"That would be intentional dishonesty, demonstrating more than reckless disregard for the truth. That'd mean Steyn's book easily meets the requirements for a libel lawsuit to be successful. You're suggesting Steyn wrote a book to defend himself from a libel lawsuit in which he intentionally libeled the person who sued him.

And that doesn't seem to bother you. Which should bother you."

I don't want to seem rude, but you've got it in one. The minutiae are more important to you than the big picture. Of course I'm telling you that Steyn tried to bait the person who perceives he's been libelled in order to get into court. That's the whole reason for the book. In court Mann would be under oath, outside of court the popinjay can make as many accusations as he likes without need to produce evidence.

Maybe you're not getting it because you haven't had the experience yourself? I don't know.

Final post on this thread. Brandon there is no doubt that you have a terrific ability to get to the minutiae of every subject you study, your patience in uncovering changes to documents, of phrases is outstanding. While your commitment to absolute truth is no doubt sincere it isn's always obvious in your own utterances. Twice on this thread you have ascribed motivations for which you have no proof. Once you accused Tol of making "significant undisclosed changes" to an IPCC report to "heavily promote his own work".

"Then you haven't looked at the example I gave before, Richard Tol. Tol made significant, undisclosed changes to the latest IPCC report without any external review to heavily promote his own work. Nobody "on the sceptic side" has made a peep."

"You know that's true, how?" I asked.

"Huh? It's trivially obvious to see when changes are made to heavily promote someone's work like Tol has done... Self-promotion is one of those things that's easy to see by its very nature."

You have no proof, but it's "trivially obvious to see"? Actually it's not trivially obvious to see and it's a calumny to make such assertions without the proof. There could be any number of reasons for Tol to have put his work in without consultation, the most likely being he thought that it brought the best assessment to the table and wanted to get it into the report without being blocked in the iIPCC process.

Then you came up with this:

"That's fine. I never said it was due to a desire for self-publicity. Other people may have jumped to that conclusion, but all I said is he made massive changes to promote his own work."

It's true you never said it was due to a desire for self-publicity, I did. You said to "heavily promote his own work". I don't know about anyone else but I can't see a cigarette paper of width between the meaning of the two phrases.

Then you said

"They want the respect which comes with being viewed as scientific skeptics, but they want to only be partisan skeptics."

That's an opinion, not truth without evidence.

Your commitment to the absolute truth is to be admired, but you should realise that there are occasions when standards to absolute truth will slip. "Does my bum look big in these jeans?" would rarely elicit the answer, "Yes" in most households. (Unless it was the husband asking of course). And of course "truth is in the eye of the beholder" where different people can take different understandings of the same evidence. Recently we've seen attachment to truth taken to new levels with people telling their killer they're Christians, would it not have been better for their families if they'd lied? Then there's mistakenly assuming something to be true and repeating it.

Tol made significant, undisclosed changes to the latest IPCC report without any external review to heavily promote his own work. Nobody "on the sceptic side" has made a peep. That's right nobody's made a peep because (a) they didn't know anything about it, (b) didn't assume he had motives other than presenting the best data available (c) agreed with his report and didn't know he'd changed the IPCC report, or (d) knew he isn't sceptical about global warming and is pushing a carbon tax, so assumed it supported a position they didn't agree with.

Four good reasons at least one of which applies to myself, but you draw the conclusion that it's "partisan" support stopping criticism, because that's what you want to believe is the "truth". Funny old world innit.

Geronimo,
Brandon is amazingly pathetic. Nothing more or less. He actually offers nothing more than his opinion, but does so with so many words and so many uncheckable claims that he confuses people's silence with his "victory".
He confuses his opinion with facts and when confronted whines to moderators or just runs away.
Eff him.

Oct 7, 2015 at 1:49 AM michael hart

I agree and am sorry I started it.

Brandon,

"Uh... that's what my entire discussion was about. Just a few days ago, WUWT ran a post whose entire point was to say Hansen proved the greenhouse effect isn't real. I gave you a link and discussion and everything."

Seriously?

The first one you pointed to was an example of the ironic rhetorical technique Reductio ad Absurdam. It aimed to demonstrate that Hansen's latest paper was wrong by showing that it implied that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist. It depends for its rhetorical force on knowing that the greenhouse effect does exist and therefore Hansen's model must be wrong.

The article is actually incorrect - it's making the mistake of assuming that if the null hypothesis isn't rejected, then the null must be true. But it's definitely *not* claiming or even assuming that the GHE doesn't exist!

