telling lies with the truth

[del]

well on a personal level, i've been holding my breath for quite some time now.

i'd like to think it's helped.

I haven't tried that, let me give it a shot, here we go............

if we could all join up and do it en masse, think of the possibilities!

 

[Diuretic]

Ignoring the facts because they're so uncomfortable. .

I'll say. I've been trying to get the fact that it's not possible to infer cause and effect in this situation catch on since I started coming regularly to this board. I even quoted the IPCC Physical Science Basis report conceding that fact. It is, as far as I can tell, still being ignored.

Don't be too hard on yourself. You've got a big task in front of you. With the scientific consensus being what it is and most of us non-scientific types willing to take notice of scientists who have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views, of course it's going to be difficult to try and obfuscate. Most people understand about vested interests in politics now and they try to follow the money to see what's really going on.

 

[JohnStOnge]

Lindzen was very wrong in his 1993 paper in which he stated that the climatologists were assuming that the third world countries would become richer and build far more power plants. He veiwed that as very unlikely, and said that the climatologists basing future CO2 levels on that assumption was in error. But here we are today. In a world where Januarys sale of new automobiles in China exceeded those in the United States. And China's total CO2 output now exceeds that of the United States. Lindzen is no closer to being correct today than he has been in the past.

I don't think China is on too many people's list of third world countries in economic terms now nor was it in 1993. Did Lindzen mention China specifically?

 

[JohnStOnge]

Observation is reality. Observation that the last 11 warmest years have been in the last 13 years. Observation that almost all of the world's glaciers are in rapid retreat. That both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are losing ice by the giga-ton at an accelerating rate. Observation that the oceans are becoming both warmer and more acidic.

I think you probably have too much faith in the precision and accuracy of the observations you're referencing but let's go with the premise that everything you wrote in the excerpt above is correct.

There is a need to make the distinction between observation and inference with respect to the cause of what's observed. Demonstrating an association does not demonstrate cause ane effect. I know you've already read what I'm about to quote it but I'll post it again for the benefit of those who might read this exchange and have not. Here, again, is a statement on the distinction between observation (called "detection" and cause and cause and effect inference (called "attribution") from Chapter 9, Understanding and Attributing Climate Change, of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Physical Science Basis report, page 668 (underlines added for emphasis):

"Detection does not imply attribution of the detected change to the assumed cause. 'Attribution' of causes of climate change is the process of establishing the most likely causes for the detected change with some defi ned level of confidence (see Glossary). As noted in the SAR (IPCC, 1996) and the TAR (IPCC, 2001), unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with the climate system. Since that is not possible...

This time I cut it off after "not possible" because that's as far as it's necessary to go to make the point. The IPCC states that what would be necessary for unequicocal attribution (i.e., cause and effect inference) is not possible. Of course, I would say that even if the IPCC refused to recognize the principle involved. But, thankfully, it does.

 

[JohnStOnge]

Don't be too hard on yourself. You've got a big task in front of you. With the scientific consensus being what it is and most of us non-scientific types willing to take notice of scientists who have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views, of course it's going to be difficult to try and obfuscate. Most people understand about vested interests in politics now and they try to follow the money to see what's really going on.

Why would you assume the scientists involved have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views? You don't think James Hansen, for example, has anything at stake in doing what he's doing? You don't think you might be able to follow some money to people involved in climate research on the "consensus" side? Talking about what's necessary to infer cause and effect is not obfuscation. It's a very important principle.

I can't say that I blame people for going along with what the consensus view among scientists in a field is at any particular time. But bear in mind that there is no shortage of examples from history in which what was once the consensus view was later either proven to be wrong or came to be believed to be wrong. But I want to start a separate thread on that so I won't farther on it here.

 

[Chris]

John, do you understand the principle of greenhouse gases?

 

[Diuretic]

Why would you assume the scientists involved have no particular self-interest in putting forward their views? You don't think James Hansen, for example, has anything at stake in doing what he's doing? You don't think you might be able to follow some money to people involved in climate research on the "consensus" side? Talking about what's necessary to infer cause and effect is not obfuscation. It's a very important principle.

