Commentator's Disease

[ASH]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Which is why I appreciate your feedback. (And hope you appreciate Cow's and my own).

I definitely do. I don't say that enough, I guess, but I very much do.

[jtabeb]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Ditto, man. Ditto !

I know you didn't want this to degenerate to a Global Warming forum, but I would REALLY appreciate if you could hear me out on something and tell what I'm missing or what I have overlooked or gotten wrong.

In my spare time I often pick up and read works that I consider propaganda. I find it is a very useful exercise and that negative knowledge (or exclusionary knowledge) can be just as powerful as positive (or inclusionary knowledge). What I mean by that is that the information can be used to validate or invalidate my own premise or a premise that someone else presents. I find that I can then use this new information to better tweak my mental model of the world.

So I picked up this book after skimming it with the intent to read and critique. There was a LOT to critique, but I want to talk about just one chart specifically (see attachment).

carbon 001.jpg



carbon 002.jpg


http://www.amazon.com/Down-Earth-Guide-Global-Warming/dp/0439024943

This chart bothers me in a numbers of different ways and makes me wonder why the data is presented in the way it is.

First, If you look at charted data without reference to the scale, there indeed looks to be an almost perfect correlation (with some lag) between carbon changes and temperature changes. Then I noticed something. The Data origin for the Year is on the RIGHT side of the Chart (as opposed to standard notation which would place it on the LEFT side). I honestly don't think that someone WITHOUT training in a language that is read from RIGHT to LEFT would catch it without examination. (Just goes to show Arabic is good for something).

Anyway, when read from right to left the chart reveals an entirely different conclusion. The Temperature always leads Carbon, ALWAYS! Now I could understand people questioning me if I had differing data, but this is THEIR (The IPCC's) DATA, the SAME data that Al Gore presented in An Inconvenient Truth.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/an-inconvenient-truth.php


Here is my problem, Temp always leads Carbon, and THAT violates CAUSALITY! I know of NO natural scientific phenomenon where the EFFECT occurs BEFORE the CAUSE.

The conclusion that I draw from this causality violation is that we are seeing that Temperature is Causal and the Carbon is the Effect. In other words, this doesn't represent Temperature as a function of Carbon BUT INSTEAD SHOWS Carbon as a function of Temperature.

That is why I'm very much a skeptic.

Can you please explain what I'm missing? (because I honestly Don't KNOW. It seems like a simple data interpretation error that any 5th Grade Science student should be able to see).

In fact, is seems the chart was intentionally oriented to misdirect the untrained eye (because most people are accustomed to reading data charts from LEFT to RIGHT). I admit that I'm postulating on the intention, but please don't waste time on that.

What do you think about the Causality Violation?

(This is where I would humbly ask you to rip this to shreds and point out all the errors that I made, seriously! Because I can't see how the data supports any other conclusion).


Thanks In-Advance

V/R

JT

[don]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Ditto, man. Ditto !

I know you didn't want this to degenerate to a Global Warming forum, but I would REALLY appreciate if you could hear me out on something and tell what I'm missing or what I have overlooked or gotten wrong.

In my spare time I often pick up and read works that I consider propaganda. I find it is a very useful exercise and that negative knowledge (or exclusionary knowledge) can be just as powerful as positive (or inclusionary knowledge). What I mean by that is that the information can be used to validate or invalidate my own premise or a premise that someone else presents. I find that I can then use this new information to better tweak my mental model of the world.

That's why I read the NY Times everyday. It's often not easy but...as you said so well, instructive... on the short side.....

[aaron]

Re: Commentator's Disease

I grew up outside D.C. and only a few years ago moved west. This article is completely accurate. They are so out of touch (so was I) around there. It really is a different world.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Commentator's Disease

BUT INSTEAD SHOWS Carbon as a function of Temperature

Yup. Rising temperatures bring more CO2 out of the oceans.

[ASH]

Re: Commentator's Disease

So I picked up this book after skimming it with the intent to read and critique. There was a LOT to critique, but I want to talk about just one chart specifically (see attachment).

I *ahem* need some technical help. Your attachments don't display for me. Thumbnails appear broken, and when I click on the icon, I get an infinite loading screen; if I arrest the loading, I get dumped to text that really looks like the header of a JPG. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or if there's something I need to install?

Thanks.

[FRED]

Re: Commentator's Disease

I *ahem* need some technical help. Your attachments don't display for me. Thumbnails appear broken, and when I click on the icon, I get an infinite loading screen; if I arrest the loading, I get dumped to text that really looks like the header of a JPG. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or if there's something I need to install?

Thanks.

Are you using google Chrome?

[flintlock]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Loved the Reed article. The Rancort article has some merit as well.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Commentator's Disease

It seems to me that you guys are apt to deem something plausible if it fits well into an overall big picture, but don't look too far under the hood; for my part, I think a lot about the big picture, but I have great difficulty believing any given big picture proposition unless I have inspected all the micro-steps leading up to the conclusion and decided they make sense.

My brain is like a happy marriage of a decent engineer and a crazy mute Gypsy fortune teller. One side handles the details and writes the code and speaks English. The other side has all the linguistic skills of a dairy cow and is happy holding several conflicting conspiracy and salvation theories in its grasp at once.