'Irony' does not mean 'like iron'.

The second article you point to I agree does indeed give a long list of commonly heard sceptic tropes, many of which are incorrect. And it's only a dozen or so comments in before Ferdinand Englebeen responds with "Oh my God, Besides several good points, there are a few stupid ones, which will give the “warmistas” a field fest…" and then starts to rip them apart. Later on Professor Brown (rgbatduke) addresses the GHE point in detail ("I would pick bones with several points in the list given, but the most prominent bone is that there is some good reason in the data to doubt that the Greenhouse effect per se is operational. This is for two reasons. One is that the physics of the GHE is pretty sound. ...")

So yes. I agree that a guest post was put up with some no-GHE points buried deep in its incredibly lengthy guts, which promoted sceptical discussion in which these points were criticised. Personally, if I'd been Anthony, I'd have put it up for discussion but with a disclaimer. I suspect, given its length, it wasn't properly read.

If those are the best examples you can find, out of several months of output, then I don't see any reason to consider WUWT to be promoting GHE-doubt. But I'll keep an open mind if you have more - statistics on how many pro/anti-GHE articles are posted would be interesting, for example.

"Are you saying you'd not care if a person rewrites entire sections so they're based entirely upon his work, ensuring there's no external review of what he writes, but you'd start caring if you found out what he slipped in was wrong?"

If somebody writes a journal paper, it is *full* of sections based entirely on his own work! It would be plagiarism if it wasn't! So I've got absolutely no problem whatsoever with whose work it was.

The lack of external review, as I've already said, is more of a problem. If the sections you refer to are original work, published for the first time in the IPCC report, then yes, I'd consider that problematic. It's implicitly claiming to have undergone a hostile review when it hasn't, so the assurance readers might gain of its correctness (assuming they're fool enough to think the IPCC reports have been properly reviewed!) is misleading. On the other hand, if he's referring out to his own papers in the peer-reviewed journals, as most of the IPCC report does, then it's not the case that it hasn't been externally reviewed.

The basic problem is that the IPCC claims that their reports are thoroughly reviewed, when as we can see they're not. That's the IPCC's lie, not Tol's. But if you treat the document as what it is, and what every scientist and politician involved in the process knows it to be, which is an unreviewed politically-biased summary of the literature, then I don't see the problem. It would be as if someone complained that you were publishing blog comments without prior external review! (I guess you do?) So long as you're not misleading about what sort of review they've already been through, there's nothing unscientific about presenting your own unreviewed work - all that matters is whether the arguments are valid and the evidence supports your conclusions. Tol presumably followed the IPCC process - that the IPCC process is not fit for purpose is not Tol's fault.

"This is the very essence of what I'm criticizing Skeptics for. Your comments openly acknowledge you won't hold people on your "side" to the same standards as people on the other "side.""

No. I'm saying I won't spend a lot of my own time doing so, since I know there are already plenty of people around to ensure it gets done. The same standards apply. I thoroughly support warmists holding sceptics to account.

If asked I'll say what I think, and I'll not hold back just because it's another sceptic. I'm just not going to go out of my way to do it.

I'd guess I've spent about a quarter of my time in the debate arguing with fellow sceptics. I've spent time defending warmists when I didn't think they were being treated fairly. And I'm pretty relaxed about a lot the less-than-ideal political stuff that goes on. For example, if some scientist posts a blog article about how we must all give up fossil fuels to save the baby polar bears, I don't waste much time on the political bias or misuse of public funding inherent in such an activity, I simply point out that it's scientifically inaccurate. That's all that really matters.

"Skeptics routinely criticized climate scientists for not policing their own, yet Skeptics then turn around and refuse to police their own."

What authority does one sceptic have over another, that they can 'police' them? We're all individuals, with a right to our own beliefs, and to participate in the debate.

If what you're talking about is the modern trend for posting polemic screeds attacking an individual or their ideas, to bully them into changing their mind or at least shutting up, then I'm against that. I'm against it being applied to mainstream climate scientists, too. They're entitled to express their opinions, same as anyone.

If what you're talking about is banning or excluding certain views from the debate, because you consider them to be wrong, immoral, heretical, or politically damaging, then I'm against that too. Skydragons have every right to take part in the debate, and express their views, just please not at interminable length on every single thread on every single topic! But I'd also encourage AGW believers to take part in the debate, put forward their arguments, and not get shouted down or thrown out. I'm against the practice of labeling them 'trolls' just because they persistently disagree. I have from time to time defended someone who was being reasonable from that. The same standards apply.

