Food Fight

UPDATE: Roger jumps the shark. The shark wins.

Well, Ethon said so. Such joy, first the Supercalifragiliciousfeakonomics Climate Pie breaks out all over (well here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and maybe here, but later) and then Ethon's favorite food group goes toe to toe with Brad DeLong at the new place, Brad being smart enough to keep the less expensive cuts out of his blog, does manage to call Roger, well careless on purpose. Roger does not take well to this and blows it into a second post.

Some highlights from brad (yes it is Delong and not the brad at Sadly No)

Well, how about: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/another_pielke_train_wreck.php ?

"The thing about a Roger Pielke Jr train wreck is that you just can't look away. Check this one out. Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 year high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. (Mark Morano , of course, links to Pielke's post.) The fun is in the comments as folks try to explain to Pielke that there is a film director called Michael Mann and that maybe Pielke shouldn't count those stories. Pielke comes back with the claim that restricting the search to "Michael Mann" + nature + hurricanes + Aug 13-15 gives 1,412 stories. Some folks might wonder how restricting the search gives you more results, but not Pielke. In fact, if you read what Google says at the link Pielke gave it says that there are "about 20", and if you look at all the results there are just 11..."

and

Re: "Yes, I did butcher a Google search. But when pointed out I corrected the mistake and apologized. But it is not really relevant to this post is it? Five years of blogging and a few hundred publications, and that all you've got? Really?!'

Well, how many do you want?

I do remember that what knocked my view of your work over the edge was one of your attacks on Hansen.

Ah. "[Pielke] claims that [Hanson's] scenario B was off by a factor of 2 on CO2. This sounds like a lot until you discover that means that emissions grew by 0.5% per year instead of 1% a year. And that works out to scenario B having the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere within 1% of what has actually happened. Pielke is being much more than a little unfair by calling a prediction that got within 1% of the correct answer as not being 'particularly accurate or realistic'."

With material like this who needs to blog.

Rabett Reprises

In honor of something or other having to do with climate blogging on October 16, Eli is pleased to reprise J. Willard Rabett's laws to guide climate change policy makers

1. Adaptation responds to current losses.
2. Mitigation responds to future losses
3. Adaptation plus future costs is more expensive than mitigation,
4. Adaptation without mitigation drives procrastination penalties to infinity.

With regard to efficient, elegant and economical climate change policies, the Bunny recommends picking one.

On the endurable ennui of doing this for four years.

Unbeknownst to Eli, Rabett Run celebrated its fourth birthday one month ago. Growing up sucks.

Auditing the auditor, or Dr. Once-ler tree hater

Everyone knows that Steve McIntyre hates trees and dendrologists, but now it appears he is clear cutting his blog.

Following comments over at Deltoid, it appears that the Lorax, an awkward Dr. Suess character and tree defender, has been disappeared down the Climate Audit memory hole although his smile still exists in the comments. The Nightingale (Jimmy) sings at Tim's Place

Re #41 and the related comments about the absence of the Lorax thread over on Climate Audit.

I was enjoying watching McIntyre's responses to the awkward questions that were evolving there and, like others, thought it very strange that the entire thread was wiped. I wrote my first post on their site to ask where it had gone (no hint of my thoughts on the subject and I didn't include the link to my Helium site where I've posted pro-AGW articles).

It seems that the mere mention of Lorax is enough to frighten them off. I tried to post on their new Unthreaded topic with a general clarification of ENSO and it appears I'm banned. Received this message:

http://www.ioerror.us/bb2-support-key?key=a461-f554-dfd9-b1ad

For McIntyre to whine about transparency and getting a fair go in the scientific community is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Eli has sent Ethon over to demand all the raw data, the code and a complete map of the Climate Audit memory hole.

Join our campaign to free the Lorax.

UPDATE: It looks like great chunks of the Lorax Chronicles have been moved to an unthreaded thread but until Ethon gets all the data, the auditors auditor cannot issue a clean sheet.

UPDATE²: Gets even weirder. The story is now that someone identified Lorax and this became a serious issue. Whooo boy.

UPDATE³: For various and sundry reasons having to do with the comments below Eli has edited out otherwise reasonable comments by reasonable people. He asks forgiveness which may or may not be given. Whatever.

It's not a bug it's a feature

Conner in the comments asks about what some people, not me, Eli hastens to add, would call a Plimer

"The raw data from Mauna Loa is 'edited' by an operator who deletes what is considered poor data. Some 82% of the raw data is "edited" leaving just 18% of the raw data measurements for statistical analysis. With such savage editing of raw data, whatever trend one wants can be shown."

and inquires WTF (sort of the right tude for WUWT).

