Climate change, cooling, cooking Koalas, and more

Mail 699 Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Professor fired for making students think?

http://www.good.is/post/was-a-professor-fired-for-requiring-students-to-think/

–Gary P.

When I was in the professor business, all my senior classes were done on the Socratic model. I also gave essay exams, not multiple choice. And I sent more students to graduate schools than most of those around me.

Cardinal Pell on Climate Change: selling Carbon Credits is like selling Indulgences

http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/4214-cardinal-pell-carbon-credits-like-medieval-indulgences.html

>>Sometimes the very learned and clever can be brilliantly foolish,

>>especially when seized by an apparently good cause. My request is for

>>common sense and more, not less; what the medievals, following

>>Aristotle, called prudence, one of the four cardinal virtues: the

>>recta ratio agibilium or right reason in doing things. We might call

>>this a cost-benefit analysis, where costs and benefits are defined

>>financially and morally or humanly, and their level of probability is

>>carefully estimated.<<

Note the link, after the end of the article, to the PDF of the full lecture.

But wait! There’s more!

http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/GWPF.html

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

A very sensible essay. Thank you.

Global Warming: Another Take(s)

Hello Mr.Pournelle,

It might be worth going through this lengthy post at Watt’s Up With That for further insight on the Muller flap:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/29/uh-oh-it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times/#more-50286

Keep up the good work,

ECM

BEST temperatures

Regarding the latest triumphalist bleat, a couple days ago, I posted on my blog a couple links:

Does This Bother Anyone?

Should it?

a) Lead Author on definitive paper http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5700/b1101.pdf

b) is president http://www.mullerandassociates.com/richardmuller.php of a consulting firm http://www.mullerandassociates.com/index.php

c) That makes its money on the fruits of such papers http://www.mullerandassociates.com/sectors.php .

Caesar omni suspicione maiores debent esse uxorem.

+ + +

The question is whether the business of Muller & Associates in any way colors the president’s approach.

I’m not sure why the press is calling him a "skeptic." At most, we was simply not over-the-top the way alarmists are. He is in the same set as Curry and the two Pielkes. The warming is real, but how much is due to mankind, and how bad is it, really? Very few of the skeptics have ever denied that the earth has been warming. In fact, they are likely to point out that it has been doing so for 400 years. And they will point to factors that have been neglected or dismissed by the modelers.

The announced results regarding station quality and urban heat island also seem beside the point. Neither of those is likely to obliterate the trend. They would only affect the magnitude of the "anomalies" (residuals). IOW, if a station is sited on concrete, the temps from that station will likely be higher, but if the lower tropospheric temperature is trending upward, it will trend upward whether the measured temperatures are biased or not.

One of the four papers leaked to the media ahead of peer review deals with their measurement method. I haven’t sat back and digested it yet, but for those interested, it is here: http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_Averaging_Process

It would also seem that Judith Curry, listed as second author (alphabetical order), has been distancing herself from at least some aspects of these reports.

Mike

Study of CO2 and ocean "acidity", been done.

"What surprises me is the lack of concern about CO2 and ocean acidity. That, it seems to me, is potentially a greater danger than any warming trend, and I don’t see a lot of studies of that."

Check it out http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/25/the-reef-abides/#more-49971 .

A study of CO2 and "ocean acidity" which shows that the previous doom and gloom were vastly overrated.

First, there is no "ocean acidity", the ocean is alkaline, more CO2 (and it takes a LOT more) merely makes it a little less alkaline. But hey, "ocean neutrality" just doesn’t have the same sex appeal, right? In fact, more CO2 , the ocean gets closer to true neutrality, and it’s effects are actually lessened.

The above study demonstrates the serious problem with former studies, these studies were far too short, they did not give time to see if the corals being studied would be able to adapt. This study went for 6 months, and it showed that given time (and a far shorter time then the 100 year predictions of climate catastrophe) the coral adapted and showed absolutely no ill effects. You need to understand that during the time that all this sea life has been around, the atmosphere has had periods when it had far more CO2 than now. There have been times during the existence of corals, for instance, when the atmosphere had 5 times the CO2 as now at 3 times the atmospheric pressure. This is true for corals, and it is also true for other sea life, as well as land based life. If more CO2 was going to kill us all, it would have already done so many times over. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

If you believe in "ocean acidification", then you must believe this:

Too much carbon dioxide will kill all the coral.

