Climate Change/Water Issues....

[Darian]

An article in the SacBee indicates that a lawsuit that over turned a 2003 accord for sales of water from growers in the Imperial Valley to San Diego is under appeal in Sacto this week. This agreement, if overturned, would mean that San Diego would have to rely entirely on the LAMWD for it's water supply. That would put more pressure on MWD to increase its demand for water from the Delta. Bad news. The court is currently conducting hearings:

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/20/4067839/what-will-climate-change-mean.html

Another article, seemingly unrelated, reports that the affects of climate change could imperil efforts to restore the Delta, Delta Smelt and Salmon/Steelhead unless it is controlled now:

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/20/4068397/courts-put-huge-california-water.html

Seems like all of this plus the recent DFG actions make up the convergence of a "perfect storm" of potentially negative outcomes for the Delta and it's ecology.... :-|

[STEELIES/26c3]

oboy thanks :eek:

[Mike Churchill]

The article in the Bee was just more simple minded b.s. regarding another scaremongering "study" cranked out by academics riding on the gravy train of government funding for climate change alarmism. Remember when they used to call it "global warming?" Global temperatures have plateaued since about 1998, so the activists and folks who depend on government grants "re-branded" it "climate change" a couple of years ago.

The thing is, the climate has been changing, sometimes slowly, sometimes relatively quickly, for a couple of billion years. Many of those changes are cyclical, and there is no persuasive evidence that humans have any control over the global climate at all. (However, we significantly affect local climates all the time through land use changes (deforestation, dams / irrigating large areas, building / expanding cities, etc.) Moreover, attempting to "stabilize" CO2 levels will just screw up our economy to no effect while China and India keep building coal-fired power plants at a rapid rate.

Contrary to the spin repeated ad nauseum in the media, the allegedly severe impact of humanity's CO2 emissions on the climate is in fact not well supported by empirical evidence. This is not an appropriate forum for the necessarily lengthy explanation supporting my statements above, but if you are interested in learning about atmospheric CO2, the state of "the science" of climate change, and the current (severe) limitations on the accuracy of climate modeling, I suggest you take a look at www.whatsupwiththat.com, www.bishophill.com, and / or www.climateaudit.com.

By the way, reading the latest batch of emails between the "leading climate scientists" that were released to the internet by an apparent whistleblower this week reveals how uncertain the science behind the alarmism is and how many of the scientists and journalists involved have private opinions very different from what they say in public.

Finally, given the difficulty of predicting the weather even 10 days in advance, the idea that the climate (weather) can be accurately predicted 50 years in advance should give you pause. For a number of very good reasons, it can't be.

Mike

[Darian]

MMmm,... Interesting. Do you subscribe to the reports in todays media that say that the e-mails recently produced were similar enough to the prior e-mails (released by the same hacker) that they appear to be the same :question:

Mike,.... I'm not sure I disagree with some of what you say but there's so many scientists on either side of this fence that I'm not sure which has the best info....

One thing's for sure, coal fired power plants pollute. In areas downwind from them, acid rains have occurred and many of the waterways on the east coast were rendered too acidic to support fish life from pollution caused by coal fired power plants. That has documented over a lengthy period of time. Coal mines are also major sources of pollution by themselves. So, for me, the climate is changing (as you point out). Are we impacting (accelerating) that change :question: I believe that we are in a lot of ways. Will we do much of anything to change that :question: Not as long as there's big money in production in mining coal or gas/oil production.... Still adds up to a major problem of clean-up for the rest of us. ](*,)

[Mike Churchill]

Darian,

The MSM is way behind the blogosphere regarding the email releases. The three websites I referenced above all include links to archives of the 5292 new emails and one links to a combined searchable archive with the approximately 1000 "Climategate" emails from 2009. The authenticity of the emails has been confirmed by multiple sources, including Penn State Professor Michael Mann and University of East Anglia Professor Phil Jones, two of the scientists at the center of the email storm

The denizens of WUWT, Climate Audit, and Bishop Hill--who include scientists and engineers from around the world as well as regular folks--are busy reviewing, analyzing and posting individual emails from the new archive. Taken in context, the emails confirm the huge holes in the science behind the alarmism and highlight the close connections between activist scientists and some media organizations (e.g., the BBC), NGOs, and other organizations out to profit from the climate scare.

As to the claim that "thousands of scientists believe in man-made global warming" / there is a scientific consensus, it has been debunked repeatedly but keeps getting dredged up by in the media. I don't have the citation handy, but the claim is actually based on a ridiculous two question on-line survey that was sent to about 10,000 scientists a few years ago. The two questions were themselves very ambiguous, a minority of the 10,000 responded, most of them were then excluded as not being "climate scientists" (because they didn't answer the way the surveyors wanted", and the final reported result that "97% of climate scientists believe in man-made global warming" turns out to be that 77 of 79 self-identified "climate scientists" agreed with two ambiguous questions that didn't identify "by how much" or "over what time period."

In contrast, 30,000 scientists and engineers signed what is called the Oregon Petition a couple of years ago pointing out to the government that the climate has always changed and that there is no compelling evidence that there is anything unusual about what is happening currently.

With regard to coal and acid rain:

1) Acid rain was a big scare a couple of decades ago that you don't hear much about any more. My understanding is that more recent studies suggest that the "acidification" and related decline in fertility of many East Coast streams and lakes during the 20th Century was actually a return to more natural conditions after large forest fires in the late 19th century had injected great amounts of ash into the environment, which raised the pH of the water temporarily.