Eli and Rattus Norvegicus try to be helpful, but after Capital Climate shows that this has become a rich source of denial delight, Ethon, who was getting quite hungry, decided to fly over to the Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) and check it out. Ethon is quite fond of high aeries even if they are on scenic Pacific Islands and you have to burn a lot of liver to get there, but he does like to check it out before he goes, and lo, the big bird found a nice intro from a high school student who spent time doing science in 1994, Eleanor Foltz, who, some people, not Eli, he hastens to add, would say obviously knows more about the subject than Ian Plimer

It is well known that MLO nighttime downslope winds and daytime upslope winds do not relate well to free tropospheric wind flow in the region of the Mauna Loa massive. The regular downslope winds bring nocturnal upper level air to the observatory site that allows MLO to make background atmospheric composition measurements most days of the year.

While measurement of the CO2 mixing ratio in the free troposphere is possible almost every day at MLO, one has to monitor the winds and other conditions to be sure that it is being measured. The figure to the left shows the number of days during which measurements could be made for a given number of hours. In any particular hour, not every measurement is accepted for a variety of reasons. This being the government, there is a web page which actually even a bird can find. Now, some people, not me, Eli hastens to add, might believe Ian Plimer's research was slipshod. The NOAA web page carefully explains how measurements are made and how and why readings are accepted or rejected. In addition to the meteorology (wind direction and such) this includes

1. The standard deviation of minute to minute averages should be less than 0.30 ppm within a given hour.
   
2. The hourly average should differ from the preceding hour by less than 0.25 ppm.
   
3. In keeping with the requirement that CO2 in background air should be steady, we apply a general “outlier rejection” step, in which we fit a curve to the preliminary daily means for each day calculated from the hours surviving step 1 and 2, and not including times with upslope winds. Aell hourly averages that are further than two standard deviations, calculated for evry day, away from the fitted curve ("outliers") are rejected. This step is iterated until no more rejections occur.

They flag these (and the wind) in the record. Clearly these folk know what they are doing and anyone who reads Charles Keeling's descriptions of his CO2 measurements recognizes that he was obsessed by identifying meteorological and methodological issues. If you pay careful attention you can even measure the CO2 mixing ratio in the middle of Europe, say at Schauinsland. If you don't, you measure nonsense, say in Giessen

Anyone who wants to look at the hourly data since 1974 is welcome. Stuff they toss is flagged.

Comments

Some people, not me

One Michael Ashley, a colleague of Tim Lambert at UNSW (Eli is a very old and suspicious bunny) penned a work of art on Climate Audit. He started by quoting Stevereno

If people are suggesting that I wasn't diligent enough in pursuing the matter, by this time, I'd exchanged over 40 emails with Science on this and Esper.

And continued

Some people (not me, I hasten to add) might think they are justified in claiming that you weren't diligent enough given that Keith Briffa replied to you very politely on May 28, 2006 saying

Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues - will pass on your message to them]
cheers, Keith

At this point, it would appear that the logical approach would have been to contact the Swedish and Russian colleagues. Did you do this?

Some people (not me, I hasten to add) might claim that you have dishonestly given the impression (note I say "impression", not that you have actually said so directly, or even possibly indirectly) that Briffa has deliberately withheld data from you for ten years, when in fact this was not the case. And that the data was not Briffa's to give. And that there was no publication policy in place at the time to require the data to be available. And that you were given a pointer as to who could provide the data, but you did not follow it up. At least that is the impression that some people (not me) might form, and even speculate (without justification) that whatever is going on at CA, it isn't auditing, or science.

If I may make a humble suggestion: why not harness the power of the people who post at CA to help you coauthor a paper on Yamal for submission to the peer-reviewed literature?

I am sure that you would receive numerous offers from potential co-authors to reduce the burden on you. Suitable wiki software would enable collaborative on-line editing. If you don't have time to set this up, I am sure that there are dozens of CA readers with the necessary expertise to help. The co-authors could assist with proof-reading, tracking down references, data, etc in return for seeing their names in print.

With this many eyes watching, it would be one of the most carefully audited papers in history, and would surely glide through the referee process. It would set a gold standard for archiving of data and software, and would greatly enhance CA's reputation as a place where science is done. Let's do it!

It should be possible to submit a paper on a timescale of a few months. Just think of the impact it would have! It would cite through the roof as the paper that finally showed that it is possible to choose a set of trees from north-western Siberia that show no evidence of global warming in the second half of the 20th century.

