This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Max, Reur 1094 concerning the 7, Feb, 2009 bushfires in relatively high population relatively difficult access/escape mountain-urban interfaces near Melbourne:
Yes I agree, it was not a whitewash from what I see in the summary report. I don’t know if I’ll ever find time to read the four great volumes, but what impressed me is that the summary does not appeal to high authority but discusses almost entirely what was actually observed or claimed by those involved. Furthermore, upon a digital search for ‘CSIRO’ and ‘BOM’ in the relevant volumes 1,2,& 3, there was only one passing reference to the BOM. (Bureau of Meteorology)
If no image or the internal links do not work, if you want, click:
http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/commission-reports/final-report
And select ‘interactive version’
And, yes, as you hypothesise, the AGW effect is arguably more complex than may be obvious; likely affecting human brain functions, to the degree of creating “serial pestilence” in some individuals. However, the Summary Report makes no mention of it. Nevertheless, that is not to assume that the four great volumes also make no mention of it…. If only I had time!
Brute,
I was just wondering if you feel Stephen Hawking is a gullible person too? Surely not! Or maybe he’s part of the general UN conspiracy?
AGW theory is all bunkum, isn’t it? We all know that! Yet Stephen Hawking comes out with:
“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.”
It could be that the UK’s ‘Marxist’ NHS treatment of his condition has enabled him live as good a life as possible, despite some US arguments to the contrary, and that’s turned him into a Communist. There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation :-)
What do you think?
PeterM
You wrote referring to Hansen’s 1988 “business as usual” (Case A) temperature forecast:
I would certainly agree, Peter, as it turned out!
But that is the (absurd) linear rate which Hansen’s 1988 prediction showed, like it or not. Just look at his graph.
As it actually turned out, his warming prediction was off by a factor of over 3!
This is most likely the same factor of error in his assumed 2xCO2 climate sensitivity, which he used to arrive at the 1988 forecast in the first place.
Hansen should have followed American baseball great, Yogi Berra’s, sage advice:
And today (in hindsight):
It sure “ain’t”! (0.26 actual observed warming from 1988 to 2009, compared with Hansen’s prediction of 0.85C).
Hansen’s error in those 21 years alone is almost as high as the total warming we have seen over the entire 20th century (1901-2000)! (BTW that’s 0.6C according to IPCC, not 0.8C, as you have erroneously exaggerated. Try to get your facts straight, Peter.)
Your parroting of Hansen’s “hidden in the pipeline” postulation (which has since been falsified by the actual physical observations, as indicated earlier on this thread) does not make his failed 1988 prediction any less preposterous.
Hansen’s forecast was lousy. It was a gross exaggeration. Either he knew in advance that it was greatly exaggerated and he did it (as the late Stephen Schneider had suggested) to frighten people into action (i.e. an overt “dishonesty”), or it resulted honestly from the errors that:
– he used an assumed CO2 climate sensitivity, which was greatly exaggerated
– he myopically fixated on anthropogenic factors alone, ignoring natural factors.
I personally believe he made an exaggerated warming forecast for the reasons suggested by Schneider when he stated:
But however it came about, Peter, you must admit it was a lousy prognosis. And it came back to bite him in the rear as many false prophesies do.
Max
PeterM
You never seem to learn.
After getting “shot down” with “saucepan on the stove” and “swimming pool heater” analogies in an attempt to demonstrate that Hansen’s “hidden in the pipeline” postulation has merit, you now bring (1100)
Peter, once you “turn off” the “small heater”, it stops warming the water in the aquarium. Period. Basta. As a physicist, you should know that much about heat transfer and thermodynamics.
There is no more energy “hidden in a mysterious invisible pipeline, lurking there to warm the aquarium more some time in the future”.
Hansen’s “hidden energy” sink was supposed to have been the upper ocean.
Then accurate ARGO measurements were installed to record upper ocean temperature, replacing the old, inaccurate, expendable XBT devices, which even Josh Willis, the team leader, acknowledged had a “warming bias”. Since these were installed in 2003 the upper ocean has cooled.
At the same time the atmosphere (both at the surface and in the troposphere) has also cooled since the end of 2000.