2) With current SO2 scrubbers installed, coal plants don't contribute to "acid rain" like they used to. (Technology installed at great cost for what was probably a significant public health benefit, but further improvements / restrictions heading far into the land of diminishing marginal returns.)

3) Coal mining has significant environmental impacts. How bad they are varies from place to place and by mining technique. Some places, some industry practices, very bad. Not to mention the deaths of coal miners. (The worst pollution and safety practices are in China, not the US, and China is mining and burning coal like mad and will continue to do so to fuel its development regardless of what the U.S. does.) Now we are talking about balancing the tremendous benefits that flow to the entire population from cheap and abundant energy with the damage caused by coal mining. I agree that mining should be done in ways that limit environmental impacts but think that common sense should be involved in the balancing rather than anti-energy hysteria as practiced by some environmental groups. (I say that neither owning a coal mine nor any property in Appalachia threatened by mountain top removal or a potential sludge tailings flood. Details matter, of course.) Right now, coal is the cheapest way to generate electricity, and until the anti-nuclear hysteria fades, the best way to keep the population warm and productive.

Back to the original topic of this thread: There is no reason to panic about diminishing flows in the Sac system in the next century.

Mike

[Darian]

Mike,.... Thanks for the info. Interesting stuff. Not sure I agree that there's no danger of decreased flows in the Sacramento River over the next decade, tho. That's one area that is and increasingly will be impacted by human activities and demands for increased water supplies. With all of the potential development, political drum-beats and money being spread around, there's nothing on the horizon to indicate that another canal or tunnel to draw water from the Sacramento won't be built. :neutral:

Hope you and your family had a good Thanksgiving.... :D

[Mike Churchill]

Darian,

Let me be more specific: there is no scientific evidence that human emissions of CO2 will have any effect on river flows in the next couple of centuries. Diversions are a direct human impact that (of course) has a long history and, one can easily project, a bleak future.

By the way, over the last couple of days, the "crowd source" analysis of the over 5200 emails has turned up numerous admissions by the "top" climate scientists of uncertainties and limitations in their work and incredible examples of unprofessional and unscientific behavior. I strongly recommend that folks educate themselves on these issues.

Wattsupwiththat.com is the best place to go for an introduction to the subject.

Mike

[Darian]

Mike,.... I'm a bit confused. When you cite, "....human emmissions of CO2....", are you referring to human exhalation of CO2 :?: That based on the impact of population increase :?: If so, I'm not sure how that applies to increases or decreases in any rivers flow.... :confused:

If not, does human emmissions mean emmissions from human activities :?: I thought our prior posts already covered that.... :confused:

[Mike Churchill]

I meant human activities. Although there are some folks who think there are too many of us currently breathing on the planet. (I am not one of them.)

[Woodman]

numerous admissions by the "top" climate scientists of uncertainties and limitations in their work and incredible examples of unprofessional and unscientific behavior.

One thing the "anti-climate change" folks will never be accused of is uncertainty. So Mike...there is one, non-peer reviewed website that we should believe over the overwhelming evidence of climate change.

Even if you debate the degree to which anthropogenic effects are to cause, changes in the timing and magnitude of flows in Central Valley rivers are well documented. Pretending it isn't true doesn't really help anyone...

I tried to resist entering this thread ....,but I could no longer help myself.

[Mike Churchill]

Woodman,

You said:

"One thing the "anti-climate change" folks will never be accused of is uncertainty. So Mike...there is one, non-peer reviewed website that we should believe over the overwhelming evidence of climate change.

"Even if you debate the degree to which anthropogenic effects are to cause, changes in the timing and magnitude of flows in Central Valley rivers are well documented. Pretending it isn't true doesn't really help anyone..."

On the contrary, most of the folks who question global warming alarmism emphasize the current uncertainty in the science of climate change. While it is true that there is overwhelming evidence that the climate changes--locally, regionally, globally, over both short and longer terms, and that it has done so throughout the history of the earth, and in many ways cyclically--there is no "overwhelming evidence" of DANGEROUS MAN-MADE global warming. Educate yourself.

"Peer review" is also not the authoritative stamp of truth some claim it to be; it is merely an indication that two to four other scientists thought an article was worth publishing. Peer reviewed articles are shown to be incorrect all the time (in many fields)--that's one of the ways science advances. In the case of climate science, the Climategate 1 and 2 emails reveal extreme perversions of the peer review process at multiple scientific journals by alarmist scientists ("pal" review of alarmist articles and gate keeping to prevent the publication of articles dissenting from the views of "the team.")

As to flows in the valley rivers: yes, flows have varied over the last century that we've been measuring them. They will continue to vary as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (an approximately 60-year cycle that affects the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events, among other things) and other climate influences affect the watershed. What I said was there was no reason to panic about them based on increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, which has not been shown to significantly affect the climate (despite the constant wails of alarm like the study reported in that Bee article).

California's climate has a documented history of both long and short term wet/dry cycles. Those will continue. Fish populations tend to suffer in the dry years. Water diversions (and other habitat changes we've caused) exacerbate the negative effects of low water years and increased diversions will worsen the effects.

Mike

[Woodman]

Woodman,


--there is no "overwhelming evidence" of DANGEROUS MAN-MADE global warming. Educate yourself.



Don't think I said that Mike, especially not in caps. It seems that everyone who disagrees with you in any way is uneducated.

[Ed Wahl]

I ate a honkin big bowl of chili with beans tonight and the indications are positive for a night of climate altering gas emissions.