Steve bit

In response to your point that I wasn't "diligent enough" in pursuing the matter with the Russians, in fact, I already had a version of the data from the Russians, one that I'd had since 2004. What I didn't know until a couple of weeks ago was that this was the actual version that Briffa had used.

Some people, not me I would hasten to add, might think B'rer Ashley would emerge with your front teeth in his back pocket if you shook hands with him. Comments

Read the Effing Editorial Guidelines

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Looks like Eli's guess was right. Steve McIntyre writes in CA

I made a diligent effort at the time to get Science to require Briffa to disgorge his Yamal measurement data, but they refused. They argued that Osborn and Briffa 2006 did not use the Yamal measurement data, but only the chronology and I should contact the "original authors" for the measurement data. The source of the chronology was, of course, Briffa 2000. I wrote Tim Osborn and asked him for the data and he said that he didn't have it. So I wrote Keith Briffa and he stonewalled me. I wrote back to Science rather crossly about the nonsense.

Parsing this a little bit, Science agrees with Eli that the "measurement data" did not belong to Briffa. Steve still misses the point that the "measurement data" belonged to the Russians, and he continued to go after Briffa thinking that the "measurement data" referred to Briffa's reconstruction. He either doesn't get it or doesn't want to get it.

More: As pointed to by dhogaza on Deltoid, details of Steve's fishing expeditions in the land of proxy including this reply from Briffa:

Steve these data were produced by Swedish and Russian colleagues - will pass on your message to them]
cheers, Keith

Rabett Run, where you read it before they admit it.
----------------------------------------------------
Stevereno's beating on Keith Briffa has gone nuclear hitting the major papers as well as the blogs. There are two legs upon which McIntyre's stands. Both are rather clayish.

First, that Briffa by publishing on the Yamal tree ring record had an obligation to make the data set available to all given the editorial guidelines of the journals.

Second, that Briffa used an inappropriately small number of living tree-ring cores from Yamal to calibrate the tree-ring proxy as evidence of which McIntyre uses a larger set of 34 cores taken from the same area taken by Schweingrubber.

The Capitalist Imperialist Pig has a pretty good take on the second issue for dummies (moi), less some important details we will discuss here tomorrow.

Briffa published three papers on the Yamal cores,

• Briffa, K. R. 2000. Annual climate variability in the Holocene: interpreting the message of ancient trees. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:87-105.
• Briffa, K. R., and T. J. Osborn. 2002. Paleoclimate - Blowing hot and cold. Science 295:2227-2228.
• Briffa, K. R., V. V. Shishov, T. M. Melvin, E. A. Vaganov, H. Grudd, R. M. Hantemirov, M. Eronen, and M. M. Naurzbaev. 2008. Trends in recent temperature and radial tree growth spanning 2000 years across northwest Eurasia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 363:2271-2284.

In a reasonably short time after the third paper was published (a year or so) the data became publicly available. In this case one of the authors (or more) was part of the group that gathered the tree-ring cores.

As Eli has been pointing out, the data set DID NOT BELONG to Briffa, it belonged to the Russians, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, so Briffa did not have the right to convey it to McIntyre, no matter what. Whether McIntyre realized this is not clear, but he sure should have if he read the papers which explicitly describe the source of the data.

Eli inquired over at Climate Audit. The response was interesting. Mostly misdirection, but Mr. Pete asked good questions in return

How does your perspective align with the journal data disclosure policies?

Do you believe journal policies should be ignored, or do you believe Briffa was wrong to be in noncompliance until this year?

The Rabett will try, as ever, to be a helpful little bunny. However first, he will point out that the silence from the concerned party is insightful.

Off to the Editorial Guidelines. For Quaternary Science Reviews we have

Data Access and Retention Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

The ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases makes an important distinction. Well, first dear hares, you have to know who they are, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). Their concern is more to protect their interests in scientific and technical databases and much less in Steve McIntyre having access to the Yamal tree ring data.

There is considerable controversy in the scholarly community about ‘ownership’ of and access to data, some of which arises because of the difficulty in distinguishing between information products created for the specific display and retrieval of data (‘databases’) and sets or collections of raw relevant data captured in the course of research or other efforts (‘data sets’). Another point of difficulty is that in many cases data sets or even smaller sub-sets of data are also provided as an electronic adjunct to a paper submitted to a scholarly journal, either for online publication or simply to allow the referees to verify the conclusions.