I can't say that I blame people for going along with what the consensus view among scientists in a field is at any particular time. But bear in mind that there is no shortage of examples from history in which what was once the consensus view was later either proven to be wrong or came to be believed to be wrong. But I want to start a separate thread on that so I won't farther on it here.

Firstly, I appreciate that not is all as it seems in many instances of human endeavour. But when I see denialist type scientists with connections to interests which would benefit from governments being persuaded that anthropomorphic climate change doesn't exist, I tend to give it some weight. There may well be those on the proponent side of ACC who have some self-interest as well. That self-interest might go as far as a Nobel Prize (fame and wealth) but in sorting out those interests I'm balancing out a few things. I might be simply pragmatic, I might be just stubborn, but I will side with those who advocate action to reduce harm.

Secondly, scientific consensus. I agree with you. As you would be very aware, humans are naturally conformist. It's natural for us to group around a particular received wisdom and agree that it must be right because, well, we all agree it's right. It's the rare individual that jumps up in a group and points at a piece of received wisdom and yells out, "that's bullshit!" The individual us taking a chance. He or she could be labelled as a nutter. But if it turns out they're right then they're perceived as a prophet. But I am taking an evidence-based view of the issues here. While I will never understand the science supporting various positions I can read the stuff produced for lay people, which is why I support my government developing policies which address ACC.

 

[JohnStOnge]

John, do you understand the principle of greenhouse gases?

Basically, the idea energy from the sun comes in and is transformed to thermal energy. Because of what they call "greenhouse gases," the thermal energy can't radiate back out into space as it would if there was no atmosphere containing greenhouse gases so the planet is warmer than it would be if the greenhouse gasses weren't there. Of course, if you read that last Lindzen paper I linked, you'll see that he says it's more complicated than that.

 

[Old Rocks]

And were you to read the many papers published by other scientists, you would see where they have vehemently disagreed with Lindzen. And Lindzen, on this issue, has a reputation of being much more often wrong than right.

 

[JohnStOnge]

And were you to read the many papers published by other scientists, you would see where they have vehemently disagreed with Lindzen. And Lindzen, on this issue, has a reputation of being much more often wrong than right.

A "reputation?" I know you said he was wrong about the trend in temperature from 2004 through the next 25 years (I think) on but I didn't see evidence in the temperature estimates to support that. And you said that he was wrong in what he projected for third world countries because of what's happened with China but I don't think China is a third world country. Then there was something about some particular hypthosis he had. You said it's been disproven. I don't know if it has and in fact doubt that. The fact that a bunch of people claim to have proven him wrong doesn't mean he's been proven wrong.

The whole realm kind of makes that difficult. When it comes to the actual processes and effects nobody can conduct experiments to "prove" anything one way or another.

 

[Old Rocks]

Of all the charges made against scientists that provide the evidence of the warming that we are experiancing, none angers me more than the charge that they are personally profiting out of providing false evidence. For that is what you people are accusing them of. How does a geologist profit from pointing out the recession of glaciers in a mountain range that he is studying? The same for a meteorologist studying climate records for a section of the nation. When he points out that the temperature and precipitation pattern has been changing, you immediatly scream "profit motive".

Then there is the matter of grants, public and private. I really love this, as I have known many scientists that used the whole of the grant for the instrumentation neccessary for their research, and essentially lived off of baloney sandwiches for the time of the research.

In the meantime, people like Lindzen recieved $2500 a day to appear before Congress on behalf of the energy corperations. And people like Singer have long recieved money from the tobacco companies and energy companies to present "evidence" supporting the interest of their clients.

I was reading and speaking to freinds about global warming 20 years before Gore made his film. I much appreciate the eloquence he brought to the debate, and he deserves all the accolades that he has recieved. When I first started talking about the fact of the warming, the conservatives song and dance was that it was not happening. It was all a "commie" plot, and the scientists had no idea what they were talking about. Now that the warming is so apperant that all can see, the song and dance has changed. "OK, it happening, but mankind has nothing to do with it." It is supposed to be a natural occurance, just that there is no explanation for what could cause this natural occurance, and cannot possibly have anything to do with the nearly 40% increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere that we have created.