So if tomorrow is warmer than today it's obvious that human emissions (mine) are to blame for global warming.

If it's cooler tomorrow it's also obvious that I need to add more peppers to the chili.

:D:D:D:D:D

Chill boys, leave the politics to the political boards, or as Frenchy says " I fart in your general direction".

You people are just lucky I didn't eat the red beans and rice, we'd all be in sub-sahara tomorrow.
Ed

[Darian]

Yea!!!! But the only climate change that'll result from your "exhalations" will be localized (like in your house). Duke'll probably move outside.... :lol: :lol:

[Mike McKenzie]

I ate a honkin big bowl of chili with beans tonight and the indications are positive for a night of climate altering gas emissions.

So if tomorrow is warmer than today it's obvious that human emissions (mine) are to blame for global warming.

If it's cooler tomorrow it's also obvious that I need to add more peppers to the chili. :D:D:D:D

Chill boys, leave the politics to the political boards, or as Frenchy says " I fart in your general direction".

Well Ed, it's 8° cooler here this AM and it's obvious that you either don't use enough chilies or the wrong kind.
Also quit bein' a killjoy..You can't discuss "conservation" without gettin' into politics. It's just the nature of the beast! I ain't too worried about your farts as I've got an old WWII gas mask around here someplace....Soooo....

I'll jump in to the above discussion with my own .02¢ worth of opinion....
I'll start with sayin I basically agree with Mike C.'s take on the issue. The real problem with any discussion with regard to "global warming"/ "climate change" is the fact that the issue has been so politicized and corrupted.

When people start name calling such as "deniers or alarmists", debate is over and "arguing" begins. When you have "alarmists" criticizing "deniers" because they have received a couple of million dollars from the fossil fuel industry while ignoring the fact that they ("alarmists") have received upwards of 700 billion dollars from the taxpayers of the U.S.A. to "study" climate change due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and the possible effect on the climate, credibility becomes lost. What gets lost further is that the "science" the "alarmist" quote to support their position is based on about 14 computer generated climate "models" that try to predict weather based on perceived climate change 100 years out. In actuality none of the models are really capable at predicting the "chaos" that really drives climate/weather systems.

When one considers that all the ruckus is over anthropogenic CO² emissions which are generally given by the media in billions of tons (and sometimes giga-tons) the reality is, anthropogenic emissions amount to 3-6% of the .0389% (as a percentage of the total gas content) in our atmosphere. It is an infinitesimally small amount, especially when compared to water vapor which at about 95% total content and is the largest "greenhouse" gas in the atmosphere. Then there is the on going debate with regard to "positive" feedback (more warming, which all of the NASA models assume) or "negative" feedback (less warming) which there is a growing body of evidence to support...

For a rational discussion on the issue (which is admittedly hard to find) I recommend that those that are so inclined go to the Blog site of Dr. Roy Spencer who, when working for NASA helped to develop and build the satellite atmospheric temperature measuring system. He left NASA when the institution became susceptible to "muzzling" due to the increasing politicization of the subject years ago. He now still works with the system he helped to create but from the University of Alabama Huntsville.

A lot of good scientific discussion and sometimes a little sarcasm which make that stuff more tolerable..Be careful about getting bogged down in the comments section of his posts though!

http://www.drroyspencer.com/#GW101

Enjoy while edifying yourselves

Mike

[troutless]

Hi,

Let me add another perspective to this thread. Probably a pointless exercise but here goes:

If you are really interested in educating yourself, I would strongly advise starting with resources that make a habit of citing source materials, so that the arguments and explanations can be traced back into peer-reviewed literature. From there one can get a discussion of the underlying data, the methodology of analysis, the uncertainties in both, in many cases links to the underlying data itself and even to the computer codes used to analyze or create the data.

Science coverage, in general, in contemporary media has become very poor, whether one is talking about particle physics or earthquakes, and the proliferation of web sites and blogs by people whose knowledge level ranges from expert to cretinous makes it even more difficult to sort out the noise. Because of the political sensitivity around climate topics the noise level is particularly bad here. So it is not surprising that there is a lot of confusion and argument in the public arena on climate-related topics and a lot of misinformation floating about.

In attempting to distill out some reliable picture, there are several reasons to prioritize sources who give good references, and particularly references in the peer-reviewed technical literature. Some parts of the field are quite complicated, and when reading a blog or other popular account, it is very difficult, even for someone who is technically sophisticated, to be able to easily tell who is telling the story straight, who is well-meaning but confused, and who is actively spreading misinformation and/or pushing a political agenda. When you can trace a line of argument back to the technical literature, and trace its history therein, you at least have some hope of sorting out what is what. Almost every topic we see out on the web has a much richer and longer discussion taking place -- again, with real data, and discussions of the limitations of that data -- in the technical literature. Blogs are here-today, gone tomorrow, zero accountability, zero follow-up. Journals are forever, and you can't moderate out people who publish follow-on articles pointing out mistakes in an article. For obvious reasons, it is likewise good practice to look for sources that represent either a consensus viewpoint, on non-controversial topics, or, multiple viewpoints, on topics that are still unsettled.

Secondly, a lot can be told about credibility of sources just from the sources they in turn cite. People who are interested in science tend to prioritize first convincing other scientists, and second informing the public. People who are interested in pushing an agenda tend to prioritize swaying public opinion, and don't care so much for doing actual science. So if you find some "revelation" out on the web, with no support in the technical literature, that should be a red flag. Likewise if you find someone who is saying one thing to a general audience, and another to a technical audience, that should be another red flag. That means they know their arguments will not pass muster with an informed audience and they are hoping to put one over on the general reader, knowing that most people won't put in the effort, or don't have the background, to call them on it.

