Comments on: Day Two at AGU

By: bender

bender — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:39:16 +0000

i.e. He behaved as a troll on a blog and achieved the same effect that trolls do.

By: TAC

TAC — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:35:01 +0000

FWIW: I also spoke with Kurt Cuffey and several others following the Monday session at AGU, and I was impressed that they made no bones about SteveM’s concerns related to climate reconstructions. Clearly, reconstructing climate history is not easy, mistakes get made, etc., etc. Likely even Michael Mann concedes these points in general (though not the specific criticisms, perhaps).

I am not sure what to make of Malcolm Hughes. I was sitting a couple of rows behind him at AGU — a front-row seat for his outburst directed at SteveM — and his behavior prompted two contradictory thoughts: On the one hand, it seemed a visceral reaction — he appeared visibly shaken by SteveM’s presentation, which is perhaps understandable though uncharacteristic for an academic (most welcome attention to their work). On the other hand, Hughes’s words were almost entirely unspecific rant — with one exception, they did not address any of the details of SteveM’s presentation — which suggests the words might have been prepared in advance. In any case, although he embarrassed only himself, his outburst disrupted the scientific discussion and may have silenced those who wanted to bring up substantive criticism of SteveM’s analysis. If so, that was unfortunate. I have seen this happen before at AGU, and in one case a frequent abuser was formally rebuked for such behavior.

By: bender

bender — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:32:53 +0000

Two short excerpts from that post:

“I heard from a few people a sentiment that we need to stop making assumptions and decisions for decision-makers; that we need to give decision-makers only the unvarnished truth with realistic bounds on our uncertainty, and trust that the decision-makers will know what to do with it.”

and

“what I heard concerns me greatly, because I see negative implications for the credibility of the climsci world”

echoing what I’ve been saying from the start.

Dealing responsibly with uncertainty means disclosure, for example, of:
-methods used to calculate temp recon confidence intervals
-error as it propagates through a GCM calculation
… so that policy-makers understand the odds (however slim) that the science is wrong.

By: Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:43:05 +0000

There's an interesting commentary at RP Jr's site by Kevin Vranes, an AGU attendee, on what he views as the changing sentiment among the scientific community as to how knowledge of climate is being represented in the media and to policy-makers. Regards;

By: bender

bender — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:23:15 +0000

Malcolm Hughes, at 00:28:28 in his Oct 17 podcast, questions the idea of independence of thought among investigators in the post-internet era of global-scale earth science. Ironically, he later goes on to contradict himself by citing the competitiveness among investigators (1:01:09) and the uniqueness of each of the proxy types, as factors leading to independence. The undeniable fact, however, is that (1) investigators are competitive *until* they face a common enemy, at which point they become collaborative; (2) uniqueness of the proxy types does not preclude cherry-picking from among them to achieve a pre-determined result. These factors tend to undermine independence.

Re #21 “absolutely independent studies” occurs at 52:11. Although this is an undercurrent theme throughout the talk.

I don’t think the word “independent” should ever again be used to describe global earth science studies. His earlier (28:28) statement is correct: independence is no longer achievable.

By: UC

UC — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:16:15 +0000

My impression of RC: Verbal hand waving and only few equations (Ritson’s). But haven’t read it much, so my impression is prone to sampling error. But they don’t care about sampling error, so why should I.

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:08:12 +0000

RE: #26 – indeed, over at that other place, the consensus is not only due to all that, it is also due to vast encouragement of the most emotional, non scientifically trained, hysterically charged element to read, participate and cheer on. The number of links from environmental activist sites and blogs to RC is immense. So, there is a ready and willing body of individuals there who give kudos to the writings of RC’s management group no matter how questionable they are, and are there to shout down and smear any contrary post that somehow manages to make it through the censors. I would not be at all surprised if the censors there generally ban contrary posts as a rule, and only let through certain ones simply to thow meat into the ring so the minions there can have at it.

By: bender

bender — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:47:52 +0000

A consensus that emerges as a result of independent data and objective thought is strong and convincing.
A consensus that is forcibly maintained by coercion, inculcation, and censorship is not.
That was Sadlov’s point in #24.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:35:47 +0000

#22. It’s amazing that that comment got through the RC censors. “Mann and some others” – “others” in this case merely means Malcolm Hughes – not exactly a third party. Kurt Cuffey made a comment about Law Dome, but his was a routine and civil comment. He was sitting near me and said that he was very polite to me afterwards, saying that my presentation was very clear. No third parties were overtly antagonistic. A couple of people mentioned to me that they thought that Hughes’ performance was embarrassing to him, not to me.

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 15:53:52 +0000

RE: #23 – On another thread, I characterized RC as [snip=- Steve S – stop this language please.]. I don’t think that is overly strong language to describe the dynamic there.