The Sad Tale of Anna Haynes

March 2010
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The Sad Tale of Anna Haynes

30 March 2010

George Rebane

Dr Anna Haynes is a True Believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming and its dire consequences for all Mankind. She has taken great exception to my being an AGW skeptic, and has recorded her distress –

• On her personal website NC Focus,
• On her community information website NC Voices,
• During her requested meetings with me,
• During an unexpected walk-in at one of my Rotary luncheons,
• In unsolicited phone calls to our residence during which she has attempted to interrogate me and my wife.

Recently (27mar10) she launched an attack of unfounded allegations on TechTest, a philanthropic merit scholarship project of the non-profit Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation (sesfoundation.org) of which I am a board member and its Director of Research. She alleges that the actual purpose of the test is to gather and indoctrinate the participating young scholars to become climate change skeptics.

She has a longer history of such dealings with my friend and SESF colleague Russ Steele (NC Media Watch). Additionally, her unfathomable labors have also included Messrs Michael McDaniel (SESF) and Martin Light (CABPRO). I will let them tell their own stories.

Tonight Dr Haynes called during dinner to pose yet another question – have I or any of my family been compensated for my skepticism of AGW. As soon as I said ‘no’, she thanked me, hung up, and posted the conversation as a comment here.

This series of intensifying harassments lasting over a year are most disconcerting. My lay assessment is that I am dealing with a disturbed person, and therefore I have not responded to her as a peer. In a recent comment thread I recommended that she seek professional help. I stand by that recommendation, and hope that she would reconsider her continued confrontations until after getting such help.

Posted in Current Affairs, Happenings, Nevada County

100 responses to “The Sad Tale of Anna Haynes”

George Rebane

23 June 2010

Mr Rabett – I don’t know who you are, but your response is the typical summary dismissal that one gets from true believers with either maximum hubris or minimal knowledge or, perhaps, both. The dialogue is then mercifully short, ending in a burst of heat and no light.

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Anna Haynes

23 June 2010

Russ, in case you missed this:
“The more peer-reviewed papers a climatologist has published and the more often those papers are cited, the more likely it is that the researcher supports the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change (ACC). That’s the conclusion of a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
http://scienceblogs.com/classm/2010/06/the_credibility_factor.php
re Russ’s

“In his book The Great Global Warming Blunder, Dr. Spencer explains…”
Russ, you might want to consider who published this book. The publisher is Encounter Books, “an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., which is supported by The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.”
Culture and Education. Not science. And Encounter Books is headed by an art critic, for heaven’s sake.
And from their 2007 IRS Form 990, here’s the charitable-activity purpose of parent org. Encounter for Culture and Education:
“The organization is an editor, publisher and distributor for books related to democratic society which have no traditional means of publication.”
Roy Spencer couldn’t find a traditional means of publication for his book?
Does all this matter? Yes, if we’d like our children to have any respect for us – “…the time horizon for climate change issues extends beyond 2100 and what is out there is seriously worrying…”
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/06/death-doom-and-disaster-coming-soon-to.html
Plus action to prevent it is downright cheap:
EPA analysis: 40 cents a day to fix climate change – http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/fixing-global-warming-40-cents-day

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Russ Steele

23 June 2010

Anna I could care less about who published Dr Spencer’s book. He has put his data in public view for analysis. We all know from the CRU Climategate emails that the climate change peer review systems is busted big time. If you are not a warmer, your papers never see the light of day. Same on the lefty blogs you visit, then bring there snarky crap here, if you ask a tough question on these blogs it vanishes. Why bother? A better use of my time is bringing the FACTS about the human global warming hoax to the general public’s attention. I must be succeeding at some level, the general publics concern for global warming keeps declining.
Now, where is Dr Spencer wrong? He has a blog where he published his finding for all to evaluate. Go for it, tell us where the satellite data is in error, and Dr Spencer’s analysis is flawed? Baffling us with horse pucky is a waste of our time and your energy. Energy you could invest in refuting Dr Spencer. Too hard? Really?
Why spend 40 cents a day on something that does not need to be fixed? I would rather spend the 40 cents a day on helping third world villagers get clean water.
Good day!