I'm going to list four resources, in increasing order of difficulty of use, meaning that in the first you will get more material "pre-chewed" and interpreted for the layperson or at least non-specialist, and the last will require significant investment of effort. Not surprisingly the first two, being somewhat accessible to a general audience, have some detractors. The point is, with all of these, they are fairly good about referencing primary sources in the peer-reviewed literature. And if it's not in the peer-reviewed literature, or headed there, from a scientist's point of view, its relevance is marginal.

1. realclimate.org

Run by actual climate scientists as an experiment in direct public communication. Deliberately steers away from policy discussions, and they are not afraid to 'eat their own', meaning that false claims and overstatements in either direction will get highlighted and dissected. There is reasonable, selective, coverage of contemporary publications in the area. There are few if any sites out there that go into quite the depth in this area, and feature as many knowledgeable contributors. There is a little snark about, particularly in the comments, but this is on the whole a fairly level-headed site.

2. IPCC AR4 -- the "Fourth Assessment Report", particularly the "Scientific Basis" section.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_rep ort_the_physical_science_basis.htm
There is a lot of misinformation surrounding this document too. Most people have heard of the IPCC, few indeed have actually read the AR4, even part of it. I suggest you reserve judgment until you have read at least a chapter or two. If you are not familiar with it, the AR4 is an assessment report -- it is a report of available knowledge and a review of the existing peer-reviewed literature. It is not a policy or political document nor does it represent original or independent research. Probably it does represent the most comprehensive view of the "consensus" state of science in the climate area. Several hundred scientists were involved in writing it, and, literally, thousands of references are cited. This last point is the one I want to emphasize here: despite the size, about a thousand pages just to describe the physical science basis, it is a *summary*, and for details you go from there to the primary sources. If you can wade through it, it is a great reference.

3. A good climate science textbook.

If you really want to get a basic grounding in the area, this is one way to go about it. For example: Raymond Pierrehumbert, Principles of Planetary Climate. Not for the lay reader, but approachable by say someone with a undergraduate-level degree in the physical sciences and who still has a workable recollection of differential equations and thermodynamics.

4. Google Scholar. scholar.google.com.

Google Scholar indexes scientific and technical publications much as "Google" proper indexes the web. You can track publication trails and evolution of scientific thoughts here through the paper citation chains. For the truly industrious, it is an indispensable tool for working through the technical literature. It is a fun exercise to compare the information you find on the general web with the information you find in Google Scholar.

That's my plea for sanity. If you are getting information from ClimateProgress, Roy Spencer, Watts Up, etc. etc. you are getting data that has been subjected to a heavy political filter and may be fairly far from the scientific mainstream. A lot of what passes for commentary is either just plain wrong, or, represents a view with very very shaky support either in the way of data or theory. I don't want at this point to single out specific topics or posts, but, sadly, there is quite a bit of such misinformation posted previously in this thread, too. Like I said before, given the amount of noise on this topic, and the difficulty, even for the PhD types, in getting reliable, non-polluted information, this isn't surprising. But if you are interested in this topic, please try to put aside the political filters and hatchets for a bit and curl up with a good journal paper. Think carefully before passing on information that you can't trace back to roots in technical literature

Hope someone finds this useful. ](*,)

[Mike Churchill]

"Troutless" calls realclimate.org and the IPCC's 4th Climate Assessment Report "unbiased" sources regarding global warming alarmism. A little investigation reveals that nothing could be farther from the truth. Realclimate.org is a propaganda site set up and run by an arm of Fenton Communications, a "progressive" / big government media-consulting company. The scientists who run it include Gavin Schmidt of NASA, Michael Mann of Penn State (and hockey stick infamy) and Pierre whatever his name is whose textbook Troutless cited. Their careers are dependent on government grants. If global warming is not a crisis, the cash won't continue to flow. They have a conflict of interest.

Realclimate is a biased echo chamber that ruthlessly censors comments from those who question climate orthodoxy. Feel free to go ask some honest questions there or just observe a few threads to see how the moderators treat commenters, then compare them to the discussions and posts at wattsupwiththat.com, bishophill.com, and climateaudit.com.

Troutless also cites the IPCC's AR4 report. The IPCC is a political body that was established with a mandate to assume the existence of dangerous climate change, not to investigate whether it was or was not occurring. The Climategate 1 and 2 email releases have pulled back the curtain on a great deal of nonscientific shenanigans perpetrated by scientists who worked on the AR4 report. Lots of analysis is now available on WUWT and Bishop Hill. In addition, a newly released book by Canadian journalist Donna LaFramboise looks at the ridiculous structure of the IPCC itself and shows how many of the authors of the AR4 report were young staffers of organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund rather than experienced scientists.

"Consensus" and arguments from authority have no place in science.

Mike

[Darian]

OK Mike, now you're beginning to sound a lot like those you criticize as being authoritative. And, I emphatically disagree with your contention that consensus has no place in science. :\\

Time to back off.... :neutral:

[troutless]

Hi Mike,

I have two questions:

1. Did you read the first part of my last post?

I will repeat the critical first and last sentences there: "If you want reliable information, go to the source........Think carefully before passing on information that you can't trace back to roots in technical literature."