Trenberth called this “missing energy” a “travesty” (since it falsifies the “hidden in the pipeline” postulation of Hansen et al.).
Trenberth also suggested that the “missing energy” may be “reflected” into “space”, with “clouds” acting as a “natural thermostat” (as was confirmed by the actual physical observations on net cloud feedback by Spencer et al.).
Peter, scientific knowledge moves on.
The old hypotheses, predictions and postulations made in 1988, 2000 or even 2006 have been superseded and invalidated by new knowledge.
And it is clear that Hansen’s “hidden in the pipeline” hypothesis has been falsified by the observed scientific data. It is as big a fraud as his 1988 temperature prediction.
So “fuggidaboudit” (as they say in New York).
Max
Max,
It’s interesting that you are quoting Josh Willis. Would this be the same Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the scientists who co-authored this paper from Nature?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/full/nature09043.html
and reported in this article:
Ocean Stored Significant Warming Over Last 16 Years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100521192533.htm
who is quoted as saying?
“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system. So, as the planet warms, we’re finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean.”
I think this is basically the same message I was trying to convey with my heater in the aquarium analogy.
PeterM
Brute may wish to add some words on this topic, which you raised (1102), but here are mine.
Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly a very intelligent individual.
In addition to (potentially) rampant, human-caused global warming he believes in extraterrestrial aliens (who are likely to be hostile to us humans):
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece
His book, A Brief History of Time is brilliant and he is hailed by many as “the greatest living theoretical physicist”.
As Wiki tells us
His beliefs on AGW are interesting. Many other theoretical physicists share these views, while many others do not.
Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist, whose specialized field is our planet’s climate (rather than cosmology and black holes), is one of the many scientists, who do not share Hawking’s views on AGW.
Obviously, one of the two is wrong in his personal conclusions on AGW.
Which one is it? Hawking or Lindzen?
If the discussion were about cosmology and black holes, I’d put my money on Hawking and not Lindzen.
But when the topic is our planets climate…
Max
.
PeterM
You asked about Josh Willis (1105). Yes.
It is the same Josh Willis who tells us that:
– the upper ocean has cooled since ARGO measurements were installed in 2003 (he called it a “speed bump”)
– the old XBT devices used prior to 2003 “were found to introduce a warming bias”
But the more definitive study on upper ocean cooling since 2003 was written by Craig Loehle in 2009 (I have cited the references previously to this study as well as Willis’ statements cited above, so will not repeat them).
BTW, the same Josh Willis was also a co-author of Hansen’s “hidden in the pipeline” postulation (written back in the heady days before we had reliable measurements showing upper ocean cooling).
But, as I wrote earlier, science moves on.
Yesterday’s postulation or prediction gets falsified by today’s observations, as happened for both Hansen’s 1988 temperature prediction as well as his “hidden in the pipeline” postulation.
Time marches on, Peter.
Max
.
Pete,
RE: # 1102
I suppose that the United Nation’s promotion of the now thoroughly discredited theory of global warming (more accurately the IPCC) could be described as a “conspiracy” as you wrote……I’d say a better term would be “shakedown” or “confidence scheme”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick
Are you certain this quote is attributed to Hawking? Seems to be fraught with speculation and uncertainty……
“May” be self sustaining “if” it has not done so already?
“May” kill off rain forests?
“May” trigger release of (stored) carbon dioxide?
I’m not a theoretical physicist; however, before I signed off on a theory that carries a multi-trillion dollar price tag, I’d certainly need more evidence than some “ifs”, “maybes” and “may some day” to base a theory upon…………doesn’t sound very confident in his assertion.
Let’s take a look at the only specific statement that he made in this quote that you’ve posted:
The Antarctic ice cap is at it’s highest extent in recorded history and the Arctic ice cap has gained mass during the latest two years………hardly “melting”……………a vague descriptor from a theoretical physicist.
Increasingly, I’m beginning to realize that you understand very little on the topic of thermodynamics/heat transfer.
The Universe is a very, very COLD place……(that is, absent heat/energy) the warm islands (Earth being one) is an extremely rare anomaly. Without the spec of heat from the Sun, the earth would be a frozen sub-zero ball of rock.