We believe that, as a general principle, data sets, the raw data outputs of research, and sets or sub-sets of that data which are submitted with a paper to a journal, should wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars. We believe that the best practice for scholarly journal publishers is to separate supporting data from the article itself, and not to require any transfer of or ownership in such data or data sets as a condition of publication of the article in question. Further, we believe that when articles are published that have associated data files, it would be highly desirable, whenever feasible, to provide free access to that data, immediately or shortly after publication, whether the data is hosted on the publisher’s own site or elsewhere (even when the article itself is published under a business model which does not make it immediately free to all).

Still, a good distinction. The data set5 did not belong to Briffa, he had only been granted access by the owners, Hantemirov and Shiyatov. So the question is did McIntyre write to them and if so what response did he get. In any case Briffa is not responsible for the Russians use or sharing of their data set.

Science says

Data availability After publication, all data necessary to understand, assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available to any reader of Science. We recognize that discipline-specific conventions or special circumstances may occasionally apply, and we will consider these in negotiating compliance with requests. Any concerns about your ability to meet Science's requirements must be disclosed and discussed with an editor. For further information about accessibility of data and materials, see the following resources.

• Cech, T. R. (2003), Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials: Responsibilities of Authorship in the Life Sciences.
• American Psychological Association, Responsible Conduct of Research: Data Sharing and Data Archiving.
• National Science Foundation Policy on Data Sharing [PDF].

The Editors of Science clearly are willing to negotiate any questions. Eli asks if Steve McIntyre addressed them or only Briffa or Hantemirov and Shiyatov and if he did what reply he received. However the NSF rules make an important point

36. Sharing of Findings, Data, and Other Research Products

a. NSF expects significant findings from research and education activities it supports to be promptly submitted for publication, with authorship that accurately reflects the contributions of those involved. It expects investigators to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of the work. It also encourages awardees to share software and inventions or otherwise act to make the innovations they embody widely useful and
usable.

b. Adjustments and, where essential, exceptions may be allowed to safeguard the rights of individuals and subjects, the validity of results, or the integrity of collections or to accommodate legitimate interests of investigators.

Briffa and Briffa and Osborn did not create or gather the Yamal tree ring data set, a point Eli has been making throughout. This distinction between data set and the data resulting from the data set is crucial. McIntyre has already shown that Briffa disclosed enough information about his methods for McIntyre to replicate the results, so clearly the disclosure met the journal policy. It is also clear that the data set was something loaned to Briffa for his use alone.

So, in sumary, Mr. Pete, Eli would say that his perspective aligns pretty well with the publication policies of the journals. Data sets are owned by those that created them and they have the right to first use. They can share them with others and do not have to share them with everyone until completely published. People who are loaned data sets, do not have the right to post them on the village wall.

Now we come to the fun part. Speculation. It looks pretty clear at this point that McIntyre hammered on Briffa for the data set. It would be interesting to know if Briffa replied (specifically if he replied, go ask Hantemirov and Shiyatov), but it does not take too much imagination to think that Steve was his usual charming self, and got another go away.

Eli doesn't believe that Briffa ignored or "broke" with the publication policy of Quatenary Science Review, and, at worst, took the Science policy to the limit, but was probably provoked by a well known boor. The key to all this is what McIntyre did, and the only ones who know that are McIntyre, Briffa and Hantemirov and Shiyatov, but one can speculate, and silence talks (at least for a while....yes, Eli is trolling. Next question)

Comments

Small Steps

Via Cruel Mistriss Eli came across yet another courtesy fart for George Will at the Washington Post. Joe Romm was not amused, but you know Joe. Not one of the Village People. He does have a number of excellent links about lighting technology developments, programs and regulation.

David Henderson, got hisself an op ed, more thoughts on that perhaps later, and proceeded to be as simple as can be. Henderson said that it was wrong of the EU to mandate a switch to compact fluorescent bulbs and the US to impose efficiency standards on light bulbs that will by, 2012, eliminate the traditional incandescent.

Eli agrees with Henderson that the US approach is better. Romm agrees too, pointing out that this has already lead to creation of more efficient incandescents (most likely by making filaments that can burn brighter) and leaves a lot more room for technological innovation. Henderson, leaving no simple thought unwritten fears a backlash from users moaning

. . many people also have a decided dislike of CFLs and will greatly resent the ban. While they may last longer than incandescent bulbs, the upfront cost is high; the light produced is not as bright as that of incandescent bulbs; they are slow to achieve full brightness; the bulbs don't fit in many old lamps; they can't be dimmed; and their lifespan is greatly shortened by using them for less than 15 minutes at a time. The manufacturers of compact fluorescent lights have made improvements on some of these issues, but their reputation is not yet vindicated.