If so, then:

2. How many chapters of AR4 have you read? Did you trace back the conclusions to the references therein? If not, why?

If you, or anyone else, is genuinely interested in a dialog about the reasons for the metric I give, why the sources I listed are credible in the context of that metric, and why web sources like WUWT and Bishop Hill are not credible, I will formulate a polite reply and explanation. Let's be fair and throw in to that latter list sites like ClimateProgress, a fairly leftish political organ that I mentioned in my first post. Or any others you care to name. The bar I am setting is fairly high, and the number of sources on the web that I expect will pass it, on either side of the issue, low.

If you want to move the discussion to political indictments that, even if they were true, are actually irrelevant to my original point, I see no point in that.

It's very easy to shut down a discussion with charges of political bias and graft. It's almost as easy to get a pre-canned argument list, suiting any viewpoint one likes, off some web site or another.

It's quite difficult to do the work necessary to understand who is properly collecting and interpreting data, and therefore, whose picture of the world is correct, or at least more likely to be correct.

[Mike Churchill]

Troutless,

I have read parts of a number of different chapters of AR4 and the Summary for Policy Makers (which was drafted before the AR4 chapters were finalized). From that reading I am aware that the uber scary parts of the Summary for Policy Makers are not supported by the text of any of the chapters. I have also read the relevant language from the document that created the IPCC, thousands of the Climategate 1 and 2 emails between scientists who served as "lead" and "contributing" authors on many of the chapters of the AR4 report (in which they express criticisms and uncertainties regarding the "consensus" science in sharp contrast to their public statements), and I have been closely following climate science and climate alarmism for the last couple of years.

Just because something was published in a technical journal does not mean it is "true" or even good science. Particularly when the field is an immature science dominated by a relatively small group of researchers who are engaging in uncritical "pal review" of each others' papers.

What you are making is an argument from authority. "Trust them, they are scientists." By their actions and writings Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Kevin Trenberth, and a significant number of other high profile scientists at the core of the IPCC process have proved themselves to be untrustworthy and not very scientific at all. But anyone who is interested can find that out for themselves. Realclimate is a propaganda site, not a science site, but each person should judge that for themselves rather than take my word for it.

Naked alarmism is easy to see and judge. CO2 is plant food and the basis for all life on earth. Crop productivity increases as CO2 concentration increases (in the relevant range). To the extent the climate is warming (as it generally has been since the Little Ice Age ended about two hundred years ago), a warmer world is a better world. Colder is bad for life, warmer is better, and a richer world will deal with any problems better than a poorer one. So why is it that the alarmists never mention any of the real benefits that will result from a warmer climate or any of the benefits that will result from higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere? And why is it that all of their proposed "solutions" will make increase poverty by raising energy prices without significantly affecting global average temperature (according to their own calculations)?

Mike

[troutless]

Mike:

For the third time: "If you want reliable information, go to the source........Think carefully before passing on information that you can't trace back to roots in technical literature."

When a technical person answers a question by giving a reference, it does not mean "This is the answer and here is my proof." What they are saying is: "you should go read this article because it discusses the question you are raising and you will either find an answer there or find a set of references you can chase down for more detail." Partially this is a question of conservation of time and space -- not repeating what is elsewhere. Partially it is just how people work. Thus the importance of references and references to references etc. etc.

So the point is not that the peer-review literature is a final authority. The point is to be able to construct an assessment of a line of argument, and a deeper understanding of the subject, by tracing to its technical roots. That means the underlying models, equations, data, graphs, discussion and interpretation of all these, whatever is appropriate. I am proposing you go through the same exercise any technical professional would engage in if attempting to assess the credibility of an author or an argument. I apologize if this was not clear up front. But if you are not able or willing to do that --- and let's be honest, most people aren't, even if you are -- at least use secondary sources whose credibility could, in theory, be checked through that process, by someone else. And if you are not an expert, reference to multiple sources is pretty important to get a balanced and complete perspective.

The reason to use the peer-review literature as a baseline reference is that only there can scientific arguments be assessed at such a root level, at the level of experiment, methodology, analysis, and raw data, for correctness. Sources like WUWT, RealClimate, even AR4, are secondary sources. AR4, and, to some extent, RealClimate, can be fairly directly traced back to peer-review sources. Most web sources cannot. You're welcome to provide counter-examples.

Outside the archival peer reviewed literature, it is not really possible to even say what the complete line of thought, as supported by data, even *is*. (See 2,3,4,6 below.)

Statements about a set of stolen emails, the motivations of the people who wrote them, or what might be read into private confersations of a very small subset of the scientific community, particularly taken from their original context, and, in some cases, altered to change the original meaning, don't have any technical content that can be assessed one way or the other. Such ad-hominem statements are irrelevant to any serious inquiry.

Off the top of my head, here are some reasons why the (archival) peer-review literature needs to be the reference point for discussion.

1. The paper has passed some minimal level of scrutiny with respect to novelty of results and technical quality.

Emphasis on the word "minimal."

This is the most mis-understood aspect of the process and the one that laypeople usually set up straw-man arguments about when they want to duck a scientific discussion.

In theory, the reviewers are not going to let a paper through that contains errors, that doesn't measure up in areas 4,5,6, below, and that doesn't provide a new contribution to knowledge in the field.

In practice, standards vary widely from journal to journal, and editor to editor, reviewer to reviewer. Some journals are very competitive and have very high standards, to the point of snootiness, and others will let through about anything that isn't rank nonsense. Nevertheless, the chances of a paper that has been through this process has of being credible, are, on average, higher than one that has not. Likewise there is, on average, a distinction in quality between what gets published and what not.