You people no longer have any credibility. You not only deny the science, you deny the very scientists that do the work. Fortunetly, we have a new admin that has put real scientists in agencies dealing with science. Not Quislings for the energy companies.

 

[JohnStOnge]

Here's Lindzen's side of the story on being "proven wrong:"

Extra - WSJ.com

A quote:

"And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an 'Iris Effect,' wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as 'discredited."'

 

[Old Rocks]

Views on health risks of smoking
Lindzen has claimed that the risks of smoking, including passive smoking, are overstated. In 2001,[24] Newsweek journalist Fred Guterl reported, after an interview with Lindzen

He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.[24]
A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" is also sometimes used to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert. That article says, "Richard Lindzen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies." The article concludes with the statement, "Such has not always been the case with environmental tobacco smoke."[25] However, Lindzen is not being directly quoted in the article, and the pro-tobacco views in that case are those of the article's authors, not necessarily Lindzen.
Richard Lindzen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Old Rocks]

A NASA article on the Iris affect;

Does the Earth Have an Iris Analog : Feature Articles

 

[Old Rocks]

Here's Lindzen's side of the story on being "proven wrong:"

Extra - WSJ.com

A quote:

"And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an 'Iris Effect,' wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as 'discredited."'

LOL! Sour grapes. He was discredited.

 

[Old Rocks]

Has lindzen ever lied on TV?

On a Fox News interview Richard Lindzen said:

But there is no agreement that the warming we've seen is due to man. Moreover, the warming we've seen is much less than we would have expected on the basis of the models that produce alarm.

So I guess this list of people are in no agreement. It seems as if national academies of 18 total countries never signed these two press releases. And Lindzen says the models are wrong? It looks as if these graphs and predictions are fake then.

Has he ever lied to congress?


Realclimate.org has a nice little discussion on his testimony to the United Kingdom's parliament. He made numerous statements that are extremely misleading at best and flat out false at worst. The material isn't for beginners but it can be seen here.



Have any of Lindzen’s claims regarding the consensus been published in a peer review journal?


No.



Does Lindzen have a standing paper in any peer review journal that can provide a mechanism as to why current global warming isn't something to worry about?


No.




Lindzen says there is a study that proves there is no consensus, is this true?

The real consensus is quoted and sourced here . However, Lindzen will often cite Benny Peiser’s study which the peer review journals Science and Nature refused to publish. Peiser then released a press release saying there was a conspiracy against his work.. The study claimed that there are 32 peer review journals that refute climate change. However, when Tim Lambert and William M. Connolley reviewed the abstracts he found the following results:

Richard Lindzen | Logical Science's skeptic rundown

 

[JohnStOnge]

Of all the charges made against scientists that provide the evidence of the warming that we are experiancing, none angers me more than the charge that they are personally profiting out of providing false evidence. For that is what you people are accusing them of. How does a geologist profit from pointing out the recession of glaciers in a mountain range that he is studying? The same for a meteorologist studying climate records for a section of the nation. When he points out that the temperature and precipitation pattern has been changing, you immediatly scream "profit motive".

Then there is the matter of grants, public and private. I really love this, as I have known many scientists that used the whole of the grant for the instrumentation neccessary for their research, and essentially lived off of baloney sandwiches for the time of the research.

.....

You people no longer have any credibility. You not only deny the science, you deny the very scientists that do the work. Fortunetly, we have a new admin that has put real scientists in agencies dealing with science. Not Quislings for the energy companies.

Uh...it's very reasonable to believe that people will foster a "crisis" mentality so that their work on solving the "crisis" will be perceived as important. It's also very reasonable to believe that, once somebody commits themselves to a prediction for the future (like Hansen), they'll become biased with respect to evidence as to whether or not that prediction is proving to be correct.

I do not deny science. Science is a process. But scientists are human beings who are each just as likely to have flaws of ego and bias as any other human being does.