Because his analysis is superficial, he misses the obvious parallel with low flush toilets, in their time a threat to civilization and the American Way, but you know, by now no one really notices except the water and sanitation system operators who were spared the expense of dealing with a whole lot more of crap filled water and building a lot more plants, which was the whole point.

Beyond this, Henderson tries to do freakonomics

The environmental benefits of using only compact fluorescent bulbs are indirect -- and less than what could be realized by changing standards governing, for example, coal use. Consider: The benefit of "reducing inefficiency" depends on where the energy is coming from. Improving efficiency without eliminating a harmful source may just free energy that is then used elsewhere. If there is no net reduction in energy use, where is the benefit?

As Eli said, he misses the obvious parallel with low flush toilets. In this case electrical generating facilities are continually being built and renewed. Decrease demand by increasing efficiency and the utilities will build fewer plants. CFLs were originally introduced and subsidized by the utilities precisely to avoid building new plants and it worked, a lesson Henderson has either never learned or tossed down the memory hole. Given capital costs and coming carbon emission regulation it is clearly in the utilities benefit to take their least efficient coal plants off line if lighting power demand decreases.

Observant link clickers may also have noticed that Henderson did not mention how much electricity is used for home lighting. 101 Billion kWh (8.8% of all electricity consumed in US homes, which is about 1/3 of all use). This, of course is only one place where good regulations can significantly increase efficiency, refrigerators are a great example, falling by a factor of four since 1970 under the spur of technological development and efficiency regulations. Oh yeah, replacements of CFCs were not even a hiccup in spite of the technotrolls. As Eli has been saying, the solution is going to include a whole lot of solutions not a single kendo bash.

Comments

What Data?

The latest Climate Audit harumph reminds Eli of the original one. A great screech for the DATA. Eli seriously wants to know WHAT data. If it is the actual cores, or their images, that belongs to the Russians who did the coring, not Briffa who they loaned the data to. If so McIntyre is whining up the wrong tree. They are the intellectual property of the Russians and Briffa cannot give them to a third party.

Another point is that the "new cores" were taken by a different group at different times in a different (although perhaps slightly) place. You can't just graft them into the Yamal record as McIntyre tried to do.

Tom P (all credit) has appeared to demolish most of what McIntyre was claiming by doing reconstructions with and without various parts of the Yamal record that McIntyre criticized.

It's Blowin in the Wind

Barry Brook is refocusing Brave New Climate on nuclear energy as the solution to our energy problems. Eli has always thought nuclear will play an important role, but not the only role, something that is not always well received. The Bunny wrote

Eli thinks you are making a major error. There will be no single solution, there will be a mix of partial solutions or there will be no solution. While there is a virtue in the marketplace (and it will be determined by the market, the problem being that it is necessary to get people to recognize the built in future costs of fossil fuels) of having apostles for each partial solution claiming it is a total solution, at the point of implementation reality requires that the buyers discount the sales talk, and at that point the winners will be the realistic sales folk. . .

Further, IEHO, wind and solar have significant advantages for electrifying underdeveloped areas as they do not need a national distribution network or a huge cadre of trained caretakers. Among the lessons from Iraq is that small, independent generating facilities are superior in chaotic situations

Only to come across an interesting example today of one William Kamkwamba who put together three windmills in order to power his family farm. While not very efficient, they are sufficient and improvable, a great example of things not having to be perfect to be enough.

Go read the article

First Krammed, then Curtined

One of the things that you learn on your Doctor Mom or Dad's knee is to be suspicious of stuff that don't quite sound right. There are any number of three card monte dealers on the street who would be only too glad to prove this to you in the lab.

Tim Curtin, a Tim Lambert's favorite pinata, a guy so important that he has his own thread on Deltoid, has come up with a new one that he parked over at Honest Marohasy's Used Climate Argument Blog.

Tim C puts on his Tamino costume and scribbles

The temperature data at Mauna Loa from 1955 do not support the conclusions of the paper, of extreme warming at ‘high altitude Hawaii” to the extent of 0.268 C per decade since 1975. Actually as the graph shows there is a slight declining trend in the annual increases in temperatures at Mauna Loa.

A plot of changes in temperature and carbon dioxide year on year from 1959, as in the chart, shows a steady rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide but no increase in temperature.

I conclude that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature at a pristine site like that at Mauna Loa. In conclusion the whole theory of ‘radiative forcing’ allegedly arising from increasing concentration of carbon dioxide over time has no validity at pristine locations like Mauna Loa.