2. Archival means a common, fixed reference point for line of argument.

The argument and summary data is preserved in a common form that can be referenced and dissected by anyone, so we all should, in theory, be discussing the same thing when discussing a specific paper. Reduces goalpost-moving. This puts a burden on the authors to either stand behind a paper, or lose credibility. Not true for a web site.

3. It is tracked and indexed.

We can count who cites the paper, how often it is cited, who else is following up, how they use the paper, and if there are any rebuttals or criticisms. It gives a rough guide for people outside the field to what works (and authors) are influential.

4. Papers are expected to contain a detailed description of data and methodology. This, and #5 below, are important points for this discussion. The point at which one can assess the raw data and methodology, and reproduce the results, is the point at which a reference to the literature ceases to become an argument-from-authority.

5. There is an expectation of reproducibility.

6. There is an expectation of summarizing and citing previous work and base sources.

Base material for which there is not room in the publication at hand to discuss should be easily accessible to the reader. This is needed for assembling the complete line of argument, assessing the current data, and performing and reproduction of results desired.

7. Almost always, papers improve with criticism.

In practice, this is probably the most important function of the peer-review process. See #1.

8. Most review processes are conducted blind (authors do not know reviewer's identities) and sometimes double-blind (reviewers don't know author's identities either). This encourages critical commentary by lessening (not removing) fears of retribution and personal feuds.

9. It is an intrinsically adversarial process. Grants, tenure, promotions, and awards are given on the basis of _relative_ status of publication record -- number of publications, how often they are cited, and other impact factors. This provides every incentive to be as critical as possible of competitors work. The closer the work is related, the more likely a review is going to turn nasty, particularly if it looks like the manuscript authors might publish something related to the reviewer's work before the reviewer can.

10. It provides a crude sorting/ranking mechanism.

Something published in Science or Physical Review Letters has probably undergone much more stringent review and selection criteria, and had wider readership and more aggressive follow-up inquiry, than an article in the East Tunisian Journal of Cybernetics, Plastics, and Turnip Growth Studies.

11. Authors can respond to criticisms in an open and hopefully somewhat impartial forum -- often the same forum in which the criticism appears. Built-in mechanism for arbitration of disputes by uninvolved third parties.

In the real push-and-shove world of technical publication, there is a lot of gray area, and at the end of the day, publishing a given paper, or not, is a judgment call on the part of the responsible editor. There are few if any 'perfect' papers -- novel insight, clear and convincing conclusion, solid and complete data, unambiguous interpretation of data. In fact I can't recall having ever read such a paper! Knowledge is built up bit by bit, building a skyscraper out of grains of sand.

At some point, you are correct, an 'argument from authority' takes place. There is no practical alternative. We can't chase every reference and reproduce every experiment. Nobody is an expert in every area. Aside from a few places in pure mathematics, everyone -- and I really mean everyone -- has to rely, at some point, on analysis, interpretation, and data gathering by others. There is, however, a critical distinction between blind trust in some expert's random opinion, and a carefully constructed argument that can, and hopefully has, been laid out for extended criticism and discussion by others. There is also a critical distinction between a selective but careful inquiry in primary literature, and ignoring that literature altogether.

As far as climate science being a 'an immature science dominated by a relatively small group of researchers' -- this also can be checked. Recently I pulled the reference list from AR4, Ch.8. 685 references in that chapter alone. You can go count how many unique researchers there are. The first chapters of the climate text I mentioned heavily reference standard texts in classical subjects. Even by the mid-1980s the field was mature enough to warrant wide-scope reviews as in IPCC AR1.

Summarizing:

The peer-review literature is not the "gold standard" for knowledge. It is the repository for raw knowledge and the place where serious scientific conversations take place. If a technical argument is not in that literature, in some form, there is no realistic way of assessing, developing, criticising, explaining, or futhering it. It also happens to be the only system going so there's not really a practical alternative base for discussion.

If you think there are flaws in that literature, the solution is -- write the paper explaining the flaws and submit it for publication. If someone on one of the secondary -- but heavily referenced -- sources I listed initially is mis-stating what is in the literature, then that should be pointed out, they need to be corrected.

Otherwise, what is your point? That we should dispense with all the items 1-11 above, ignore expert analysis and data, and make decisions based on what we read on our favorite web sites?

[Mike McKenzie]

troutless,

You seem to have great respect for the "peer reviewed papers" dealing with anthropogenic warming and the IPCC's AR4 document which is fine with me.

You can believe what ever you choose to believe but don't tell other folks what they should "believe".

Like it or not, it is a fact that any scientist that does not agree with the "consensus" dogma of anthropogenic warming finds it extremely difficult get "published" in the "correct publications". In other words the science with regard to "Climate Change" or anthropogenic warming is is fairly well corrupted by the $700+ billion dollars that the taxpayers have spent on studying this "crisis"

The IPCC's AR4 is replete with so many "weasel words" that one can only assume that they have little faith in what they are saying! Almost every statement made is qualified by words Like "high confidence" or "very high confidence" (whose confidence are we talking about anyway?) then there is all the "likely", "most likely", "very likely" or "more likely than not" usage... a good "weasel sentence" says "with results simulated by climate models using either natural or both natural and anthropogenic forcings". The problem? No one has a clue as to how forcings whether positive or negative actually work in a system as chaotic as earth's weather and climate. No one knows how cloud feedback works so how can one program that effect into any of the "models" that are being used?