One thing that always irritates me is expression of the premise that a scientist being supported by industry has to be wrong because he or she is supported by industry; as though those on the other side can't possibly have any biases. Or as though it isn't possible that industry supports that scientist because of what they scientist honestly believes instead of having a situation in which that scientist misprespresents what he or she actually believes because industry is supporting them.

It's all so convenient. Why, all of the scientists on the "global warmist" side are completely honest and totally unbiased but those evil ones in the minority on the other side are only saying what they're saying because somebody's paying them to say that.

 

[JohnStOnge]

LOL! Sour grapes. He was discredited.

No, you have chosen to believe one side over the other. And I'm not seeing the "sour grapes" anology.

 

[JohnStOnge]

Lindzen has claimed that the risks of smoking, including passive smoking, are overstated. In 2001,[24] Newsweek journalist Fred Guterl reported, after an interview with Lindzen

He'll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.[24]

A 1991 article in Consumers' Research entitled "Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?" is also sometimes used to characterize Richard Lindzen as a tobacco spokesperson or expert. That article says, "Richard Lindzen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies."

I think this is a good time to repeat a quote from a statistics text used in a graduate level statistics course. Pay particular attention to the underlined portions. If you do, you will see that, when it comes to assessing the cause and effect relationship between cigarette smoking and disease, we have strayed from "accepted scientific methodologies." That's particularly the case when it comes to passive smoking.

From Ott, R. Lyman (1992). An introduction to statistical methods and data analysis. Chapter 2. Belmont California: Duxbury Press:

Before leaving the subject of sample data collection, we will draw a distinction between an observational study and a scientific study. In experimental designs for scientific studies, the observation conditions are fixed or controlled. For example, with a factorial experiment laid off in a completely randomized design, an observation is made at each factor-level combination. Similarly, with a randomized block design, an observation is obtained on each treatment in every block. These “controlled” studies are very different from observational studies, which are sometimes used because it is not feasible to do a proper scientific study. This can be illustrated by way of example.

Much research and public interest centers on the effect of cigarette smoking on lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. One possible experimental design would be to randomized a fixed number of individuals (say 1,000) to each of two groups – one group would be required to smoke cigarettes for the duration of the study (say 10 years), while those in the second group would not be allowed to smoke throughout the study. At the end of the study, the two groups would be compared for lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. Even if we ignore the ethical questions, this type of study would be impossible to do. Because of the long duration, it would be difficult to follow all participants and make certain that they follow the study plan. And it would be difficult to find nonsmoking individuals willing to take the chance of being assigned to the smoking group.

Another possible study would be to sample a fixed number of smokers and a fixed number of nonsmokers to compare the groups for lung cancer and for cardiovascular disease. Assuming one could obtain willing groups of participants, this study could be done for a much shorter period of time.

What has been sacrificed? Well, the fundamental difference between an observational study and a scientific study lies in the inference(s) that can be drawn. For a scientific study comparing smokers to nonsmokers, assuming the two groups of individuals followed the study plan, the observed differences between the smoking and nonsmoking groups could be attributed to the effects of cigarette smoking because the individuals were randomized to the two groups; hence, the groups were assumed to be comparable at the outset.

This type of reasoning does not apply to the observational study of cigarette smoking. Differences between the two groups in the observation could not necessarily be attributed to the effects of cigarette smoking because, for example, there may be hereditary factors that predispose people to smoking and cancer of the lungs and/or cardiovascular disease. Thus, differences between the groups might be due to hereditary factors, smoking, or a combination of the two. Typically, the results of an observational study are reported by way of a statement of association. For our example, if the observational study showed a higher frequency of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease for smokers relative to nonsmokers, it would be stated that this study showed that cigarette smoking was associated with an increased frequency of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is a careful rewording in order not to infer that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.

 

[Old Rocks]

Very wonderfully reasoned nonsense. Even as a child, I remember the nickname for cigarettes was 'coffin nails'. And that was well before the studies in the '50s and '60s. People have long known that smoking had very serious affects on health. Simple observation between smoking and non-smoking family members.