It would help if you would specify, using the minutes and seconds on the interview timer, which of his statements in the interview you consider to be “demonstrable falsehoods”, instead of just uttering a general denunciation that he is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Petty caviling again.
I don’t care what you assume. If I said I didn’t believe you had training or experience in Psychiatry, would you care?
What braggadocious claims? I’ve stated I don’t regard myself as having any expertise in climate science. (Christy does, but I don’t.) I don’t know what claims you’re talking about. That I’ve published books and articles? How can those be “braggadocious claims” when they’re simple facts?
On the other hand, if you want to see some “braggadocio”, you could look at some of the videos of “Professor Dave”, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYfOA5FR6gg. He thinks, with his very slight background in chemistry, that he has demolished James Tour, a world-class synthetic chemist. The swaggering display of twenty-something testosterone is jaw-dropping. (Of course, in a series of YouTube responses, Tour, displaying a massively more detailed knowledge of the relevant chemistry, destroys the guy, but that’s a topic for another post.)
2:26 - Changes near a station can really affect that station
3:56 - Same claim
Analysis of the so called problematic stations has found the impacts to be negligible. In fact, the so-called bad stations show a cooler trend than the so-called good stations, so removing them increases the warming signal. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2009JD013094
6:36 - Climate models are too hot!
This is true in a limited sense, but as presented it is false. It is true that models have outer confidence for the extreme end of their range. This is a known issue, related to the sensitivity of models to accumulating feedback. That’s why it’s important to use the median range of estimates as you move farther out. But… as presented here, it is implied that the models are always hot throughout their range of estimates, which is flatly false. Models are broadly accurate over short timescales (2-5 decades), and only get ‘hot’ as you move into 50+ years.
Thank you for providing specifics. And thanks for providing links to something other than a blog site produced by amateurs and dilettantes. I’m not wedded to the idea that everything Christy says is right.
Rather than quickly skim this stuff and come back quickly with a superficial answer, I will look over these examples in the coming weeks, and do some more thinking and reading, before responding. In the meantime, I have some very difficult editing work ahead of me, which must take priority over leisure debates like this, so don’t expect a thoughtful or detailed answer soon.
That is an utter falsehood. He has stated that he reads the primary literature, unlike you.
It’s not a question of superior understanding. It’s honesty about the data. I’d say that his understanding helps with his deceptions.
Again with the tonedeafness. Dissertations in science are not about posturing and showing how much you know, they are about contributing new knowledge.
I suspect that @CrisprCAS9 has higher aspirations–a faculty position in which teaching is secondary to research.
You don’t know any actual working scientists, do you?
Maybe that attitude explains, at least partially, your failure as an academic.
Why do you persist with your absurd fantasy that there are clear walls between scientific disciplines?
That would be the same James Tour who claims the theory of evolution, a theory within the field of biology, is not true because he, as a chemist, does not understand it.
So uhm, Eddie, what’s the difference between CrisprCAS9 writing posts as a non-expert, but with links and explanations, and other people doing the same thing on that website you are so desperate to discredit and ignore? Either way there are explanations and links to the relevant literature.
Why do you only have trash talking points that IMMEDIATELY COLLAPSE on scrutiny?
The difference is that I don’t want to have to waste my time sifting through the dozens of pro-AGW articles on that site, many of which aren’t addressed to Christy at all, and many of which don’t address the specific claims Christy makes in the interview (not surprising since every one of the articles was written before the Christy interview). I want to read only stuff that is directly keyed to particular claims Christy made in the interview.
Since Crispr cooperated at the end, I will look, as time permits, at the particular items Crispr provided. But what I’d really like to see is a YouTube exchange (or some similar exchange) between Christy and a trained climatologist on the questions. I disregard in advance the expected response from Mercer that scientists never debate things; aside from the fact that Mercer is just plain wrong about that (scientists do sometimes debate things with other scientists), scientists should debate things; the debate/dialogical format is a better one than “Read this article which disproves Christy”, because it allows for rejoinders and responses to rejoinders. Crispr expects me to read rebuttals of Christy and just accept them, but how does he know Christy couldn’t respond to those rebuttals? The dialogue or debate format allows for that. And again, I’m talking here about dialogue between the experts, not between the sort of people that post here or on Crispr’s climate-groupie web site.
It doesn’t even have to be Christy. It could be a debate between any AGW skeptic and any AGW supporter – as long as both of the people in the debate are verifiably trained climatologists with significant publications in the field. Does anyone here know of any such debate that I can watch? I know of one between Curry and Mann, but I want some fresh examples. Anyone know of any other debates/dialogues available online between the titans of the field, as opposed to the pipsqueaks in the fan clubs?
The James Tour I’m talking about is one with greater scientific achievement in his field than 99% of the people posting here have in their own fields, and the particular discussion that I linked to is not addressed directly to whether or not evolution is true, but to particular claims that “Professor Dave” – a smart-alecky youngster who would provide a perfect image, in an illustrated dictionary, for the word “cockiness” – about chemistry pertaining to the origin of life. In video after video (the series is multi-part), Tour shows that the “Professor” not only does not understand chemistry at a sufficiently deep level to be entitled to speak on the subject, but doesn’t even correctly understand his own sources.
It would be interesting to watch a debate on the origin of life between Tour and someone competent to share a stage with him. If any such video debate ever surfaces, I’d appreciate being alerted to it.
No, I expect you to read the rebuttals and then see what responses there are to them. If the only responses are in popular media and interviews… then you should accept the best current evidence of the field, which is what’s currently published and supported through peer-review.
No, but having worked for decades in professional debate over all manner of points, I can tell you that how debates proceed and how laymen judge them are two things that are much less related to the underlying merits than one might think. A career spent in professional debate increases, rather than decreasing, one’s skepticism over the value of debate as a format for resolving anything.
Now, I know nothing about climate science. But I accept that if I decided to inform myself, it would be a long, hard slog. It would take a while. I would misunderstand things along the way. I’d have to chat with climate scientists to clarify points. But if I did the hard work, I might just emerge with some kind of truly informed layman’s grasp. I would certainly need, of course, to understand the dominant paradigm before taking on board critiques of it by the climate skeptics, just as anyone who wants to understand the merits of intelligent design must, first and foremost, inform himself about biology.
Debate is not merits-driven except to the extent the participants believe the target audience is sensitive to merits. This means that when issues are of great political and public concern, the quality of oral debate is almost always rock-bottom. So you get, for example, Stephen Meyer arguing with actual scientists, and he gets to perform, and people get to say how very clever he was and how much better-pressed his trousers were and how confident he sounds. Biologists watch it and laugh at the sheer raging idiocy of it; fools lap it up.
So I think you are better off not being able to find that debate. A strong scientific consensus isn’t infallible, but it is the best we laymen have, until we decide to take that deep dive.
I’m all in for grabbing the popcorn and taking in a spirited debate, and perhaps glean some insight, but I do no think debates make a very sound basis for taking positions on scientific questions. In a debate, the more seasoned and confident public speaker, complete with wry asides and witty rejoinders, will win. Many capable scientists, who might publish an definitive paper, can barely mumble let alone debate.