The larger concern for the future of the Earth would be progressively falling temperatures as the immense void of a frigid Universe diffuses/absorbs and equalizes what little heat exists………
Max,
“But when the topic is our planets climate…” You’d put your money on climate scientists right? But only the handful that you approve of? Or should I say only the ones which give you an answer you approve of? We’d all like that answer too but it doesn’t make sense to ignore the vast majority and go with the mavericks. You can’t even give me a single scientific reference to show that the hockey stick has been shown to be false. And, yet, thats #1 on you list of beliefs.
I guess that’s why they call it denialism!
Would you like to increase your stake on our earlier bet BTW?
Brute,
You’ve not answered the questions about Stephen Hawking. Do you know who he is?
PeterM
Let’s check your logic (1109).
You brought up Hawking (a brilliant physicist, whose specialty is cosmology and black holes) as a defender of the “dangerous AGW” hypothesis.
I countered with Lindzen (a brilliant physicist, whose specialty is our planet’s climate) as a rational skeptic of the “dangerous AGW” hypothesis.
Now you counter with “a vast majority” of other (unnamed) scientists (whose specialties you have not stated), whereas I had provided you earlier a list of names of over 200 scientists, whose specialties were stated, who had gone on record as being rationally skeptical of the “dangerous AGW” hypothesis.
It seems like this is going nowhere, Peter (at least for you).
Your original statement concerning Hawking was meaningless, and that was my point.
As to the scientific references on the hockey stick falsification, don’t be obstinate. Simply check the sources I cited, Peter. The references are all listed in these sources and we have buried this topic several days ago. Get it through your head: the Mann hockey stick was a bit of lousy statistics done on a bunch of bad and cherry-picked scientific data arriving at a flawed conclusion, which was comprehensively discredited by the in-depth analysis of McIntyre and McKitrick.
In addition there is the testimony to that effect by Carl Wegman, which was corroborated under oath by Gerald North and Peter Bloomfield, both of NAS.
It’s dead and buried (and smells), even if some die-hard idiots out there may try to resurrect it out of its grave.
And besides, there are many independent paleoclimate studies from all over the world using different methods, in addition to voluminous historical data, all of which confirm that there was a MWP that was global and warmer than today, followed by a LIA that was colder, for many of which I have cited references on this thread.
You truly make yourself look foolish by bringing up this “dead dog” again and again. Move on to something else.
Max
You mean this guy? I don’t care if he’s the Pope……..doesn’t make him any less gullible (or ideologically warped) than the anyone else.
You’ve got to get out more Pete. “Infallible” Scientists and men that possess very high intelligence quotients have been duped from the beginning of time. Some of the smartest, most successful people in the world never attended university much less finished high school.
You carry what is known as an “elitist attitude”………that you somehow have been naturally endowed with some sort of divine superhuman intelligence that (you feel) makes you more capable of making decisions for “the collective”…………that you somehow are entitled to make decisions for other people based solely on your arrogant, self serving, highly inflated ego………this defect of character is also quite apparent in Liberal/Progressive/Socialist political circles.
I’ll bet that you refer to yourself as an “intellectual” also……
Try a little humility Pete…….it “may” help you develop into a better person. The false compassion for the “less capable” is transparent.
Max and Brute,
If you want names there are 13 on this link.
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12877
They are hardly household names, but anyone of them could gain instant fame, invitations to appear on Foxnews, write articles for the WSJ, speak at Heartland conferences etc just by spouting the sort of garbage that would be expected of them by these organisations.
So, the money isn’t in supporting the consensus – in fact its just the opposite.
Yes, we shouldn’t just look at the big names like Stephen Hawking but when he says he worries about the runaway GH effect people do listen. When James Hansen says it, its different – of course he’s a bad guy and he would say that wouldn’t he!
The question remains , if you two can see that the the science of AGW is all wrong, why can’t Stephen Hawking see it too? Or maybe he can and he’s just lying? I don’t think so. Do you?
The truth of the matter is that neither of you have decided on the issue by studying the actual science itself. There are other factors which have driven those. You’ve adopted what are known as a priori positions. The decision comes first and any scientific arguments you can find, the ones that look good to you, are used as a justification for that position.
Its not how smart people think!
Let me share a secret with you Pete……in my industry, “going green” is big, big business.