Give him credit (ok a few pieces from the penny jar) Tim C mentions that he got the graph from the Western Regional Climate Center at DRI but ding him, he doesn't point to where. Eli went looking and found a table for average monthly and annual temperature (link fixed), and being a good bunny he graphed the annual data using the 1955-1985 data as the base


with a mean annual trend of +0.041 K/yr. Then the Rabett went and found a very nice presentation from Donald Turcotte, Bruce Malamud and Jordan van Aalsburg, who find an annual trend of 0.022 K/yr from 1977 through 2006. More about that tomorrow

So dear reader what's going on?

Ah, very simple. The Curtin is not plotting temperatures, or temperature anomalies, but the CHANGE in annual temperatures. In other words, if the annual MLO temperature in 1975 was 4.5 C, and in 1976 it was 5.5 C, the CHANGE is 1.0 C.

Since CO2 concentrations are increasing approximately exponentially, and since the effect of CO2 on global temperature is approximately logarithmic, the net is that the annual CHANGE in temperature per year will be approximately constant. According to Tim Curtin's graph, at least at Mauna Loa, it is.

Watch the bouncing ball.

Head bangers

Anyone who has ever taught knows about head bangers, you know the sort of thing that you thought was clear and obvious except there is one kid in the class . . . well, let's put it this way, after you figure it out you want to go bang your head against the wall mumbling "Never Again" endlessly. This is why teachers are always asking questions to check that they are getting through and why the good ones are always swapping stories about the truly eerie interpretations they get back from their class so they can avoid them next time.

Eli has one from last week. During a lab class he had to go to the little bunnies room for a short, but pleasant, interlude only to return and find the lab tech on the floor with the mercury cleanup kit and a bunch of panicked kids.

Eli: "WHAT HAPPENED
Kids: We dropped a thermometer and the mercury spilled all over the floor

Eli: We don't have mercury thermometers here
Kids: We dropped a thermometer and the mercury spilled all over the floor and we don't want to die (slight exaggeration)

Eli: We don't have mercury thermometers here

(Light dawns)

Eli: What color was the liquid in the thermometer
Kids: Blue

Eli: What color is mercury
Kids: We've never seen mercury

Eli goes and gets a mercury thermometer out of the stockroom

Eli: This is a mercury thermometer
Kids: Oh.

Moral: Most people under twenty these days have not seen a mercury thermometer or mercury or if they have have not registered that mercury is a silvery liquid (they may know that nearly all metals** are silvery, but not made the connection).

In his defense the lab tech thought Eli had handed out a mercury thermometer and was prepared to make Rabett stew after cleaning up

Change in lab SOP: Show the students a mercury thermometer in the first week. Explain that there are none in the undergraduate labs anymore.

It is literally impossible to figure out all of the “crooked” ways that people can think, but if you have heard about them, you can head some of them off at the pass.

The mem about the "lifetime of CO2" provides an opening for such a head banger which could be avoided by talking a bit of care. Say things like, an increased amount of atmospheric CO2 lasts centuries. Maybe add, CO2 exchanges quickly with the ocean and biosphere, but that is an exchange, not an increase or decrease.

** Copper and gold are exceptions

Via Atmos a whole blog full of head bangers, including this one

Got any stories?

Motivated Reasoning

Lane Wallace writes (in a non climate change denial, non tobacco denial, non AIDs denial) about motivated reasoning

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create "cognitive dissonance"--discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence--selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

The two base examples are interesting, did Perry or Cook reach the north Pole and

Everett Reuss left civilization to go live in the wilderness ... and was never heard from again. A whole folk myth movement sprang up around this young man who seemed to have slipped so completely into the wild that he eluded discovery for the rest of his life. An annual art festival in Escalante, Utah, is even named in his honor. But Roberts, who researched the case for 10 years, finally discovered evidence that Ruess had been murdered by two members of the Ute tribe almost as soon as he'd begun his journey. There was a witness to the murder, an unearthed skeleton, and DNA tests that were compatible with other family members.

The mystery, it seemed, had been solved. But the hue and cry surrounding Roberts' piece was both angry and loud, catching both Roberts and the Reuss family by surprise.

Real Climate is thumb sucking about how to communicate science, with the usual distribution of be nice and bash the moles recommended. It appears to Eli that you need to feed the trolls to the bird while being helpful to onlookers. His adventures in ACS land have reinforced this to him. At a minimum this requires building trust with the lurkers first by being initially helpful and polite, and then by outing the trolls in a way that the lurkers see that they are being disruptive. Among other things, especially in a one on one, it really helps to find a trusted intermediate. You do have to give the trolls a fair amount of rope but you should never give way to their moaning and never let them change the subject.