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Gregory

23 June 2010

Fabricated Scientist Eli Rabett, aka Dr. J. H. of Howard and NASA-Goddard, enjoying your visit?
“luminous” [Notice how the alarmists are overrepresented by the sock puppet brigade?] …Regarding the paper “Sudden cosmic ray decreases: No change of global cloud cover” I’d already read it, try it yourself, it’s a hoot. Caught with their pants down, they obviously had to fix it up on the fly as the Danes had actually published finding the decreases about when the paper was received. In section [19]) they just patch it up by casting doubt on one methodology… “Without further discussion we would like to state that a study as the one by Svensmark et al. [2009] including Fd events which are associated with the solar proton events leads easily to questionable or even contradictory results”.
Of course, that’s different than actually finding the results were questionable or contradictory. But that’s enough for Lumi, and similar to both Anna Haynes and FlorifullofSomthing, who seem to just search “RealClimate” for discouraging words, and declare this or that research as “debunked” if anything contrary is found. A fine and devastating case is the defense by Shaviv and Veizer from the hit piece by Rahmstorf et al (including Gavin Schmidt) that “Flori” thought the last word.
Try reading it. Choice bits: “As openly admitted in the German/Swiss “manifesto”, publicly released by the Potsdam-Institut f¨ur Klimafolgenforschung (24.10.2003), the attack on SV03 is motivated mostly by political considerations.” and “We show that Rahmstorf et al.’s claim for statistical insignificance is based on misunderstanding of the underlying assumptions in Bartlett’s formula for the effective number of degrees of freedom when correlating time series. They employed Bartlett’s formula at a limit where it grossly fails to yield a meaningful result. When properly used, the correlation between the reconstructed Phanerozoic temperature and CRF is shown to be statistically significant, conservatively at least at the 99.7% level. It is in fact the most significant correlation between any climate variable and a radiative forcing proxy on a time scale longer than a few million years. Moreover, the CRF data and the 18O data are backed with additional, independent data sets, making the link redundant and robust. It implies, again, that the CRF was the dominant climate driver on the multimillion year time scale.”
http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate
The folks fully invested in CO2 driven positive feedback warming just can’t deal with the likes of Shaviv & Veizer, and it bears repeating they came to their results completely independently and both had been believers in CO2 warming; in fact, Veizer was about to abandon his research because it didn’t match the CO2 record when Shaviv emailed him that he had something that seemed to fit.
This also fits with a claim by a friend of mine, a postdoc managing a paleomagnetism lab, who assured me that in paleontology a correlation between temperatures and carbon 14 had long been noted but was treated something like the crazy aunt in the attic… they knew she was up there but no one knew how to handle her and so pretty much ignored the issue. A big Someone Else’s Problem field erected on top of the connection.

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papertiger

24 June 2010

Eli says; Mr. Rebane, the atmosphere is full of turbulent winds. Turbulence is chaotic. Therefore airplanes cannot fly.
As the saying goes, all models are wrong, some are useful. GCMs are useful. You are wrong.
That’s so funny Josh. Even when describing your own baliwick, you get it exactly backward.
GCMs make the pretense of describing order from chaos, which are then used by puff chested, would be masters of the universe, to demand airports be closed, by threatening the airplanes won’t be able to fly.
Met Office atmospheric models cause international chaos
“Not one single weather balloon has been sent up to measure how much volcanic ash is in the air.” Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walter added. ”The flight ban, made on the basis just of computer calculations, is resulting in billion-high losses for the economy […] In future we demand that reliable measurements are presented before a flying ban is imposed.”