Everyone, (remaing) with a pot to piss in wants to showcase the “latest” green technology that they have incorporated into their design. It’s chic, it’s trendy…………it’s a passing fad.
When these climate “do gooders” are faced with the stark reality of the cost of “green” technology and the poor return on investment, they opt for the tried and true conventional (read “dirty”) methods…………leaving their concern for the environment and their checkbooks in the top desk drawer.
(I happily relieve these dopes of their money………)
That being said, these same people, when attending their hip, corporate, Washington cocktail parties, would never dare mention their reluctance to embrace the “green” agenda. They’d be ostracized/blackballed faster than a politically conservative actor in Beverly Hills.
Take a look around you Peter. Have you seen a single politician that endorses global warming theory riding in a Prius or Smart car? Have you seen a single Hollywood environmentalist/big mouth movie star flying commercial or living in an 800 square foot solar powered home?
Where does Prince Charles live? How does he travel from place to place?
Have you seen any of the (numerous) houses that Al Gore owns? Have you noticed him sitting beside you on a commercial flight lately?
Have you seen John Kerry’s new 7 million dollar yacht?
How about John Travolta’s 4 commercial (private) jetliners or Harrison Ford’s seven airplanes.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi flys a taxpayer funded 747 from Washington DC to her home in San Fransisco every weekend……….does that sound “green” to you?
Obama hosts a 300 guest rock show in the White House every Wednesday night……..travels in Air Force One on “date nights” with his wife for dinner and a movie in New York City for kicks.
They don’t believe in this nonsense any more than I do………the fact is that if they spoke up, their careers would be finished…………
When any of these loud mouths show any concern for “the climate”………I’ll buy a Prius.
Global Warming as Groupthink
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s process institutionalizes groupthink on a global scale.
It is easy to mock the thousands of activists, officials and ministers flying to Copenhagen in their jets, driving around in an immense fleet of limousines, and collectively emitting more carbon dioxide than a small African country—all to force the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprints.
But it is one thing to accuse them of hypocrisy in not living out their beliefs. Casting doubt on their belief that global warming poses an imminent threat to life on this planet is another.
To question so much scientific expertise and governmental authority seems arrogant or foolhardy—even in the city where Hans Christian Anderson wrote about the little boy who blurted out that the Emperor had no clothes.
Can so many experts be wrong? Well, it is worth remembering that the experts were supposedly united about the apocalyptic dangers of the Y2K millennium bug. Half the world was persuaded to spend an estimated $600 billion to save us from disasters that embarrassingly failed to materialize in the countries and companies that omitted to take any pre-emptive action. Then intelligence agencies around the world were allegedly so convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that we went to war, only to find—zilch. In both cases there was a solid foundation of truth on which enthusiastic professionals and governments constructed an exaggerated scare story that the media lapped up.
I was skeptical enough to delve into both those scares and rapidly found the experts were not as unanimous as supposed. But the dissenters were persuaded to keep quiet, bar a handful who were ruthlessly stereotyped as mavericks or worse.
In each case the driving force was “groupthink.” Irving Janis defined this as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
The symptoms include:
“Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group; Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as evil, biased, etc.; Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group; Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus; Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.” Campaigners against climate change show remarkably similar symptoms.
There is a solid basis of truth for their claims. Having studied physics at Cambridge I do not for a moment doubt the existence of the greenhouse effect. Without the warm blanket provided by greenhouse gases—mainly water vapor and carbon dioxide—the earth would be a frozen uninhabitable rock. If the amount of CO2 is doubled, the direct effect—other things being equal—would be to raise the Earth’s temperature by about one degree Centigrade. Since warmer air holds more water vapor, that could double the impact—or reduce it if the resultant clouds reflect more sunshine.
But to move from the modest but scientifically well-founded range of 0.5 to 2.0 degrees Centigrade to catastrophic impacts on human life requires successively more uncertain layers of conjecture. Higher temperature projections are obtained by constructing elaborate computer models that build in complex feedbacks that amplify warming and assume nothing could dampen these effects—both tendentious and unproven assumptions. Then, even more unwarranted assumptions must be adopted about the impact of higher temperatures on sea levels, hurricane frequency, disease propagation, and so on (glossing over the fact that it would take centuries for higher temperatures to melt the ice caps sufficiently to raise sea levels substantially).