An interesting example emerges in an endless thread at Deltoid, where another tactic, which has some value, has emerged, corral the troll into a corrida and have the picadors stick pins in the beast. An endless thread featuring a libertarian Dunning-Kruger poster child (you know, the face on the cereal box of the cute kid, with the byline: our village has lost its idiot) has emerged as a source of useful information as others respond to the pinata (mixing Mexican metaphors is not a sin). You can dip into it at any point and find something interesting. Eli thinks they are going for 10K responses.

Comments?

Magical Solutions Anyone?

The operative definition of chutzpah is taking an axe to your parents and pleading for mercy as an orphan. Ethon has a new one, a certain tasty senior fellow of the Breakthrough Institute, you know, the delayers who current strategy is faith based research to combat future climate change, telling the new Japanese government off for setting goals in their first couple of weeks in power but not immediately having concrete plans for reducing greenhouse gases.

Of course, as E points out, not eating today because there might be a nice piece of liver tomorrow doesn't exactly take care of a hungry bird's tummy. However here we have our old playmate Roger P taking the Japanese to task for not specifying how to reach their goals. Except that he took the old Japanese government to task for the same thing, when they had specified both their goals and methods (see also comments at Environment 360 by Brendan Barrett). Anyone in bed with Marty Hoffert should not go around criticizing others for not being realistic.

Some things never change.

As Eli was saying

Barak Obama obviously reads Rabett Run, for in his speech to the UN special meeting on climate change, he said

We must also energize our efforts to put other developing nations—especially the poorest and most vulnerable—on a path to sustainable growth. These nations do not have the same resources to combat climate change as countries like the United States or China do, but they have the most immediate stake in a solution. For these are the nations that are already living with the unfolding effects of a warming planet—famine and drought; disappearing coastal villages and the conflict that arises from scarce resources. Their future is no longer a choice between a growing economy and a cleaner planet, because their survival depends on both. It will do little good to alleviate poverty if you can no longer harvest your crops or find drinkable water.

That is why we have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development.

A point that The Rabett has been stressing especially with respect to India (1, 2, 3) but also the other countries that draw drinking water from the rapidly vanishing Himalayan glaciers such as Pakistan and to an extent Bangladesh. Rabett Run, where you read it before it happens.

Gotta have a meeting

Chad Orzel, Dean Dad and Female Science Professor are having a contest to name the worst kind of meeting. Somehow they missed

Groundhog Day

The same meeting, every meeting, until you retire, then you dream about it until you die. Sartre was a smart cookie. Hell is your colleagues. There is no exit.

UPDATE: Steve Bloom wins the thread

S/he who dies having convened the most meetings wins.

How much is that Morano in the window?

You know, the cute little guy who was interviewed by Clean Skies News, a web based environmental news service.




They also interviewed Andrew Freedman, more about that later, but on to Villa Morano a small, but expensive building in Mostly Moaning Town. Marc paints the IPCC as totally political as a UN organization and therefore untrustworthy. The lack of flackish self awareness is astounding, something the interviewer calls him on later, and he attempts to push back to her. She could have been much stronger and persistent.

He claims that many IPCC scientists have rejected the IPCC. The interviewer, who had good questions, fails on the follow up, e.g. name some. There are, of course, a few like Spencer, but to get any numbers he would have to drag in the "Expert" Reviewers like the Mad Moncktons, Richard "Dipl Phil" Courtney, Vincent Gray and that ilk. It would have been amusing to watch him with an interviewer who had followed the blogs.

The same is true of the 700, ably deconstructed by the Center for Inquiry, and the 650list blog, which MM plays up. What did you expect, we didn't exactly fall off the carrot truck here at Bunny Farms, but again, the interviewer is unprepared to pin him down. Morano's line is hand waving. You have to at least try and pin him down.

Towards the end, Susan McGinnis, the interviewer, asks who was paying the freight for Morano in his new home at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and who was paying for CFACT. She is much better on that as you would expect, journos are trained to follow the money. Pinning him down on who funds CFACT is, of course, difficult. He refuses and tries to distract her. Exxon Secrets has a bit about CFACT funding from Exxon, it appears to run about 50 K$/year, Source Watch references this and adds that they have gotten substantial support from foundations controlled by Richard Scaife, a noted US source for right wing funding, but again, McGinnis should have been better prepared, especially with a slippery character like Morano.

Morano put out two indicative false statements in the funding discussion. The first being that CFACT gets ~85% of its funding from individuals. According to its 2008 990 they got 60.2 and 40.5% from individual donations in 2008 and 2007 respectively. The second is when he told the interviewer that she could find out who donated to CFACT from the 990s on Guidestar. Donors are not listed on 990s, something that anyone familiar with Guidestar knows.