The atmosphere has had far more carbon dioxide in the past.

That means that in the past, all the coral died.

So there is no coral.

What you think is coral is just a cleverly manufactured tourist attraction.

"Basically, you’re just bitter," said Tom acidly.

Legatus

I am hardly an ocean ecology expert, and what I know about it come mostly from science magazines, not journals. Thank you. One the advantages of being me is that someone will ask good questions if I say something that I should have given more thought to. I think I had not known that we had periods of that much CO2 during the life of the coral’ the fact that coral survived that is cheering. Thank you.

Global warming, scientific heresy & confirmation bias

Text of an excellent lecture given at the Royal Society in Scotland by Matt Ridley, well worth a read.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html

‘In conclusion, I’ve spent a lot of time on climate, but it could have been dietary fat, or nature and nurture. My argument is that like religion, science as an institution is and always has been plagued by the temptations of confirmation bias. With alarming ease it morphs into pseudoscience even – perhaps especially – in the hands of elite experts and especially when predicting the future and when there’s lavish funding at stake. It needs heretics.’

cheers

Norman

Norman Hills

Subj: Global warming controversy continues

http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/280948/Is-global-warming-over-

"Prof (Richard) Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and Prof (Judy) Curry, who chairs the Department Of Earth And Atmospheric Sci(ences at America’s Georgia Institute of Technology <http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/280948/Is-global-warming-over-#> , were part of the BEST project that carried out analysis of more than 1.6 billion temperature recordings collected from more than 39,000 weather stations around the world.

Prof Muller appeared on Radio 4’s Today Programme last Friday where he described how BEST’s findings showed that since the Fifties global temperatures had risen by about 1 degree Celsius, a figure which is in line with estimates from Nasa and the Met Office.

When asked whether the rate had stopped over the last 10 years he said they had not. “We see no evidence of it having slowed down,” he replied and a graph issued by the BEST project suggests a continuing and steep increase.

But this last point is one which Prof Curry has furiously rebuttted. In a serious clash of scientific experts Prof Curry has accused Prof Muller of trying to “hide the decline in rates of global warming”.

She says that BEST’s research actually shows that there has been no increase in world temperatures for 13 years."

Jim

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

Blog post: Brrr..the Troposphere is Ignoring your SUV (30OCT2011)

Jim

It does make one wonder about the consensus.

And now a long screed from a confirmed Doubter:

Confused Muller recants?! Slams Gore & Climategate — ‘I never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. — Reality Check: Muller Did Say that: ‘Let me explain why you should not be a skeptic’

For latest, go to www.ClimateDepot.com

Confused Richard Muller now claims: ‘I never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. I never said that’ — Reality Check from his article: ‘Let me explain why you should not be a skeptic’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13517/Confused-Muller-now-claims-I-never-said-you-shouldnt-be-a-skeptic-I-never-said-that—Reality-Check-from-his-article-Let-me-explain-why-you-should-not-be-a-skeptic  

Muller did say, ‘you should not be a skeptic’ — and so he told an unambiguous falsehood to the interviewer http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13528/Muller-did-say-you-should-not-be-a-skeptic-mdash-and-so-he-told-an-unambiguous-falsehood-to-the-interviewer 

Warmist Muller: Scientists ‘Endorse Al Gore Even Though They Know What He’s Saying Is Exaggerated and Misleading’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13538/Warmist-Muller-Scientists-Endorse-Al-Gore-Even-Though-They-Know-What-Hes-Saying-Is-Exaggerated-and-Misleading 

‘He’ll (Gore) talk about polar bears dying even though we know they’re not dying’

Muller: Climategate a ‘scandal’, ‘terrible’, ‘shameful’ ‘Some people say that I proved there was no Climategate. No! The Climategate thing was a scandal’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13529/Muller-Climategate-a-scandal-terrible-shameful-Some-people-say-that-I-proved-there-was-no-Climategate-No-The-Climategate-thing-was-a-scandal 