Finally, heroic assumptions are necessary about low discount rates to maximize the present value of future benefits from cutting carbon, and that decarbonizing industry will be cheap. Meanwhile, the supposed damages from climate change must be aggregated over centuries to prove that we need to remove CO2 immediately rather than adapt to change. Far too little attention is given to measures to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries adapt, rather than spending huge sums to prevent what may not occur.
The tendency of those committed to the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming to unquestioningly adopt the assumptions, at every stage, that maximize the expectation of calamity should alert us that groupthink is driving the movement.
The recently leaked email exchanges between scientists at the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia and their colleagues in the U.S., who are among the illuminati of the global warming movement, show vivid evidence of groupthink at work.
These scientists have become so committed to a cause that they think it natural to perform “tricks” to “hide the decline,” as one email says. Another is so upset by “The fact… that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t” that he suggests “the data are surely wrong.”
It is reminiscent of the German philosopher Hegel who, on being told by his disciples that the facts refuted his scientific theories, replied: “So much the worse for the facts.”
It is clear that while governments think they are pursuing evidence-based policies, these institutes have been serving up “policy-based evidence.”
The whole U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process could not be better designed to institutionalize groupthink on a global scale. It puts enthusiasts at the helm.
It seeks to establish a single view on the science, modeling, and economics. Dissent is banished. Loyalty is demanded. Silence is deemed consent. Moral fervor is reinforced by massive cash research budgets.
Even the British parliament has become caught up in groupthink. Dissent (and there are silent skeptics in both Labour and Conservative ranks) is suppressed by equating skepticism with Holocaust denial. Moral zeal replaces reasoned debate. Scrutiny of costs and benefits of alternative policy options is suspended. Desirable policies such as nuclear power to reduce dependency on hydrocarbons are sidelined in favor of a whimsical dependency on wind and sunshine.
When the Climate Change Bill passed through parliament last year, I read the cost benefit assessment ministers are obliged to produce for any bill. Amazingly, it put the potential costs (of reducing carbon emissions by 60%) at £205 billion ($331 billion)—yet the maximum benefits (of reduced climate change damage) were estimated at only £110 billion. This is the first time any government had asked parliament to support a bill that its own figures say will do more harm than good. Yet just five of us voted against it. At least I had the satisfaction of pointing out that while the House was voting for a bill based on the assumption the world is getting warmer, it was snowing in London in October for the first time in 74 years. I was told, “extreme cold is a symptom of man made global warming.”
The absurdity did not end there. Because the target for reducing emissions was amended upwards to 80%, I asked for a new cost-benefit assessment. Ministers eventually slipped one out—long after the bill had become an Act. It showed that the cost of meeting this more onerous target had doubled to £400 billion.
Yet, miraculously, the government estimate of the likely benefits had risen tenfold. They had apparently previously mislaid nearly £1 trillion of benefits. It would be hard to find clearer evidence of the flaky nature of figures governments employ to justify their commitment to climate-change policies.
More carried away by groupthink than his colleagues, Gordon Brown has strutted his stuff in Copenhagen—the prime minister of a near-bankrupt country offering to bankroll a global deal.
When he returns we will find that although the benefits are flaky, the costs are real.
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704238104574601762696721506.html
Max, as you know, I’ve been having intercourse with Barton Paul Levenson because he claims to be an RCM climate modeller, but displays some rather strange interpretations of the science of heat transfer, that are strongly supported by Gavin Schmidt and others at RC. (my latest here)
He seems to have gone quiet lately, despite pledging to answer any questions on his science. Wondering, I did a restricted Google search on his blogosphere activities in recent days, and he is indeed quiet. However he may be busy with the launch of his latest book, and I was startled to find from the following review, that apparently:
a) He may only do RCM’s as a hobby…. Maybe not taken seriously by “the church”?
b) He may have serious health problems
c) His love for science fiction precede his alleged physics degree
d) His latest book clearly demonstrates a vivid imagination
Interview with author Barton Paul Levenson Tuesday, July 27, 2010
This week author Barton Paul Levenson is here [with me Sonya Clark] to talk about one of his latest releases, the science fiction novel I Will.
