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MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

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Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#51
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First item: " How can Lindzen, a member of the National Academies be wrong about the consensus?" Which is followed by an appeal to authority. Most of the following is appeals to authority, attacks on his funding (necessarily from eeevil sources since "the consensus" has halted funding to "deniers"), complaints about his not have current peer reviewed papers (see previous item), etc. Sorry, but if we're talking real s…

"his point is that there isn't really a consensus, which it demonstrably true" Not at all. You can search through the peer-reviewed papers in vain for any saying there isn't any anthropogenic climate change; there are no such papers. None. Zero. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

A 6 year old paper is limited in its utility, especially since the CRU email leak confirmed that the "alarmists" have been systematically keeping the other side out of the peer-reviewed literature.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#52
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An appeal to a "consensus" is by definition an appeal to authority. It has nothing to do with theory or data, it's not science, it's science policy. As Jerry Pournelle said, "Science policy is to science as birdshot is to birds."

Actually, I think it was Dr Petr Beckman that originally said that in the early 1970s.

A quick check with Google indicates you're right, and that's the sort of thing he certainly would have said back in that period.

Thanks for the correction.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#53
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No statistician, Canadian or otherwise, has shown that Mann's methods could generate a 'hockey stick' curve from random data.

Red noise, to be precise: http://www.google.com/search?q=hockey+stick+red+noise

No. A claim was made by two individuals, one a mining executive, the other an economist, in a trade publication called Energy and Environment with no peer review. Both of the authors are well-known industry skeptics. The claim was subsequently refuted by Mann, and ultimately discredited in a peer-reviewed article for the Journal of Climate (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3351.1), in which an alternate method confirmed the original result.

The skeptics were Canadian, though, so at least you got one thing right.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#54
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red noise, to be precise: http://www.google.com/search?q=hockey+stick+red+noise

No. A claim was made by two individuals, one a mining executive, the other an economist, in a trade publication called Energy and Environment with no peer review. Both of the authors are well-known industry skeptics. The claim was subsequently refuted by Mann, and ultimately discredited in a peer-reviewed article for the Journal of Climate ( http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3351.1 ), in which an alter…

This would be the same Journal of Climate that Mann was once an editor of (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=201)?

The invocation of "peer review" doesn't mean anything (good) nowadays in this field, as previously discussed (see also what the CRU emails revealed about ... management of "acceptable" journals and editors), and a single peer reviewed paper by the CRU circle including Mann is less than convincing, let alone definitive. This email from McIntyre and McKitrick http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=458 should raise some serious questions about it.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#55
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to argue that he's been bought, you get to explain why AGW supporters aren't bought as well. After all, the connection between their conclusions and their funding is even stronger. Of course, the truth is that money isn't the most corrupting influence by a large margin - true belief is. You can often spot true believers by their insistence that money is the only reason why their position isn't univers…

"After all, the connection between their conclusions and their funding is even stronger." Citation? I'm really not aware of any pro-global-climate-change corporations paying people to issue opinions favorable to themselves. Perhaps you can point some out to me.

> I'm really not aware of any pro-global-climate-change corporations paying

Are you suggesting that corporations are the only parties that have interests?

> opinions favorable to themselves

Irrelevant.

Do you believe that NSF or the Energy Department views research likely to be critical of AGW the same way that it views research that is likely to be supportive?

I do appreciate that you're demonstrating my claim that many folks think that monetary self-interest is the only corrupting influence. Many folks don't after I point that out because they realize that it isn't, that it isn't even the big one.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#56
post #34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important part: " Lindzen recieved $2500 a day from oil and coal interests for his services.1,2, 3 His article "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.1 Lindzen has lectured at numerous Cooler Heads Coalition meetings. The Cooler Heads Coalition is funded by CEI which is in turn funded by Exxon Mobil. He has also given talks for the George C. Marshall Institut…

I get it, attack the person, not what he's saying.

Actually, you'll find that we're doing both. It is perfectly valid to point out conflicts of interest (it's a favored denialist tactic to invent CoIs that don't even exist, so isn't it hypocritical to take umbrage when CoIs are brought up?), so long as the actual claims are also addressed. This is like the difference between making your argument rest upon an ad hominem and making a wonderful argument followed by "oh, and you're an idiot."

You don't get to reject the mountains of well-understood science just because one guy dared raise questions about conflicts of interest.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. A claim was made by two individuals, one a mining executive, the other an economist, in a trade publication called Energy and Environment with no peer review. Both of the authors are well-known industry skeptics. The claim was subsequently refuted by Mann, and ultimately discredited in a peer-reviewed article for the Journal of Climate ( http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI3351.1 ), in which an alter…

This would be the same Journal of Climate that Mann was once an editor of ( http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=201 )? The invocation of "peer review" doesn't mean anything (good) nowadays in this field, as previously discussed (see also what the CRU emails revealed about ... management of "acceptable" journals and editors), and a single peer reviewed paper by the CRU circle including Mann is less than con…

If you're going to cry out censorship, then at least have the common decency not to rely on the tired old CRU/climategate scam. This has been rather thoroughly and soundly debunked over and over again. Denialist papers get rejected from peer reviewed journals because they aren't science, not because there's a conspiracy.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#58
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All science is bought by special interests to a certain extent." Any evidence for that statement? My academic research was mostly funded by the US NSF, which doesn't really strike me as a "special interest". The NSF doesn't particularly care what the results are, just that the questions are worth answering and that the approach is reasonable.

I'm not asking you to do this work, but to prove your point you'd need to list some research that the NSF has funded that "denies" global warming (assuming they fund the reverse).

That's false equivalency. The NSF doesn't fund research to show that the earth is flat, because it isn't. Just because the well-tested AGW hypothesis exists doesn't mean that AGW denialism is on equal footing.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"his point is that there isn't really a consensus, which it demonstrably true" Not at all. You can search through the peer-reviewed papers in vain for any saying there isn't any anthropogenic climate change; there are no such papers. None. Zero. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

A 6 year old paper is limited in its utility, especially since the CRU email leak confirmed that the "alarmists" have been systematically keeping the other side out of the peer-reviewed literature.

[citation needed]

All joking aside, the CRU e-mail hack revealed no such thing. To say otherwise is either ignorant or dishonest.

Re: MIT Prof Richard S. Lindzen: Global Warming Alarmists Are in Denial

#60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The data reevaluation that resulted in 1934 being declared the hottest year in the 20th century This whole argument is getting extraordinarily tired, but 1934 could well be the hottest year on record in the 20th century without invalidating the claim that the climate has warmed on average by several degrees since then. Outlying data points are in every single data set. >the "hide the decline" games As I recall there…

The point here is not which year was the hottest but the incorrect research that said a recent one was. An additional point would be the big deal the alarmists made when the first results came out and their silence on the correction. Your recollection is incorrect, "hide the decline" is found throughout the source code in the CRU archive leak (quoted like that in comments and directly expressed in the code). There's…

Did you actually read what "hide the decline" meant? Go learn about proxies and you'll see that what they mean is that there is a false decline in proxy temperatures that must be corrected for, likely due to increased CO₂ concentrations changing how tree rings are formed. There's no deception here-- they were up front and honest about this problem, and referred to data analysis techniques to correct for a false decline.
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