research unit which is competent
to reproduce or test the CRUTEM analysis. For the trial analysis of the Review
Team, the code was written in less than two days and produced results similar to
other independent analyses. No information was required from CRU to do this.
Ah, I'd forgotten how talking to creationists is a mugs game, because of their resolute incapacity to reason.
They aren't against the science; they are against the faith component of CAGW and evolutionism.
But the thing is, there's no faith component in evolutionary biology, and the only faith in CAGW is yours in your odd idea that such a thing even exists. You haven't even adequately described what CAGW is.
And I didn't argue so much that science is inherently Christian as that science developed out of a Christian world view. That's closer to the correct answer, but still gives Christianity too much credit and elides the complexity of it all.
And there isn't any science proving macroscopic evolution.
That smell? That's your pants burning.
'Cos really, that's the basic level of creationist argument and you aren't doing any different here.
It seems you will accept my word as credible.
It seems only sensible and polite to do so, at least with regards to things I know nothing about, like who you are.
That's good, anyway. I'm not a train engineer, sanitary engineer, domestic engineer, or professional engineer. I did study civil engineering, and I do have a degree in applied science.
I'll put you down as engineer class then. Which happily does complete the bingo card.
So I know enough to know that I don't know very much. I also know that while you know something, you certainly do not know everything, and a little common sense, humility, and respect would go a long way.
But oddly enough I am humble etc in my life; the thing is creationists seem to think that should also involve claiming to know nothing therefore God did it all. (Never mind all the other christians who are happy enough that God let evolution do it)
Canman, dated yesterday,
it doesn't matter if you think MBH 98 or whichever it was, was rubbish. It has been superseded by better papers and the main conclusions reinforced by lots of other studies. So it's pointless to go wittering on about it now, just forget about it and move on.
guthrie:"it doesn't matter if you think MBH 98 or whichever it was, was rubbish. It has been superseded by better papers and the main conclusions reinforced by lots of other studies. So it's pointless to go wittering on about it now, just forget about it and move on."
Mann has not moved on. He's suing Steyn for editorial hyperbole! It's Mann's specific graph that was heavily used and promoted. With all the baggage it carries, it's perfectly reasonable to think it fraudulent. Steyn's quote is a vague generalization on a blog for an opinion magazine. It's clearly an editorial, not an investigative piece. The main point of the piece is that Penn State's whitewash investigation of Sandusky, makes its investigation of Mann suspect. In his book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars", Mann touts his letter of support from Graham Spanier. Spanier got indicted for covering up for Sandusky.
Anon-101a here:
"Mann has not moved on. He's suing Steyn for editorial hyperbole!"
No, he's suing for libel. Even the judge of the case knows there's no crime of hyperbole.
Oh, and how is responding to a recent case of libel per se "not moving on"? Are you supposed to ignore all crimes and "just move on"? Why then are you deniers still blathering on about CRU, even after 9 investigations?
Just move on.
"It's Mann's specific graph that was heavily used and promoted"
Ah, so you have a problem with a graph being used.
Why?
"With all the baggage it carries, it's perfectly reasonable to think it fraudulent."
No, it's batshit insane to continue to believe it's fraud despite all the evidence in disagreement with that insanity.
"Steyn's quote is a vague generalization on a blog for an opinion magazine"
Being on an opinion magazine (whatever that is) is not protection against libel.
"It's clearly an editorial, not an investigative piece."
Yup, no investigation took place, hence it is in reckless disregard for the truth and therefore actionable. Being "clearly an editorial piece" means that the owners of the periodical are ALSO in the firing line for supporting such arrant bilge.
"The main point of the piece is that Penn State's whitewash investigation of Sandusky, makes its investigation of Mann suspect."
Which has ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL to do with the case being brought to trial.
That it is complete nonsense with no logical underpinning is as irrelevant as the statement itself.
"Spanier got indicted for covering up for Sandusky"
And Wegman was convicted by his peers and internal review on fraud. Therefore ALL denier "scientists" are frauds?
Canman, if Mann "touts" the letter of support he got from Spanier, he also "touted" the support of many, many others. He mentions he got a welcome supportive letter from Spanier, but also many supportive statements and messages from others.
Also, people are free to think that an unofficial investigation (as in the case of Sandusky) is the same as an official investigation involving several high profile staff (as in the case of Mann), but that does not mean it is a rational belief. Add the NSF OIG investigation clearing Mann, and you'd have to be outright unwilling to listen to facts contradicting your preferred narrative to not reconsider your position.
Marco
Thus sayeth the Speak:
"The Eocene epoch--or its dating, at least--is not a part of my faith. I realize that it is part of the faith system of most scientists today. But they were not around to observe it, and they adhere to the presupposition of uniformitarianism."
Which brings us to The Book Of Genesis , Chapter minus 17, verse four :
And the Lord looked out upon his latest creation and saw that it left a Lot to be Desired, rather like the Pillar of Salt to be introduced many chapters hence, for the Lord was right wroth with the giant sloth, the cumbersome Coryphodon, the unattractive Uintatherium and appaling Arsinoitherium,the miserable Mesonyx, the hapless Hyaenodon and the snarky Sarkastodon.
And lo, when he saw his latest opus included the Moropus, He said " No more of this!" and erased the eon from the Book of Numbers , where it cannot be found to this day.
Here endeth the lesson .