Tell us about your book.
I Will is an SF love story, named from a line in Yeats’s “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” It’s just your typical boy-human-meets-girl-alien, loses-girl-alien, gets-girl-alien story, with stops along the way like being in the close vicinity of a supernova and getting trapped in a parallel universe with cold water for interstellar medium. You can get it in paperback for $10.95, or as an e-book for $4.95, through either VirtualTales.com or Amazon.com. And I’m starting to get it into the bookstores.
Tell us about your favorite scene in the story, without giving too much away, of course.
It’s hard to make up my mind, but one very brief scene stands out, I think. It’s early in the story, when my protagonist, Art Gordon, is looking for work. He signs on as housekeeper for an alien research starship, and at the end of the conversation with the ship’s captain, Shevileen Tonctyr, she asks his name. “Arthur Gordon,” he says. “You can call me Art.”
“Thank you, Art,” she says. “You can call me Captain.” That sets the tone of their relationship right there.
What draws you to writing science fiction?
I got turned onto science fiction in a major way at age eight, when my parents took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey. After that I was hopelessly hooked.
Tell us a little bit about your writing process. For instance, are you a pantser or a plotter? If you’re a plotter, what method do you like to use?
I definitely prefer to wing it. Sometimes I have a broad plot outline in mind, but most often I just start with one daydreamed scene. If it works out I get a story, if it doesn’t, I get an incomplete manuscript. I only complete about half of them, I’m afraid.
What are some of the writers and books that have inspired you?
Edgar Rice Burroughs was a strong early influence, and I picked up some nutty ideas from him it took me years to get rid of. Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Ursula K. LeGuin were others. Heinlein was a big influence–I love his books even though I despise his ideology. More recently, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, C.S. Lewis, Brian Stableford, C.J. Cherryh. King is my hero because he was teaching part-time and working part-time in a laundry when he got the call offering him a $400,000 paperback contract for Carrie.
Very recently I’ve been infatuated with anime and manga, especially Gundam Seed Destiny and Rosario + Vampire. Ikeda Akihisa, who draws the manga Rosario + Vampire, is a genius, as far as I’m concerned. The manga is far superior to the anime, by the way, although both are great fun.
Tell us about yourself. Do you have a day job? Do you have any hobbies and interests outside of writing, and if so, do they ever find their way into your writing?
I have a degree in physics but have worked mostly as a computer programmer. The past two years I haven’t worked at all, due to multiple crippling medical conditions. My hobbies are mostly sedentary ones–books, videos, computer programming. And I write radiative-convective models of planetary atmospheres. For fun. Which tells you what kind of an Über-geek I am.
I’m very happily married to Elizabeth Penrose, the poet, who just had a poem published in the August Asimov’s. She keeps me alive.
Would you explain for us what a “radiative-convective model” is? That sounds like a fascinating hobby.
RCMs are a way to model the atmosphere as a single column of layers–I generally use 20 layers of atmosphere and one to represent the ground. If you get the physics right, you can predict how temperature varies with altitude, and from the amount of sunlight, clouds, greenhouse gases, and so on, you can estimate what the mean global surface temperature should be. The first reliable estimates of global warming under increased carbon dioxide were made with RCMs. They can also be used to predict temperatures on other planets, which was how I originally got interested in them.
*
Thank you for stopping by, Barton!
Here his latest front cover from his website:
BTW, he also has a book entitled ‘Max and Me’
Brute,
I’m not sure if the Y2K scare was really a beat up. I had a fax program which stopped working as the century rolled over! I know this was only a trivial example but I’m sure that there were plenty of other more serious problems which were prevented in time.
The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq issue was somewhat different. For a start you are making the assumption that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did actually get it wrong! Maybe they didn’t insomuchas they knew one thing but said another. Can you think of any other possible explanation of why they said what they did? They didn’t have to write peer reviewed papers, and openly explain their reasoning etc If they had, President Bush and his team may well have needed to think up another reason to justify their invasion.
Groupthink does exist in science. That’s what the consensus in fact is. If the evidence changes it can and it will change. It’s fair enough to challenge the consensus but it can be difficult to stand outside the group. You’ve got to be a genius like an Einstein to get away with that! Plenty of others have tried but failed.
