Monday, May 23, 2011

Unauthorized notes, ~ Ben Santer ~ The General Public: Why Such Resistance?

Today I was asked if there's a transcript available of the Ben Santer talk. To the best of my knowledge there is none. However, when I hear an especially good lecture, I'll return to it and do some detailed note taking along with transcribing specially valuable sections... I find it an excellent learning exercise.

So below are my notes, transcribed sections are in "quotes," the rest is paraphrased, with any personal commentary in {brackets}.

It isn't as polished as it should be and unfortunately right now I don't have the time to invest, however at some point I will return and clean this up...

Friday, May 20, 2011

Integrity of Stephen McIntyre examined... a review by Real Climate

The following is a collection of posts from RealClimate.org a website put together by real climatologists, folks who actually publish real peer-reviewed articles - as opposed to being wrapped within a non-peer reviewed media machine as is the case with the famous Stephen McIntyre - the mining engineer, investment promoter, and the statistician who thinks his personal intellectual powers permit him to stand judge and jury over the entire establishment climatology community and decades worth of research.

Over at the Skepticforum.com he has a great defender who's constantly challenging me to provide evidence for McIntyre's deception, yet rejects all that doesn't agree with her outlook. But, like I keep trying to remind her, One Directional Skepticism Equals Denial.

So for folks out there who are interested in what the brains have to say about the controversies and misperceptions being peddled by Mr. McIntyre here is a little collection.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Auditing Stephen McIntyre, anatomy of a deception

Considering my conversations of the past couple days I believe it is time to share a little information from a website that has had the opportunity to delve into the modus operandi of Stephen McIntyre the Canadian mining engineer, investment promoter and statistician who has become the darling of the denier blogosphere and who is quite adept at stirring up passions.

Unfortunately, his dedication to the principles of science as a learning tool aren't among his priorities ~ this man's priority is championing a political agenda. The Free Market of drill baby drill, burn baby burn, in total disregard for consequences.

Pushing an attitude of Willfully Ignoring what climatology and other Earth sciences are telling us, he believes that with wisps of statistical tricks he has upended decades of climatology knowledge.

What's up with that Watts?

Since Anthony Watts felt the need to delete my post from his forum and thus my ability to defend myself and present the other side of this debate, I'll post it here {with an additional sentence or two}.

What's up with the climate?

A little sequel to my previous post. It's a cut and paste of another post of mine over at Skepticforum.com. I collected a few ScienceDaily.com stories.

K, {plus Mr. Watts and clan} it isn't a game.
How do you manage to show so much contempt for the establishment climatology community and its considered opinion ~ as dramatized by your obsession with McIntyre's statistical machinations and such dog-chasing-tail arguments ~ in the face of all this stuff going on in the real world?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I just wish I could figure out how you folks rationalize that...
. . . with this

What's up with that climate debate?

This website is a modest homemade affair, my visitation is low and discussion zero. That's fine this started as just a place to post and hopefully share my essays.

However, I do enjoy discussion and am quite active at the Skeptic Society forum's "Climate Change" board. I invite anyone interested in some, hopefully, serious discussion to join us.

I bring this up because of a tiny exchange between Anthony Watts and myself, followed by this post over at Skepticforum:

Monday, May 9, 2011

Mann's "hockey stick graph" and McIntyre et al. examined ;-)

Perhaps the most enduring argument AGW “skeptics” use against the scientific consensus regarding manmade global warming is attacking the “Mann hockey stick graph.”

What’s a hockey stick got to do with understanding global warming? Well, it goes back to the 1980s and 90s. With the flood of new atmospheric and Earth Observation data scientists began to search for ways of discovering past climate changes in order to put the new information into historical perspective.

Scientists realized there were many natural “proxies” that recorded climate conditions as they grew. Trees, glaciers, all kinds of geologic depositions on land, under lakes and oceans. They reasoned that it should be possible to learn how to tease out climate information from such proxies.

Michael Mann and a team of pioneering researchers focused on tree-ring proxy studies.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Frauenfeld,Knappenberger,Michaels 2011: No Worries

I heard kind of a sick joke today, but it was so spot on I couldn't help but giggle:
"Global warming contrarians are like those sad chimpanzees who continue carrying their long dead babies."
Get it... talk about denial!


Talking about denial. . .
here is the latest scientific study to be ricocheting through the denier blogosphere ~ "Frauenfeld, Knappenberger, and Michaels 2011"
it claims:

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Ben Santer: This is what a scientist sounds like.

I came across a five star lecture that I feel like sharing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTsc3jV1Otw

{ I appear to be having technical issues with links in this post - you can find properly functioning links at the CFI Discussion Forum }
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

PhD. Ben Santer and the climate debate -
“The General Public: Why Such Resistance?”


Ben Santer giving a hour long lecture at Stanford University, with nearly as much Q&A afterwards.

It begins with an introduction from the late great Stephen Schneider where he takes the time to explain what happened at the infamous IPCC plenary where-after Ben Santer was slandered with false charges of having manipulated Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report. It's a fascinating, revealing story. Then its on to the main show...

... Presented in three stanzas:
~ Science ~
~ Non-science ~
~ Nonsense ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It begins with the UAH Satellite temperature records