Muller on Climategate: ‘It was terrible what they did. It was shameful the way they hid the data’

Muller: ‘The rise in temp is small, 1.6 degrees, but it is real…We’re not sure how much of that is due to humans but the global warming models predict that it would be about that much’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13531/Muller-The-rise-in-temp-is-small-16-degrees-but-it-is-realWere-not-sure-how-much-of-that-is-due-to-humans-but-the-global-warming-models-predict-that-it-would-be-about-that-much 

Muller trashes WashPost’s Eugene Robinson: Muller is asked: ‘WaPo’s Eugene says what Dr. Muller says proves that these skeptics are wrong and they gotta get on this cap-and-trade train’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13530/Muller-trashes-WashPosts-Eugene-Robinson-Muller-is-asked-WaPos-Eugene-says-what-Dr-Muller-says-proves-that-these-skeptics-are-wrong-and-they-gotta-get-on-this-capandtrade-train 

Muller responds: ‘Uh, that’s ridiculous’

Muller’s BEST Research Team Can’t Find ;Accelerating’ Warming — Instead, Confirms Recent Global Cooling http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13527/Mullers-BEST-Research-Team-Cant-Find-Accelerating-Warming–Instead-Confirms-Recent-Global-Cooling 

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels: ‘The last ten years of the BEST data indeed show no statistically significant warming trend, no matter how you slice and dice them’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13526/Climatologist-Dr-Pat-Michaels-The-last-ten-years-of-the-BEST-data-indeed-show-no-statistically-significant-warming-trend-no-matter-how-you-slice-and-dice-them 

‘The policy significance of BEST will be nil because the length of time it will take re-establish a warming trend since 1996 is too long to politically support any expensive intervention’

BEST statistics show hot air doesn’t rise off concrete! It’s OK to pretend to be a skeptic in order to get a headline pushing your favorite religion’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13525/BEST-statistics-show-hot-air-doesnt-rise-off-concrete-Its-OK-to-pretend-to-be-a-skeptic-in-order-to-get-a-headline-pushing-your-favorite-religion 

‘It’s ok to release press releases about half-baked conclusions, and claim you aren’t trying to get media attention, and then disagree with the conclusions you stated yesterday. You are trying to save the world, lies are ‘forgiveable’

Climate Audit’s McIntyre on Muller: ‘BEST’s attempt to claim the territory up to & including satellite trends as unoccupied or contested Terra Nova is very misleading’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13524/Climate-Audits-McIntyre-on-Muller-BESTs-attempt-to-claim-the-territory-up-to–including-satellite-trends-as-unoccupied-or-contested-Terra-Nova-is-very-misleading  

‘Unfortunately, BEST have not lived up to their commitment to transparency in this paper. Code is not available. Worse, even the classification of sites between very rural and very urban is not archived, with the pdf of the paper disconcertingly pointing to a warning that the link is unavailable (making it appear like none even read the final preprint before placing it online.)’

Climate Audit’s McIntyre on Muller: ‘The new temp calculations…shed no light on proxy reconstructions & do not rebut misconduct evidenced in Climategate emails’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13523/Climate-Audits-McIntyre-on-Muller-The-new-temp-calculationsshed-no-light-on-proxy-reconstructions–do-not-rebut-misconduct-evidenced-in-Climategate-emails 

‘One great regret about BEST’s overall strategy…the actual best way to improve quality of temp reconstructions from station data is to really focus on quality, rather than quantity…They adopted the opposite strategy (a strategy equivalent to Mann”s proxy reconstructions). Throw everything into black box with no regard for quality and hope the mess can be salvaged with software.Unfortunately, it seems to me that they failed in this objective and actually end’

Climatologist Pielke Sr.: Muller’s ‘BEST overstated completeness of their study. They have not yet examined all aspects of station quality, homogenization, urbanization, & station selection’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13516/Climatologist-Pielke-Sr-Mullers-BEST-overstated-completeness-of-their-study-They-have-not-yet-examined-all-aspects-of-station-quality–homogenization-urbanization–station-selection 

Muller’s study ‘failed to adequately consider the range of issues that are yet to be resolved. and have prematurely reported their findings and conclusions both in their submitted papers and in their media interactions’