Another good one is "Temperatures are assessed best estimates and likely uncertainty ranges from a hierarchy of models of varying complexity as well as observational constraints." Duh! This doesn't even touch on the fact that the surface temperature measurement system is no longer credible for a whole host of reasons.

I had several pages written to further the argument but I decided not to waste the bandspace having a discussion with some one who argues anonymously.

Mike

[Mike Churchill]

Troutless,

I'll second Mike M's comments and add the following: You have described the way that science is supposed to work. It is very obvious to many objective observers that climate science hasn't been working that way for many years. One obvious example is the failure of climate scientists to comply with journal policies that require them to archive data sets and computer code used to adjust data and calculate temperature trends and the failure of journal editor Stephen Schneider to enforce that policy. When Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit served as an expert reviewer on AR4, he asked for data and computer code supporting one of the papers cited. Not only did Schneider not enforce his journal's policy, McIntyre was told that if he kept pushing for the data and code he would be kicked out as a reviewer.

It is also disingenuous to keep trying to dismiss the Climategate emails as "stolen", "out of context" and "ad hominem" attacks. The email liberator did the world a service by revealing the dishonest and unscientific actions of the relatively small group of scientists at the center of the global warming scam. As to web sites: not all web sites are the same, and not every post on each web site is of equal merit, but Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and his regular contributors have done more real science in the last six or eight years than many mainstream scientists--including thoroughly debunking both the hockey stick and Steig et al. '09 (which splashed a red-stained Antarctica on the cover of Nature due to erroneous math rather than actual measured warming) and co-authoring O'Donnell '10, the published refutation of Steig '09. (Read the saga of the "peer" review of O'Donnell '10 at Climate Audit to get a taste of how climate science operates: Steig served as one of the anonymous reviewers and made multiple rounds of obnoxious comments plainly aimed at steering the paper to be less critical of his work. The drafts, the comments, and the revisions are all available for everyone to review and analyze for themselves.)

I am not a scientist. I am a science literate lawyer. BS detection is one of the tools of my trade. Scientists who claim to have discovered a great danger to civilization but go to great lengths to avoid scrutiny of their work don't impress me.

I will now follow Mike M.'s example and stop arguing with you and won't clog Bill's wonderful board with more on this thread unless someone else asks for some information I can provide.

Mike

[troutless]

The Two Mikes --

You are both making very serious accusations about the integrity of the scientific process in the climate science area. In some cases those accusations have extended to the personal integrity of specific, named people in that community, people who are not on this board to defend themselves. One of you is edging close to condoning criminal activity (did you really mean to do that?). You're right -- it's not an appropriate topic for this board. And never was. But, this started well before I joined in and you should not be surprised to get a response.

Now, I recognize that opinions run strong in this area and few if any information sources accessible to the layperson are of much use in sorting the noise. Most of the statements I have made to date have been either about process, or, my interpretation, as an "objective outsider", albeit one with technical training, of how to engage in a process that will ultimately lead to non-politicized information. The process statements should be non-controversial, or at least would have been a decade ago. You may disagree with my starting sources, but they are as close as possible to the primary science as I have been able to find. Certainly my own opinions in this area have evolved greatly in the past few years.

But since you seem to have strong resistance to following up on any of my suggestions, I have followed up on one of yours, specifically the O'Donnell/Steig incident, since the entire paper and review trail is still out on the web and openly accessible (here: http://www.climateaudit.info/data/odonnell/). What I found was instructive both for what was said as well as what was not.

First, having been in similar situations myself, I understand why the exchange with "Reviewer A", who we now know to be Eric Steig, could be -- what's a polite way to put it? -- vexing for an author. On the other hand, these sorts of exchanges occur all the time and it is the job of the editor to arbitrate and ensure they don't get out of hand, with one reviewer exercising a veto power over publication. That appears to have happened in this particular case as "Reviewer A" was over-ruled by the editor and the paper was ultimately published. It doesn't always happen and authors don't always get fair treatment, in any community I've seen. I'm not naive about the peer-review process. Much of the time it more resembles the effect of locking seventeen ferrets into a small closet during mating season than anything resembling a staid exchange of ideas. Fortunately, early in my career, before I started to understand this, I was lucky enough to have mentors who were able to persuade me from writing letters I might later regret.

And this sort of gets to one of the root problems in this whole big climate debate.

In the Steig/O'Donnell case, someone who has never been through the publication process is going to see a set of nasty exchanges instigated by someone that most people would believe has a vested interest in derailing publication of the paper (and they wouldn't be wrong). What I see is a textbook case of peer-review in action, warts and all. Undoubtably the fact that I have been a journal author, reviewer, and editor affects my perspective. Very different perspectives.

Should you wish to give me the benefit of the doubt that my approach to the subject is not entirely unprofessional, I've written down a fairly extensive analysis of this case, for your analysis, perhaps in a more appropriate, more private venue. It is indeed a good example that I myself found instructive. Similarly, I too have issues with the verbiage in AR4, its opacity and obtuseness, that it would be an interesting exercise to think through.

If you choose not to engage in further dialog, fine. But please consider this a request, from someone who has no professional or financial interest whatsoever in anything related to climate science, to stop sliming the climate folks. At least on this board.

[Mike Churchill]

Troutless,

I would be interested to read your thoughts on the Stieg / O'Donnel conflict. You can email me at mikechurchill@hotmail.com.