What I criticise climate scientists (and scientists generally) for is knowingly misleading the public about the state of the science for the sake of showing a united front or encouraging political action. If you know somebody's work is bunk, using invalid methods, don't go around saying it's not. Or continue to cite it as if nothing has happened. If you know a particular claim is unsupported by evidence, don't go around saying there's masses of evidence and it's as beyond doubt as the sun rising in the east. If you haven't checked the arguments and evidence yourself, don't claim authority as a scientist in asserting that it is so.

The same applies to sceptics. The difference is, a lot of sceptics aren't as informed about what's not right as scientists are, or are supposed to be, and few sceptics claim scientific authority. I'm not going to hold a housewife from Texas to the same scientific standards as a professor of climatology at NASA! The ones that are and do, I expect to act accordingly.

"I suppose there wouldn't be much point in pointing out Richard Tol acknowledged fundamental problems with his approach when questioned then turned around and published work explicitly denying those problems."

It depends. Were his reasons valid?

"Apparently if I want to point out wrongdoings by someone like Michael Mann, I should talk to Skeptics, but if I want to point out wrongdoings by someone like Richard Tol, I should talk to Warmists."

The scientific process does tend to be rather adversarial. Pointing out our shortcomings is what opponents are for.

"It's not like anyone even denies that's the case. It's like everyone agrees people are being completely partisan, and they think that's perfectly okay. I don't get it. That's the very antithesis of skepticism."

It depends whether you're doing science or politics. It's OK in politics. It's not in science.

Most of us are doing politics. Treat what we say accordingly.

--

" I don't mind returning to proving the link between radiative gases (which I don't reject) and CAGW, which I do. I've never seen the chain of logic adequately explained, even right here in Discussion by NiV."

I don't accept the link either.

--

"NiV is one of the posters I always read but I get so far along the route of following the argument until suddenly there is a clause or a sentence which I read two or three times and I conclude that there is a gap somewhere. And I go back and try very hard to find where I am going wrong because I have to assume it's me that doesn't understand."

If there's something specific you don't understand, or think is a gap, please ask. I get impatient with blanket rejections or evasive wriggling, but I'm usually happy to try and help with understanding.

"And I'm beginning to realise that the reason I don't understand is that there are floating around several conflicting (or perhaps complentary, who knows?) hypotheses about CO2 and about the "greenhouse effect" and what it is and how it works"

That's true.

Donna Laframboise has written many posts and two books demonstrating the deeply flawed process the IPCC depends on in the production of its useless reports. The IPCC process is filled with much more important flawed and incorrect results. Tol happens to be mostly reasonable in his economics. Brandon simply condemns Tol and others without bothering to do the hard things like backing up his opinion. But is good at long winded bloviating that represents his opinion has fact.
Brandon's annoying game is to ignore the massive deliberate hype campaign of the climate obsessed and to tunnel in with pointless fervor on typos and his (very dubious) ability interpret what others write.

"What are you talking about? That's not what this post is about, at all. It's not even about Hansen's latest paper."

I misread. Delete 'latest'.

"And not once does the post suggest Hansen's paper was wrong like you claim. There's no reductio ad absurdum in it."

???!

Irony. Noun. the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

"Why are you talking about journal papers when we're discussing the IPCC report?"

Because it's a counterexample to the suggestion that there's anything scientifically wrong with an author presenting science based solely on his own work. Obviously.

"Claiming a journal's review process could in any way replace the IPCC review's process is just nonsense."

Why?

Journal review is bad, IPCC review is worse. Frankly, I'd respect a journal review far more highly. So what value is the IPCC review supposed to add?

"Moreover, it seems disingenuous to suggest I am wrong to say Tol made changes to the IPCC report without external review because the work he based those changes on might have been externally review. Sure, you don't actually say that, but that's the impression you give with your last sentence here. I don't know why else you would talk about external review in response to my comments about the lack of external reviw."

I don't know whether the work he based those changes on was externally reviewed by the journal, because I haven't looked them up. But if they were reviewed by the journal, and the IPCC report simply summarised/paraphrased their conclusions as it usually does, then yes, I'd say the claim they hadn't been externally reviewed was wrong.

"I'm willing to bet if someone from the Team had done it, everyone posting in this topic would criticize them for it."

That's wrong. I've already explained that I'd criticise the IPCC for allowing it, and I'm posting in this topic.