Muller refuted: ‘How is it headline material when someone who was never a skeptic pretends to be ‘converted’ by a result that told us something we all knew anyway?’ http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13512/Muller-refuted-How-is-it-headline-material-when-someone-who-was-never-a-skeptic-pretends-to-be-converted-by-a-result-that-told-us-something-we-all-knew-anyway 

Scientist slams Muller as a ‘charlatan from a California University who attempted to pull off one of the most transparent scams in science history…he was nailed for his nonsensical and unethical comments to the press’ http://www.Real-Science.com/colorado-slammed 

Run away! Muller backs off attack on skeptics http://www.climatedepot.com/a/13508/Run-away-Muller-backs-off-attack-on-skeptics 

Muller’s new version of events: ‘I was saying you can no longer be skeptical about the fact global temperatures have risen over the past 50 years. There are other aspects of climate change which are still uncertain as I have made clear.’

‘But in his Wall Street Journal oped, Muller wrote: ‘But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer’

Mark Morano

Global cooling

Jerry,

You were worried about ‘global cooling’ the same time that I was in graduate school and a ‘cooling’ denier. Reid Bryson was the expert who gave the idea credibility and he didn’t make that mistake twice (http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/2007/06/reid-bryson-takes-on-global-warming/) . He is mentioned in Schneider’s book.

You and I and Schneider and Mead et al. remember the cooling.

And from the NAS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_cooling.jpg

Fortunately it has been minimized by all groups:

http://www.earthtimes.org/climate/berkeley-warm-up/1540/

Makes you wonder what all those people were getting excited about way back when.

The BEST papers were rushed. Why?

"Second, the reason for the publicity blitz seems to be to get the attention of the IPCC. To be considered in the AR5, papers need to be submitted by Nov, which explains the timing. The publicity is so that the IPCC can’t ignore BEST. Muller shares my concerns about the IPCC process, and gatekeeping in the peer review process."

From Judith Curry’s conversation with Muller: http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/30/discussion-with-rich-muller/#more-5540

She is the second author on the papers.

The papers seem to be changing over time:

"Re the recent trend, Muller reiterated that you can’t infer anything about what is going on globally from the land data, but the land data shows a continued increase albeit with an oscillation that makes determining a trend rather ambiguous. He thinks there is a pause, that is probably associated with AMO/PDO. So I am ok with this interpretation.

With regards to the BEST data itself and what it shows. He showed me an interesting graph this is updated from the Rohde article, whereby the BEST data shows good agreement with the GISS data for the recent part of the record. Apparently the original discrepancy was associated with definition of land; this was sorted out and when they compared apples to apples, then the agreement is pretty good. This leaves CRU as an outlier." [see Curry link above.]

-Joe

I admit that back in the 70’s I believed that the Ice might be coming back, because after all we are in the middle of an Ice Age. What startled me was the work of a Belgian scientist whose name I have forgotten – Daniella something – who found from the study of lake sediments that England and the Channel areas went from deciduous trees to under many feet of ice in under one hundred years, and possibly even quicker, back at the onset of the current Ice Age (in which we are enjoying a temporary respite).

I also know that the long term trend since about 1800 has been warming at about 1 degree per century, and that’s probably the way to bet now. And finally I note that it’s pretty cold in much of the US, but that’s weather, and there’s lots of snow but that’s ocean conditions which are certainly not affected by what they are calling ‘climate change.’ Climate is what you predict. Weather is what you get. Or is that too glib?

Radiation is good for you

Dr. Pournelle,

Thought that you’d appreciate this story I caught on BBC news this morning:

_Japan MP Yasuhiro Sonoda drinks Fukushima water_

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15533018

The news readers are making a big deal about the MP’s hand tremor when pouring the water, but watching the clips, I think that they’re making too much of it.

I think that drinking the water to demonstrate its safety is probably meaningless, and is not a choice I would have made, but perhaps there’s a little of the Bushido code that would make the man do this on a dare.

On the other hand, if this develops into a fad among politicians here in the U.S., I’ve a little list.

-d

The evidence for hormesis is piling up. One of these days I will do a full report on it.