As to "sliming" the climate "folks," I'm just trying to accurately describe them based on their actions and statements that have been exposed to anyone who reads the leaked emails that should have been produced in response to multiple FOIA requests in 2009 (not "private" emails). I hate hypocrites and liars, especially those who take government grants for their crappy work while they shill for advocates for increased government power, more taxes, and actions that will increase poverty by raising energy costs for everyone.

Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit.org has done a masterful job of putting the denial of his and others' FOIA requests by the University of East Anglia in 2009 in Context in a series of posts this week. When compared to the emails between Professor Phil Jones, the university official in charge of responding to FOIA requests, and the UEA official to whom the denial would be appealed, the UEA's responses to the various FOIA requests for temperature data and university policies regarding entering into confidentiality agreements are a simply disgusting display of mendacity.

Mike

[troutless]

Again I go back to the importance of multiple independent sources.

A balanced reading of the Phil Jones case would also report the multiple inquiries -- some journalists, some academics, some politicians, at least one full-scale new-from-scratch scientific study -- that exonerated Jones with respect to issues of data manipulation, and emphasized the fundamental soundness of his scientific record. And while Jones has received independent and public reprimand in some of his FOIA dealings, let's remember some of the actions for which Jones has been criticized were related to massively duplicative information requests explicitly intended to swamp his research group in paperwork. McIntyre and his acolytes in particular are hardly innocents in this matter.

We could go on like this all day. Is it really useful to try assign credibility by weighing Jone's need for research funding vs. McIntyre's fossil-fuel industry connections? While amusing to witness Anthony Watts tie himself into knots over the Muller/BEST study, when it didn't produce the answer he wanted, it's pretty pointless. These axes have been ground to nothingness, doing nothing so far as I can tell but to entrench the participants into their existing political positions. This is why I am over and over again emphasizing starting from scratch, going back to the basic physics, the basic data, get multiple viewpoints, understand the evolution of the knowledge in the field over time by reading the primary literature, particularly literature written before the politicization of climate science.

At the end of the day, this controversy will be decided by physics -- primarily the physics of radiative transmission and convective transport -- and not what you, I, or anyone else reads into the motivations of the scientists involved or their critics. My basic claim is that, in the long term, it is not in anyone's best interest to deny facts or rely on readings of the science that are highly improbable. That extends to the policy discussion and its implications for taxes, regulations, and energy costs.

For example, for the sake of argument, let's think about the political implications of the consensus science, in a business-as-usual policy scenario. That consensus indicates it is very hard to present a credible physical model that doesn't predict a fairly substantial climate shift, defined by say mean global temperature, in response to the amount of CO2 likely to be dumped in the atmosphere over the coming decades. It is a simple argument: CO2 leads to radiative forcing of a system whose sensitivity is known, through multiple lines of evidence ranging from models to past climate history, not to be low. In this sense the work of Jones and McIntyre and the drone over hockey sticks and such is a small sideshow in the larger picture.

The point is that if this consensus is even close to being correct, we will see a series of large and possibly scary changes over the next ten or twenty or thirty years, the sort of things that tend to lead to public demands for policy measures. Politicians will need to be seen as doing something -- anything. Do you think the left-wing elements in this country will use that opportunity to try to push a political agenda? Of course they will. They are doing that now. If you recall I earlier pointed out some offenders. [That says nothing about the state of the science. The scientific literature is not proved wrong because it can be abused for political end. ]

What I would really ask you to ponder carefully is this: such abuse is particularly easy to engage in with the absence of a commonly-agreed upon, coherent scientific framework in which to reason, and the absence of a credible alternative policy discussion. Right now, politically, the conservatives are in complete denial about the scientific basis, and with a few exceptions like the editorial perspectives of The Economist, the centrists are essentially MIA with respect to policy. That leaves only the left to fill the policy vacuum. That's a very unhealthy situation, in my opinion. The longer there is a lack of a constructive policy debate, the more painful the future choices, and the worse the tradeoff between economic and climate disruptions. If you are concerned about the economic and political implications of the mitigation options on the table now, I assure you the choices will not get better.

There is also much here that could be discussed about uncertainty in the predictions, once past the basis theses. The current consensus admits a lot of uncertainty around the precise degree of climate sensitivity, the rate of change, and manifestations of climate shifts into specific weather patterns. The error bars for even the most well-studied baseline metrics, like mean temperature shift, are quite large, in the 40-50% range. So it is indeed reasonable to believe that a goodly portion of the predictions made e.g. in the IPCC reports will turn out to have significant quantitative error -- my own guess is around 30% of them. Much current research is focused on refining these uncertainties and improving the spatial and temporal resolution of modeling predictions (a reasonable journalistic perspective: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/pdf/463284a.pdf). Studies like the one that started this thread are going to be heavily revised over the next 10-20 years. But -- it seems like we have to repeat it over and over and over again -- uncertainty cuts both ways. Some -- my guess is around 5% -- of those predictions will quite possibly be wrong in ways that catastrophically understate the rate or extent of effects. Any such surprises will be very influential in shifting public opinion, and lead to policy implications that, for the reasons above, I guarantee you will not like. It would be in all our best interests to both cull out concerns that may prove to be non-issues and minimize the number of surprises. However, the current polarized climate is making it very difficult to have any sort of balanced discussion of uncertainty and its resolution. There is more to be gained doing new science than quibbling over the second or third decimal place in well-trodden topics, which is where most of the blogs out there are focused.


ps. You should have the O'Donnell commentary by now.

[Bob Loblaw]

upon further reflection, I'm deleting my involvement in this discussion.

life is too short....