You’re not immune from groupthink either. You are the member of, I’m guessing, the middle class white American group. You’d be expected by your friends and family to adopt the values of that group. And equally, you expect it from those around you too. Its a worrying trend that climate change denialism is increasingly a part of that package.
Its a similar story in England. Scotland is different. The white middle class groupthink south of the border is strongly monarchist( they can get quite stiff if you actually dare to suggest that Heads of State should be elected!) and of course strongly Pro-Tory party but its maybe OK to have a wife who might occasionally vote for the Greens or Lib Dems! Not Labour though! That’s just the way they are. Climate change denialism isn’t quite part of the ‘de-rigueur’ social package yet, but they are moving that way.
Brute,
Its pretty easy to spot when you’ve plagiarised whole sections!
The section below “Global Warming as Groupthink” is obviously cut and pasted from somewhere else. It fair enough to quote but you should make it clear that you are quoting rather than just tacking on a link at the end. Also you should mention the name of the author Peter Lilley.
You say that you don’t like elitism. Well Peter Lilley certainly wouldn’t agree with you that climate science was the result of elitism! He thinks of himself as one of the elite. Not necessarily by ability, but because he was born into the right social class, went to the right school and of course speaks with the right accent!
Bob_FJ
Interesting blurb about BPL. He is an interesting guy, if a bit conceited and overly convinced of his superior intelligence.
My blog exchanges with him have been briefer than yours.
You wrote:
If the “Max” is supposed to be me, this is obviously a work of fiction (as are his blog posts on AGW).
Max
Aug 01, 2010
The Burning Woman Festival of Global Warming: Step up to the stake, Ms. Curry
Environmental Policy Examiner, Thomas Fuller
Judith Curry, who has been kind enough to give interviews here before, has now crossed the line in the minds of the climate hysterics who have polluted this discussion with invective and hatred for so long.
Her crime has been to read a book. Really. The book is The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford, who blogs under the nom de guerre (it’s a war now…) of Bishop Hill. The book, which reads like a detective thriller (it has been described as Stieg Larssen without the lesbian sex, which is just about the best one-line review in history), chronicles the exposure of Michael Mann’s famous Hockey Stick chart as irretrievably flawed.
Curry will pay–she’s already paying, in fact. She is now being described as a skeptic, a denialist, someone who has gone over to the Dark Side. Tim Lambert, who runs a blog that is arguably the worst of the climate hysteria genre, has a post up on his site devoted to criticism of Curry. The comments there are summed up by this: “Her comments at RC and CP do not read like those of a scientist, or even of a rational person. They read like those of the typical denialist.”
Now get this straight. Curry is not pronouncing that Montford’s book is the definitive source. She does not endorse the book. (I do, but I’m not a respected climate scientist…) Curry’s crime–what makes here a ‘denialist’ and ‘skeptic’ and ‘irrational’–is to say that people should read the book to get an understanding of what happened, how it happened and why it’s important.
Judith Curry actually had to say that people should read a book. That’s because some of the hysterics published phony studies saying it was not necessary to read a book to understand why they were right and their opponents were wrong. I am not making that up. Everybody from Brian Angliss to Michael Tobis is inventing reasons why they don’t need to read criticism of the position they support–that Michael Mann is a saint and the Hockey Stick chart is a holy relic.
There is no better vignette explaining the intellectual dishonesty of the hysterical position, championed by Joe Romm and Tim Lambert, supported by Real Climate, Tamino and Michael Tobis, and egged on from the sidelines by Eli Rabett and countless commenters.
Montford’s book shows how Steve McIntrye identified the errors in sample selection and analysis that made the Hockey Stick chart untrustworthy, and the efforts Michael Mann and his colleages went to to hide the defects of their study (which led to Climategate, which Montford covers at the end of his book).
Montford’s book is good. Curry’s recommendation to the community that they read it is a very good recommendation. I have seen too many defenses of the consensus and attacks on its opponents that showed an appalling ignorance of what happened to think otherwise.
Judith Curry is a respected climate scientist (who does not dispute the theory or existence of climate change due to human emissions of CO2). She holds respectable positions and has published well-respected papers in the literature.