Runnin’ guns

Hello Jerry,

Wonder when it will occur to some enterprising journalist that ‘Fast

and Furious’ was never about identifying drug kingpins, or whatever

the ostensible cover story was.

The whole intent was to covertly arrange for the guns to cross over

into Mexico, where they would inevitably be used in crimes. On

investigation, the guns would be traced to US dealers who sold them

to criminals not legally authorized to purchase them or to straw

buyers who in turn transferred them to the criminals. Upon learning

this, cries of outrage would be heard across the land, demanding

stricter gun control in order to prevent such tragedies. And of

course 90% of the Democrats and 49.75% of the Republicans would be

happy to oblige.

Unfortunately (for the ATF and the Obamunists), an American citizen

got killed, someone blew the whistle, and we learn that it was a

government sponsored program, with government funds in some cases

used to make the ‘illegal’ purchases. But the ‘find the kingpin’

story continues unquestioned.

Bob Ludwick

I do not necessarily accept your analysis, but as my paranoid psychotic friend says, “It fits…”

Koala Kookery?

Jerry,

Last I heard, the koala subsists on the leaves of the Eucalyptus.

Under the assumption that that is correct, wouldn’t they then taste of cough drops?

I recollect from my youth–a bit more recent than your own–a Christmas tree farmer who, after allowing hogs to run about the tree lot, slaughtered the hogs straight off the tree log without the important step of feeding them corn for a couple of weeks, resulting in meat that tasted strongly of Blue Spruce.

Charles Krug

I have heard no more of the cooking Koalas story, and I continue to doubt that Oz exports them and almost certainly not at a price that would allow them to be sold for 25 bucks to be broiled; and I do wonder who would eat one. But I have heard neither confirmation nor refutation of the story.

In response to my inquiry about whether Australia really would ship out Koalas to be eaten one of my readers from Oz says

Hadn’t heard that one at all until I read your post, and was understandably horrified by it. We do barbeque kangaroos here though…

Cheers

Mike

Hobby pursuits as legitimate college degrees?

Stabbing in the dark looking for answers / explanations, this thought came to me after lunch today.

How many of our ‘unemployable’ college graduates (with their student load burden) in this country pursued their personal hobby interests as a college degree path? What kind of adult leadership or influence set them on that path?

While rigorous STEM education is essential for any industrialized country, a good dosing of liberal arts (small l, small a) is equally essential as a humanizing balance to the hard sciences. But the other way around? Hardly seems to be a viable career move. The larger majority of the classic sad stories you hear are of liberal arts PhDs working in food service. Or hotel housekeeping. The number of similar sad stories involving folks with those dreaded (and somewhat less feel-good) Bachelor of Science degrees may be vanishingly small…….

In the late (cough cough) 1970s I played around with the idea of tossing my technical studies out of the window in favor of other, low-stress paths that I was already talented in (music, photography) before coming to my senses.

I doubt that any number of college credentials in those feel-good areas would have let me travel the world for 20 years continuously, live for extended periods on five continents, visit all seven, be part of the end of the Cold War (remind me to tell you an interesting-scary story regarding serial/vehicle numbers on SS-20 TELs), return to the ‘states, build a rather nice home, drive paid for autos, care for my aging parents, and finally, play music to my hearts content with my college alumni marching band **and** work as a paid photographer photographing some of the most spectacular sporting and cultural events around. All the while working at a full-time job in technology management.

Sure the TV and press are full of stories about the successful and well-paid liberal arts major making millions. But as a percentage of those who aren’t making millions (or even a reasonable wage) how many are there, really? For every TV personality, celebrity chef, or travel channel host parading the Good Life, how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are saddled with worthless degrees whose financing is now coming due and must be paid for?

Nope. The basis for my life has been a paid-for college degree in a hard science/technology discipline earned very early in life. Once that was in hand, I had the career and cash flow to do what I wanted to do where I wanted to do it.

My story is not unique. Yet it’s not being told at all.

Best…….

Chuck Kuhlman

I told my children as they were growing up that the best I could wish them is that 85% of the time they would be able to be places and do things that they liked. Some of us manage to do better than that. Most do not do that well.