Susan McGinnis, had useful questions, but was unprepared to follow up with Morano in obvious ways. Further, the interview never really reached any scientific questions. In short, it was not a bad effort, but could have been much better.

To put on my inner MT, it is clear that even good journalists do not know how to prepare for these interviews. Their training encourages them to be a mile wide and an inch deep, but for interviewing "media representatives", who spend their lives looking for misleading sound bites they need to be inch wide and a mile deep or know someone who is, who can prepare them.

This interview should be required viewing for anyone who wants to deal with Morano. You need to be very specific and very persistent.

Oh yes, how much is that Morano in the window. Well, before he moved, about $135K/yr. Now, well we have to probably wait until next year's 990s. He only started at CFACT in the Spring.

Eli sucks at multitasking

Mostly, like a computer with a fast processor and no memory, he ends up spending all his time thrashing, so it was a happy day to read Rudy Baum's latest tirade in C&E news

We know from personal experience and from recent studies that multitasking while driving is a bad idea. Cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys, and the like just don’t mix with driving. People talking on cell phones while driving are as dangerous as people who are legally drunk. People who are texting are much more dangerous.

Multitasking outside of cars, however, is a different story. We’ve all been told that the ability to process multiple streams of information, most of it digital, is the wave of the future. Teenagers and young adults, we are told, have developed the ability to do homework, browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, and instant message simultaneously, packing so much more into every hour than we old-school unitaskers. . .

Guess what? It doesn’t work. The Aug. 30 New York Times carried a story on “The Mediocre Multitasker” that led: “Read it and gloat. Last week, researchers at Stanford University published a study showing that the most persistent multitaskers perform badly in a variety of tasks. They don’t focus as well as non-multitaskers. They’re more distractable. They’re weaker at shifting from one task to another and at organizing information. They are, as a matter of fact, worse at multitasking than people who don’t ordinarily multitask.”. . .

Chronic multitaskers do process information differently. They do it badly. The research definitively shows that multitaskers “have greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment … they are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory … and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets.

Eli is getting to like that fellow Baum

H1N1

Academic blogs have been commenting that University administrations have been worse than usually useless in telling us how to deal with H1N1 outbreaks. Eli has come across what, to him, appears to be a useful site, hosted by EBSCO, you know the folk who sell your library journals at delicious prices. While not the end of civilization, there probably will be a fair amount of disruption as flu season moves into high gear. You can find the information at the EBSCO Influenza - Evidence Based Information Portal

Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide.
The editorial teams will monitor the research and update these resources continuously throughout the upcoming flu season.

UPDATE: Link fixed. Nick Stokes suggests Effect Measure for information about H1N1

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The Morano Mumble Jumble

Well, to boost the incoming at the WP, one of their meteorologists, Matt Rogers is now doing the Morano Mumble Jumble. More of the usual. Be good creatures and help him out. Marc is quite pleased

UPDATE: Pass the popcorn

Marc Morano is upset that Andrew Freedman, a blogger with the Washington Post, won't debate him about climate change. Not wanting to see Marc left without a debating partner, I'd be happy to debate Marc Morano on climate policy. Were we to do an Oxford-style debate I'd propose the following resolution:

Resolved: Governments around the world should adopt a low carbon tax to finance technological innovation and other policies focused on decarbonizng the global economy. At the same time enhanced investments are needed around the world on policies focused on improving resilience and adaptive capacity.

How about it Marc?

Although one of the commentors, Stan, made a useful point that also applies to Plimers dancing away from Monbiot

One of the biggest shortcomings of debate formats is that the debaters end up talking past each other because they define terms differently or want to stress completely different aspects of the issue (or fail to critique each other's "evidence"). I think the debate would likely be more interesting if the two of you both agreed to narrow the issue to one genuinely in dispute and published "briefs".

I guess the model for appellate courts works very well. The issues on appeal are specific, appellant files a brief, appellee responds, appellant replies to the response. Then each gets to make a presentation to the court in oral argument (often mostly responding to questions from the panel) in the same order. No surprises, both sides are fully apprised and fully prepared to respond.

For a debate, you should correspond to discuss precisely where you disagree and structure the debate to focus on those issues. Then you should make your initial case in writing (or cite previous work/studies relied on).

There is no point of having a debate where someone cites X and the other isn't familiar with X. It may score debating points, but a thoughtful audience really wants to know if X is really worthy or not and cannot find that out.

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