Not much nuance left over here.
It seems @Rumraket was right.
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Note the coupling of “Western and Enlightenment values”, which conceals the fact that the Enlightenment was in many respects an attack on many traditional Western ideas. “Traditional Western values” were based on the affirmation of the twin foundations of Athens and Jerusalem. The Enlightenment was largely anti-Jerusalem and accepted only a truncated version of Athens. Those of us who actually do uphold “Western values” do not see many of them left in the thought and actions of the modern intelligentsia.
Yes, there is some thoughtless anti-science and anti-education activity in the USA today, but it’s a direct reaction to the capture of science and of educational institutions by people committed to materialism, atheism, reductionism, etc. And you can’t expect simple everyday people who haven’t got the ability to articulate things very well to provide a very accurate analysis of matters. So they look for champions against what they perceive as an atheist and materialist tyranny, and unfortunately, in their bad judgment, they latch onto people like Ken Ham. They would do better to look to C. S. Lewis, Chesterton, etc., who did not hate science and who did not hate education, but who opposed the modern perversions of both of those things.
As for this:
North Americans owe no apology to the rest of the world, and certainly not to Europeans, who have gleefully abandoned the Western tradition (to which their architecture and older literature testifies) in the name of a pan-European (ultimately aiming to be global) socialist secular humanism. They have traded their Western inheritance for a mess of pottage. North America is in many respects more traditionally Western than England, France, or Germany these days. Compare something like St. John’s College in Annapolis, or the writings of Allan Bloom, with the vision of someone like Angela Merkel, and it’s pretty obvious who is upholding Western tradition and who would like to accelerate its disintegration. I feel alienated enough here on this continent, given the power and totalitarian leanings of its intelligentsia, but I’d rather live here than in Europe – though of course Europe is a wonderful place to visit, because it has so much noble history (even if Europeans themselves are repudiating large parts of that history).
I’m forgetting who was called “one of the finest minds of the Sixteenth Century”, but it wasn’t a compliment.
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The Conversation article I linked to above detailed how the scientific consensus on climate change is achieved and I expected @Eddie to read it since he seems to be genuinely interested in that process. In any case, let’s see how that consensus is achieved.
First, what is the IPCC?
Second, what is the working capacity of the IPCC?
Third, what happens during each assessment cycle?
Fourth, what are the requirements to be part of the scientific community that provides the consensus?
Fifth, what is the peer review process like for the IPCC report?
Sixth, can governments influence the IPCC reports?
Seventh, in summary of what relevance is the IPCC report?
These my friends is how the consensus on climate change is arrived at within the scientific community.
So what is that consensus? From the summarized version the IPCC report for policy makers:
I only quoted the headings. See the report for more details.
Have a blessed Sunday!
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As well as the likes of Stephen Meyer, Douglas Axe, Michael Behe, Michael Denton et al, whose science-denial is no more valid than that of Ken Ham despite its more sophisticated appearance.
BTW, that rant of yours would serve as a very concise summary of the sentiments behind the Wedge Document.
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Pretty hard to discuss the ideas of a thinker when you can’t even remember the name of the thinker. And if your one-sentence remark has any point to it, the point isn’t evident to me.
Edward “Eddie” Robinson, highly trained academic extraordinaire, once again avails himself of his highly trained reading comprehension skills. We are truly fortunate to bear witness.
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If I were trying to prove that there was a hiatus in warming, this is the last paper I would cite.
Curry states in the 2015 article that the question is open, and future data is needed.
The data that were future in 2015 have arrived over the past 6 years, and it’s official: Per Curry’s definition of hiatus (17 years with no years higher in temperature than the first), a hiatus never happened.
You are focused on settling a quibble that started several years ago on a different forum. May I suggest something more worthy of your focus?
Regards,
Chris
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Perhaps you could show us all how “highly trained reading comprehension skills” could divine which thinker of the 16th century that Harshman was alluding to, and which modern writer made the statement which Harshman paraphrased.
That’s not exactly how she defined it. Her three points bore on the question of when a hiatus matters, not the length of time that constitutes a hiatus. That said, she implied (see her first two points) that if there was a “hiatus” even for only 10 years, that had some significance, though it would be more significant if it lasted as long as 17.
Anyhow, my original comment about the hiatus (which was a throwaway, parenthetical side-comment, not a major contention in the post in which it is found, and could be subtracted from that post without affecting the argument of the post) was not based on Curry’s article, but was merely an allusion to the fact that there had been a lengthy period (well over 10 years) with no appreciable warming. And yes, I know that there are all kinds of ways people can try to neutralize that observation, but the fact is that not a single climatologist (known to me anyway) predicted the start of such a lengthy period before the hiatus started. (Indicating that within the theory there could be some periods of relatively flat temperatures, without giving any idea of how frequently such periods might occur, or how long any of them would likely last, or when the next such period would likely start, is hardly a “prediction”, unless the world “prediction” is stretched so far beyond its normal meaning in English as to be unrecognizable.) One would think that people who claim a precise knowledge of every factor that influences climate change would have been able to predict a major break like that, but not one of them did. Odd that some of them knew the rates of warming, and the effects of those rates so well, that they “knew” when the Himalayan glaciers would be gone (a prediction which they later had to retract), but they didn’t know the causes of warming well enough to predict, before it occurred, that there would be a long hiatus. But of course they were extremely imaginative (and in the eyes of many, defensive) in explaining why, after it happened, it was perfectly within expectations. It’s like an economist who could explain the Great Depression in terms of his favored theory after it happened, but didn’t utter a word about its coming beforehand.