We will now pass the plenary indulgence plate for donations to the shrine of St. Mnestheus of Paypal.
He's stopped speaking so it appears that he no longer exists, but during his brief time as a putative corporeal entity the guy with a bee in his bonnet might have been interested in this post at Grist as a supplement to my comment above.
[Recaptcha cryptically says 'paterntu cerning']
That's a bee in his bonnet about the word "catastrophic".
About that link :
Whatever gristafarian wrote it has a powerful polemic death wish -- seldom in the annals of existential threat inflation has Nearer My Godwin to Thee been played on a louder tuba:
If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale.
That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. “Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake” footing.
That simply won’t be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It’s not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally."
Wait, scientists adhere to uniformitarianism now? That guy's almost a century out of date, the terms irrelevant nowadays. The original uniformitarian/ catastrphism debate was back in the 19th century about geological principles. A great deal of time and effort was wasted arguing about it all only for it to be rendered irrelevant by more modern geological discoveries.
So really, anyone who uses the term to describe modern science has to be an ideologue, or a creationist, but I repeat myself.
Well I checked, wikipedia of all places says that the term also covers the general scientific basis of all laws of the universe being the same at all times and places. Of course a creationist would argue that's an assumption; a scientist would point out that no examples of this not being the case have been observed.
WHich is of course the problem with miracles, since the YEC flood geology stuff requires breaking the laws of the universe, yet why would god do it in such a way as to make the universe look old?
That's something they have trouble answering.
Russell. It's one end of the Gaussian curve, and therefore based in probability, no matter the relative proportion compared with the rest of the distribution.
As such it's worthy of the mill, and in any analysis of extreme risk this really is the grain that should be ground first* - but for some reason it's kept tied up in the sacks in the basement...
And when all is said and done, this is what Grist is about.
[* I suppose that we could go with the "it won't hurt a bit" platitude. Yeah, that would work... :-)]
Bernard, Murphy's Second Law is one editors deny at their peril, especially when the odds are Bayesian
Russell, indeed.
Editors should certainly be aware of Murphy's Second, and the witch-hunt that the Australian Coalition government is aiming at the ABC is probably a salient demonstration why.
Of course policy makers ignoring scientific advice should also consider Murphy's Second, less their sneers at Cassandra turn to grimaces when she bites them on their arses.
Anon-101a here:
"Well I checked, wikipedia of all places says that the term also covers the general scientific basis of all laws of the universe being the same at all times and places. Of course a creationist would argue that's an assumption; a scientist would point out that no examples of this not being the case have been observed."
Actually, that isn't true, either that the laws known seem to be universal, nor that no law has been shown not to be universal.
Newtonian gravity only works far from the weight of the sun. Near the sun that law doesn't hold true.
What science does is encaspulate these facts into a law that DOES hold universally: General Relativity.
So scientists and science DO accept that laws are not necessarily uniform, THEN WORK TO FIND ONE THAT IS.
Meanwhile faithiests like "I must wibble so I wobble" insist on a uniform overall God, and any evidence against it existing in some place MUST BE WRONG.
I have one last thing to post. John Mashey commented on his report on Wegman's alleged plagiarism. I've finally gotten around to looking into that a little bit. I found this post:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/12/manic-flail-epic-fail/
Here's a quote from it: "And we’ve all read recently about Mashey’s attack on Edward Wegman, accusing him of plagiarism in a 250 page document that is straight out of the movie Conspiracy Theory, with color-coded themes and memes, and an outrageous accusation that Steve McIntyre was recruited, trained and funded by the George Marshall Institute–something I hope Mashey can back up."
I followed the included link and looked at Mashey's report. ROTFLMAO!!!
Wegman Isn't laughing- nor are his unfortunate academic accomplices-- they got caught red handed and while all of Cuccinelli's targets have been exoorated, the feckless bunch of plagiarists K Street recruited have all been censured .
Serves you right for limiting your own bandwidth to Watts feed.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that Canman hasn't googled John Mashey. But then, if he gets his facts from WTF, that really is about all we need to know, isn't it?
Yeh, Wegman's helpers got sloopy and had their wrists slapped. From the way you guys were telling it, I was expecting to see a lazy cut and paste job. It was nothing like that. It was certainly arguably paraphrasing and could have been done better, but it was also just background material. At the WUWT post, there were lots of comments from various points of view and I found Steven Mosher's to be the best argued and most sensible, while not the best typed. On issues like this, the comments sections at places like WUWT, Climate Audit and Climate Ect tend to have a lot more discussion from a lot more points of view, although not as many from YE creationists or 7th Day Adventists. I find that when I look into the details on some issue and compare the various arguments each side is making, I find the skeptics are usually coherent, while the CAGW side is shrill and convoluted.
I actually have googled John Mashey before. I had some of my comments disappear from one of his posts at DeSmog Blog. I may have been a bit snarky, but I was not far off topic and it's not like the place was overrun with comments. Everyone has confirmation bias and I'll happily admit to a cornucopian bias. You guys could use some Introspection.
I look into the details on some issue and compare the various arguments each side is making
You've got BOTH kinds, country and western!
Anon-101a here:
"Yeh, Wegman's helpers got sloopy and had their wrists slapped."
Nope, they were found guilty of plagiarism and fraud.
Funny how that#s "got sloppy" when you like the fraudulent results.
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