When decisions have to be made with insufficient evidence, the Gypsy side is happy to make the call and trust the engineer to mind the details. The engineer gladly trusts the Gypsy to find a path through the unknowable.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Are you using google Chrome?

At first glance, I thought ASH's description sounded like some Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) problems we discussed a few weeks back here. But since you got this call first, FRED, and since you know more about this than I do, I'll gladly stand aside.

[ASH]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Here is my problem, Temp always leads Carbon, and THAT violates CAUSALITY! I know of NO natural scientific phenomenon where the EFFECT occurs BEFORE the CAUSE.

The conclusion that I draw from this causality violation is that we are seeing that Temperature is Causal and the Carbon is the Effect. In other words, this doesn't represent Temperature as a function of Carbon BUT INSTEAD SHOWS Carbon as a function of Temperature.

I haven't been able to look at your graphs yet, but apparently this is a much-commented observation, so I'll proceed assuming we're talking about the same thing.

Here is a version of the "official" explanation.

Basically, the climate scientists agree with your observation -- temperature DOES rise before carbon dioxide in the record (by about 1000 years each time), and the temperature rise IS NOT caused by rising carbon dioxide levels. Rather, the earth's orbital mechanics explain the initial rise in temperature, and the warmer oceans explain the carbon dioxide rise. Al Gore and others are wrong to point at that graph and say it shows rising carbon dioxide CAUSING rising temperatures.

However, the climate scientists also say that increased atmospheric CO2 amplifies the warming that is initially caused by orbital mechanics, so that the temperature rise is larger than would occur if it was just due to the change in earth's orbit. They say that the change in solar heating received by the earth due to its orbital cycle is too small to account for the resulting temperature rise without the CO2-related feedback mechanism, and that the amount of warming is consistent with amplification by the greenhouse effect. Further, there is evidence in the measured data from north and south poles that supports the role for CO2. In that respect, there IS evidence of the greenhouse effect in the data, but it is not the causal relationship suggested by Al Gore or his ilk.

In my opinion, the "official" line on this is physically plausible.

At the same time, I think you are entirely justified in saying that the significance of the data was misrepresented, and I can see why that would engender suspicion. Does that misrepresentation constitute propaganda, or simply "dumbing down" the science to get the gist across without losing a broad audience? Or a little of both? Maybe folks like Al Gore both believe there's a problem and therefore a reason to influence public opinion through propaganda, and understand that they can't get their message across with full scientific rigor. But I also see how once you determine that something is propaganda, your next question should be "what is their motive?" -- and I see how that inquiry led you where you're going.

I would be a lot more shocked if a professional climate scientist with a Ph.D. were to misrepresent that graph in the same way. But I've seen so much dumbed-down science out there that this particular sin against rigor isn't a smoking gun for me. And even though I suspect there is an element of propaganda here, the intent behind it -- and the collusion of the scientists -- isn't at all clear to me from what I've seen thus far. Could be opportunistic; could be well-meaning; could just be sloppy popularization of science. Not necessary a grand conspiracy.

The other point that is important to me is that a climate scientist predicted carbon dioxide would lag solar heating for this particular cycle back in 1990. It seems to me, then, that the scientific story on this hasn't changed in 20 years... so it's not a reaction to criticism, but rather a successful theoretical prediction and an indication that climate scientists aren't so stupid that they don't know the solubility of carbon dioxide in water drops when you heat it.

[ASH]

Re: Commentator's Disease

At first glance, I thought ASH's description sounded like some Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) problems we discussed a few weeks back here. But since you got this call first, FRED, and since you know more about this than I do, I'll gladly stand aside.

I'm running IE8. I will search the forums for that discussion, and debug from there. Thanks.

[ASH]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Reed's article sounds spot on to me.

Hi Cow. This is another post-without-context issue (on my part). I was talking about Rancourt, not Reed.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Commentator's Disease

I'm running IE8. I will search the forums for that discussion, and debug from there. Thanks.

I believe that the thread mentioning IE8 and similar such problems was Firefox + Greasemonkey script to view 'old school' iTulip. I'd have replied with this a couple of hours ago, but my ISP dropped my Internet connection for a while.

[jtabeb]

Re: Commentator's Disease

Thanks ASH, I've only been looking for a good answer the Causality question for, like 5 years. You provided the first plain english explanation that made sense. Note to Policy wonks: "oversimlification is the ENEMY of the sufficiently complete!"

(As background this will be my second flip-flop on the issue, Pro-> Con and now I think I have a stance that most closely resembles what you outline in your prior response)

"is that recent global warming might or might not be primarily due to anthropogenic causes. I do not understand from a technical perspective how climate models can possibly produce useful long-range forecasts, given the complex and nonlinear nature of the system, and I think the models give the appearance rather than the substance of scientific rigor. I think that the basic greenhouse warming effect and tie to carbon dioxide is incontrovertible, but that we are flying blind when it comes to the magnitude of the climate impact relative to other factors, the rate of onset, and the strength of various feedback mechanisms."

Thank you very much for the illumanting response!