She’s getting dragged through the mud by political hacks for the crime of telling these hacks that they should read what exactly their opponents are saying.
As I said above, there is no episode in all the climate wars that shows more clearly the cheap partisan political nature and moral bankruptcy of hacks like Joe Romm, Real Climate, Tim Lambert, Tamino and Eli Rabett. The question now is will Curry get burnt at the stake professionally and personally before people say ‘that’s enough’?
PeterM
Brute has made an excellent point (1113) about “global warming groupthink” being promoted by the powerful of this world to bamboozle the public into supporting the multi-billion dollar AGW big business.
He also points out, quite succinctly, how many of the most vociferous promoters of the “green” AGW agenda do not, themselves, live by their own “low carbon footprint” rules at all; in fact, they are the worst offenders of these rules.
For another view on how the “powerful” promote “groupthink” to deceive the public into accepting their agenda see the exchange with geoffchambers on the “BBC review of science” thread here and the conversation between Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers. This view is coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum (two “left-wing liberal intellectuals”), but the conclusions are the same.
They just take the “politically correct” care not to specifically apply their words to the “multi-billion dollar AGW big business”.
Max
Brute (and PeterM)
Hurray for Judith Curry and for Andrew Montford!
Hurray for the truth!
As Abraham Lincoln is quoted as having said:
I hear the sound of “tables being turned”.
How about you guys?
Max
PeterM
You have opined to me (and Brute):
Peter, you will have to admit that you have absolutely no basis for this claim. I have “bombarded you” with “the actual science itself”, while you have responded with silly analogies, “arguments from authority”,
“arguments from ignorance” and other logical fallacies, rather than providing “actual scientific” empirical evidence based on physical observations to support your “dangerous AGW” premise.
Just go back through the hundreds of posts, and you will see how utterly absurd your above statement is. It is a “waffle” to “side track” away from the fact that you have been unable to provide “actual science” to support your postulation.
This definitely “not how smart people think”, Peter. It is pure, unadulterated BS.
Max
Bob_FJ, I’ve had a look on Amazon UK and BPL’s stories are available over here too. Max and Me, incidentally, is set in the far future and looks very interesting and a fun read (although, according to Amazon’s warning, it also contains “vulgar language”, sexuality and violence. Max is a talking cat, by the way.) Being an SF/fantasy/cat fan, these are just the sort of books I like, and BPL has gone up a fraction in my estimation!
(Okay, he’s a proponent of AGW, but as Peter Martin has reminded us, there are still some very bright people (Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and so on) who sit on that side of the argument, so I think we shouldn’t hold that against him too much.)
Peter M, on the subject of Y2K, it appears that you, Robin Guenier and I have some common ground here! It’s clear to those of us involved that the Millennium Bug could have caused a very serious cascade of problems, had not there been a massive effort on the part of IT staff worldwide to fix innumerable lines of code (and test them, which is where I came in). Like you, I even found a Y2K issue that slipped through the net, although similarly it was a very minor one and had little impact. In a way, the fact that many people actually consider the whole thing was no great deal could be considered a testament to the hard work (and occasional episodes of blind panic!) that went on behind the scenes.
Max, Brute, re the Judith Curry/RC business, have you also seen Thomas Fuller’s articles (latest one here) re the “Blacklist Paper”? It does look like a new and active phase of the war, but I think this sort of witch-hunting unpleasantness will tend to rebound on those who perpetrate it.
Re: #1115
Well Pete, you’ve definitely proven me wrong……………I’d certainly equate nuclear power plant meltdowns, planes falling from the sky, world bank computers permanently losing their information and intercontinental ballistic missiles self launching as a result of the Y2K bug with your facsimile machine failing to change it’s date.
Boy is my face red right now………
Alex Cull
Thanks for link to Thomas Fuller’s article on “blacklisting”. Very interesting.
I agree with you (especially in today’s world of “instant information”) that the “blacklisting” attempt will backfire. Sort of reminds me of the bygone McCarthy witch hunts (which took much longer to die, as information still traveled slowly back then).
Max
PS Al Gore sure did one great thing for humanity when he “invented the Internet”!
Brute,
Yes you’re developing a nice line in sarcasm there! Keep it up. Use your own words. No need to copy and paste whole sections from the net.