" I've already said I speak up about certain issues because I feel Skeptics misbehave. I've repeatedly pointed out people don't speak up about certain issues."

Sure. There are all sorts of things I'd like people to speak up about - largely aligned with my own opinions and politics, of course. They don't funnily enough. Perhaps because they don't see them as important issues the way I do?

You're entitled to your view. As are we.

" I would think it is clear what I would expect Skeptics to do if they were behaving as they should is to speak up about what they see as problems. I don't know why you think I'm calling for viscious attacks, bullying or banning people from discussions."

So what are you calling for?

I've already said that I don't approve of Tol doing what you say he did. What more do you want?

"Seeing as he didn't give any reasons, it's hard to say."

Quite so. So why are we saying it?

"I guess that's my problem. Politics is BS. If you're going to engage in it, you're as bad to me as the Warmist side is."

Politics is the process of deciding public policy. It affects people's lives and fortunes profoundly. That's not BS.

Politics is war continued by other means. It's not science, but it is a part of life we all have to deal with one way or another.

"I support skepticism because it is right. I don't support Skepticism because I can't see a difference in standards between it and any other political group."

That's fine. That's your view on politics. Most people likewise support a particular brand of politics because they think it is right, too.

Although I'd say most sceptics support scepticism because they think it's right, as well. There are right wing / free market solutions to the global warming problem, after all, should they be required. People are CAGW-sceptical because it's right. Most of them care about it because of politics.

"I don't have words to respond to this adequately."

Followed by five paragraphs. God help us if you did have the words.

What you also don't have is the reading ability, you read what you want to see.

I said Steyn was "baiting" Mann to get him to go to court. As far as I'm aware "baiting" doesn't mean, or imply, telling lies. "baiting" means deliberately annoying someone. I don't believe Steyn has told any lies, I've read the book and the quotes are all there, and, so far at least, none of those quoted have refuted any of the quotes.

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating because, for all your wading in minutiae, you don't seem to get it. If you have an argument/debate and you get to say what your opponent is saying you'll win every time, so why bother?

Why don't you apply some of the thoroughness you obviously take great pride in to understanding the points that are being put to you instead of understanding what you want to understand?

"Heck, it denies CO2 causes warming in its first sentence..."

Actually, he didn't say CO2 doesn't cause warming, he said:

"The only place in the world where CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is in climate models..."

That statement is not at variance with CO2 being a GHG, it's pointing out that increasing CO2 doesn't increase temperature. The records show no relationship between temperature and CO2 other than the degassing that occurs around 1000 years after a warming period.

That does not say, or imply, that CO2 isn't a GHG.

You really do need to get beyond looking at individual words and taking the meaning of a sentence from them.

He is saying that CO2 isn't causing warming, but not that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas, and he may have a point. There is no relationship between CO2 and warming in the paleo records, with the exception of temperature rises causing increases in CO2. We've witnessed warming with CO2 rises and no warming with CO2 rises in recent years, so the relationship isn't that clear cut from the data.

Brandon was arguing that dr. Ball didn't think CO2 was a GHG, I doubt very much if that's true.

You should not be able to create much of a debate based on a non-precise statement like 'CO2 doesn't cause warming'. The only thing an honest person could say is 'What do you mean by that?' and then deboate would commence. To pick up that comment and to go on to say that the poster and the blog host (and anyone who frequents the blog by implication) was failing to meet a set of standards they never signed up to might be considered nit-picking. Or unreasonable.

I plead guilty to picking up 'CO2 traps heat' in a met office claim as bogus. Perhaps I am equally unreasonable.

However we are managing to find a debate in it here.

If CO2 causes warming, can someone point me to the best evidence of that? That is, that a change in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere can lead to a measurable change in temperature for the Earth as a whole.

If CO2 really does cause

Dung, Brandon said that Ball had said that "CO2 doesn't cause warming in his first sentence". "Heck, it denies CO2 causes warming in its first sentence..."

The first sentence said: "The only place in the world where CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is in climate models..."

Which is more than subtly different, and at no time did he say CO2 isn't a GHG.

So here's the thing is he saying CO2 is a GHG but doesn't cause temperature rise? That's what I took him to say, and it's quite feasible.

Nullius in Verba:

???!

Irony. Noun. the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

In the future, when you want to claim a post says something, you might want to try explaining why one should interpret it as saying that rather than making unhelpful remarks like this. You can act as though disagreeing with you is ridiculous all you want, but it won't advance a discussion. Seeing as it seems nobody, either here or at WUWT, shares your interpretation, I suspect the ridiculous interpretation might be yours.