As for your claim that the earth has warmed since 2015, I have not contested it. I have not said there has been no warming lately. I have not said the hiatus is still in effect. I have not said that warming should not be a concern. I have not said that human activities have nothing to do with the warming. My original point still stands, i.e., that the use of the 97% figure was based on rumor and hearsay, rather than reading the report the figure came from and placing the 97% figure in the context of that report. I’ve demonstrated this beyond doubt, by the use of simple arithmetic, applied to the survey results. Whatever may be the truth about how much warming there has been, how much it is caused by human activity, and what the best policy responses are, the use of the 97% figure was a classic case of the spread of misinformation. Modern people, including modern people with lots of university degrees, seem prone to accepting misinformation, if it is repeated often enough, particularly if it is repeated often enough by people whose conclusions they happen to agree with. There’s a lesson there somewhere.
Note that no one here has yet conceded that the original report did not justify a “97% of scientists” claim, or even a “97% of climatologists” claim, but at best a “67% of climatologists whose articles were surveyed” claim. It’s typical around here that no point made by Eddie, even if it’s manifestly correct, should ever be conceded.
By the way, since several people here are citing IPCC reports as if their conclusions are beyond doubt, here is a critical response to the latest report, by Ross McKittrick:
There is a link in the article to his original paper.
I do not claim the competence to be able to evaluate McKittrick’s critique, but he surely has been more involved in high-level debate with the experts in the field than any of the self-taught “climatologists” here, and it’s very possible that his critique has some merit.
Note (see his final paragraph in the article on the Curry site) that he does not say that the conclusions of the IPCC authors are false; his critique is concentrated on their methods. And surely a discussion of the reliability of methods is central to good scientific work.
Note that my critique of the 97% number was also, in effect, a critique of a faulty method for determining what the consensus view was. There might be a way of establishing a 97% number, but the method used – incompetent or dishonest interpretation of the data from one particular survey – was an invalid one.
If people want to dispute the McKittrick critique, I would suggest that they start a new topic specifically on the IPCC reports and McKittrick. This thread is becoming too wide-ranging to have any clear focus. In any case, not being an expert in the area, I will stay out of any such discussion (while reserving the right to comment on things such as whether people are fairly representing what McKittrick said, since partisan distortion of people’s words is not uncommon around here). I took a break today from editing essays, but I have to resume that work tomorrow, and for several days. I hope everyone has an enjoyable autumn season.
Likewise to you, Eddie.
Regards, Chris
Why don’t you ever want to discuss methods and evidence in biology, then?
I wouldn’t have spent nearly so much time on it if people had stopped trying to deflect the discussion to the evidence for global warming, etc. Rumraket provided the money quotes from the paper that originated the 97% number. All that was necessary to shut me up immediately was for people here to say: “You’re right; that particular survey did not justify the 97% claim, but only a 67% claim.” That would have ended the discussion of “a quibble that started several years ago on a different forum” in very short order. The prolongation of that discussion was not my doing, but that of those who failed to make a reasonable concession such as, “OK, you’re right about the misuse of that survey to justify the 97% number, but don’t you think that even if the number is not 97%, even if it’s only 67%, it’s still a clear majority?” If everyone had come back with that response, I would have said, “Yes, it is,” and this discussion could have been over days ago.
That’s an excellent example of examining opinions rather than data (coupled with an appeal to authority)
…in which she gives her opinion, and fails to apply the appropriate statistical tests. For example, she says that the difference between the ‘hiatus’ data is “statistically insignificant” from a flat line - which is insufficient to draw a conclusion, since she fails to also test it against the previous rising data.
It’s not, unless you want to earn how to cherry-pick data and not analyse it properly.
Since you won’t discuss the details, you shouldn’t have bothered to cite that paper.
Since you have not done that, you are either poorly-trained, or lacking in integrity.
Pick one.
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Highlight any comment on this thread that suggests the conclusions of the IPCC reports “are beyond doubt”? If you can’t please retract this strawman.
Anyone who has read the IPCC report will see its written in the same probabilistic tone as other scientific writings. Some conclusions are made with high confidence, while others are drawn with moderate confidence.
So why did you link to an article you don’t understand? If a new thread is opened and objections are raised to the points in that article, how would you engage with those criticisms?
And those experts consider him to be a kook. Examples are found here:
https://climatefeedback.org/authors/ross-mckitrick/
There are many methods asides from “optimal fingerprinting” which Ross goes after in his paper that can be used to test for causality between human activities and climate change and they all tell the same story: out CO2 emissions are changing the climate for worse.
The IPCC is the most representative of the community of climate scientists, so we can safely conclude that the conclusions arrived at in its reports represent the consensus of climatologists. As their reports read, the earth is warming up dangerously and that is the consensus. Read the report for more details.
His critique is concentrated on the earliest form of the optimal fingerprinting method for climate change detection and attribution. A lot of modifications have happened since then or does he think that teams of statisticians working on those reports wouldn’t be aware of limitations in the earliest form of the methodology and not try to improve them.
Currently, it rains almost every day in most parts of my country as we are in the rainy season. We don’t have autumns here.
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Right, “Eddie.” 'Cuz those were the most germane points of his comment.
Keep it up, you’re a laugh a minute.
(Helpful hint: The individual in question who was called ““one of the finest minds of the Sixteenth Century” almost certainly did not actually live in the Sixteenth Century. That would be the reason it was not a compliment.)
almost certainly?
So you don’t know who is being referred to. As I suspected.
I didn’t say that I didn’t understand it, only that I was not competent to render judgment on it. I mentioned it to show that there exist highly competent people, who have been engaging with climate science data for years, who do not fall prostrate before the latest report from the IPCC, the way the people here, who to the last man are completely untrained quacks when it comes to climate science, do.
Sorry to hear that you are deprived of one of creation’s most beautiful spectacles.