But perhaps in the future I should just respond to all your remarks with "???!" I actually feel that's an appropriate response to several things you've just said, including one which is the epitome of obtuseness:

I don't know whether the work he based those changes on was externally reviewed by the journal, because I haven't looked them up. But if they were reviewed by the journal, and the IPCC report simply summarised/paraphrased their conclusions as it usually does, then yes, I'd say the claim they hadn't been externally reviewed was wrong.

I hadn't said the work included in the IPCC report had not been externally reviewed. I said changes had been made to the IPCC report absent any external review. When you conflated these two ideas, I drew attention to the difference and pointed out the inappropriateness of conflating them. You responded by simply conflating them again.

Quite frankly, at this point I just don't see the sense in responding to the rest of what you've said. There's a certain level discussions reach where you realize there's just no point. If even after I clarify simple points they're still going to get misrepresented in obvious ways, I think we've reached it.

Following up on what I said with Nullius in Verba, geronimo says:

"I don't have words to respond to this adequately."

Followed by five paragraphs. God help us if you did have the words.

I made that remark in response to a specific thing he said. I then wrote several paragraphs, responding to several different things he said. He, of course, pretends all paragraphs were in response to one thing so he can make this snarky remark. It's like people aren't even trying. The same is true when he says:

I said Steyn was "baiting" Mann to get him to go to court. As far as I'm aware "baiting" doesn't mean, or imply, telling lies. "baiting" means deliberately annoying someone. I don't believe Steyn has told any lies, I've read the book and the quotes are all there, and, so far at least, none of those quoted have refuted any of the quotes.

Here he pretends the choice of the word "baiting" is in any way relevant to the issue. It's not. geronimo claims to not "believe Steyn has told any lies," yet earlier he said:

For all I know it could be that Steyn has planted the misquotes to get Mann riled enough to get into the courtroom.

Now I suppose one could quibble over whether or not intentionally misquoting people is literally lying, but it is certainly dishonest. If Steyn intentionally "planted the misquotes to get Mann riled" up, then Steyn was dishonest with his book. That is what I clearly referred to, and yet, geronimo's comment does nothing to address it. Instead, he tries to argue about his choice of words as though this were a semantic issue.

Then there's been something like ten comments because I said Tim Ball's post denies CO2 causes warming, but geronimo insists this is different:

"The only place in the world where CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is in climate models..."

In some meaningful manner. I'm not sure how saying CO2 doesn't cause warming anywhere other than in climate models is meaningfully different than denying CO2 causes warming, but... apparently that's the level of discussion we've reached?

I do like how much discussion there's been about the fact you can believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas yet not believe it causes warming though. Normally people accuse me of arguing semantics.

Dung, Dr. Ball, in his first sentence said the only place CO2 causes "TEMPERATURE" to increase is in models. Whether that's universally true or not I don't know, but it's certainly true in the observations.

He went on to confuse the issue by saying "warming" but I take him to mean atmospheric temperature. And for the last 18 years at least he's right, and in the paleo records, if they are assumed to be accurate, he's right. There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature visible in the records except for two short periods between 1910 and 1940 and 1980 and 1998. We've had 60+ papers trying to explain this phenomenon in the last couple of years.

Does that mean CO2 isn't a GHG? No. It means one of three things 1. CO2 as a GHG doesn't retain enough heat in the atmosphere to make a significant difference in atmospheric temperatures; 2. There are complex interactions in the climate that aren't understood (like shifting the heat into the deep oceans, or it escaping to space) that mitigate the rise in atmospheric temperatures. 3. Both of the above.

Brandon keeps substituting "warming" for "temperature increase" in Ball's first sentence. I don't know why, but his first sentence was to the effect that the only place CO2 causes "temperature" increase.

Brandon. I used the word baiting deliberately because, guess what? that's what Steyn's doing. He wants Mann in court under oath after full discovery. Mann has effectively silenced him with the court case, so he's using other people's words to avoid contempt of court. He's letting Mann know he won't be silenced in the (I think vain) hope that Mann will get riled enough to take him to court. Not very complicated.

Don't conflate, "For all I know it could be that Steyn has planted the misquotes to get Mann riled enough to get into the courtroom." with saying I believe Steyn's told lies. I don't and I've said so.

You would do well to read what's written carefully and stop putting words into other people's mouths.

Is it worth mentioning that you're all off topic a smidge?