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Eli Rabett

24 June 2010

Bart, at ourchangingclimate is commenting on the issue of the brilliant BS, but perhaps Eli might take advantage of this lull to summarize the Goodknight issue by using the WayBack machine to something the bunny wrote a while ago
——————
Uncle Eli has always admired astronomy, botany, and zoology as sciences with important amateur participation. By nurturing the large community of those interested in the science these fields have built important support groups, and amateurs have made important contributions. Many amateurs become obsessed with relatively narrow and previously trodden areas. Within those areas their knowledge often exceeds that of professionals. To Eli the most important thing is that people get to experience the joy of science. The smartest thing NASA ever did was reserve time on the Hubble for amateurs and some good science has resulted.
What amateurs lack as a group is perspective, an understanding of how everything fits together and a sense of proportion. Graduate training is designed to pass lore from advisors to students. You learn much about things that didn’t work and therefore were never published [hey Prof. I have a great idea!…Well actually son, we did that back in 06 and wasted two years on it], whose papers to trust, and which to be suspicious of [Hey Prof. here’s a great new paper!… Son, don’t trust that clown.] In short the kind of local knowledge that allows one to cut through the published literature thicket.
But this lack makes amateurs prone to get caught in the traps that entangled the professionals’ grandfathers, and it can be difficult to disabuse them of their discoveries. Especially problematical are those who want science to validate preconceived political notions, and those willing to believe they are Einstein and the professionals are fools. Put these two types together and you get a witches brew of ignorance and attitude.
Unfortunately climate science is as sugar to flies for those types.

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Eli Rabett

24 June 2010

paper tiger, Eli believes that BP made similar comments about various unnecessary safety procedures before the platform hit the bottom of the ocean.

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papertiger

24 June 2010

But the part you fail to mention Josh, BP also greased the right palms, and paid homage to the popular dogmas in order to gain cursory government acceptance of their shoddy practices.
Rest assured the oil companies who cleave close to the truth about GW alarmists, and their political allies, are scrutinized very carefully, and their safety proceedures rest on more then PC lip service.

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luminous beauty

24 June 2010

George,
In spite of your prodigious output of of techno-babble, you have utterly failed to convince me that strange chaos does not give rise to boundary conditions. Perhaps I should take a page from Wittgenstein and just show you.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1ds3y8/www.exploratorium.edu/complexity/java/lorenz.html

Instead, the large scale model or (under dubious assumptions) its submodels must be identified through a process of numerical estimation (glorified regression fits) that use measured and presumed observations of the past behavior of the process to be modeled.

A number of things wrong here. Numerical methods aren’t regression fits, ‘glorified or otherwise’. They are iterative interpolations of the sums of non-linear differential equations. A process much like how we interpolated the value of pi or the values of trig functions before calculus.
The largest number of processes are ab initio calculations from well understood physics that haven’t been near a regression fit since they were ‘proved’ under laboratory conditions. Those small number of processes or ‘subsystems’ that are empirically derived (for example: how to partition the energy from the atmospheric drag of falling raindrops) aren’t inputted as regression fits to ‘past behaviors’, they are empirical differential equations derived from in situ observations. Because they are limited by observed processes under historical conditions, they actually make the models more conservative.
Russ,
Spencer makes his flimsy hypothetical speculations about as yet unobserved, in fact, contrary to observation, massively increasing nimbo-stratus clouds boiling out of the tropical oceans and limiting the temperature sensitivity of external climate forcings without even postulating any explanatory mechanism. Weak. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to whether this would be a good thing. (Think: coastal flooding/inland drought)
Now, I’m not saying such wildly divergent emergent properties in the fractal phase space of meteorological chaotic behavior are impossible or even unlikely. I’m just saying, look before you leap from the frying pan into the fire, thinking it will make everything cozy and nice.
It’s this same illogical, short sighted, small minded and biased thinking that permeates those who would resurrect the Greater MWP without inferring what that would mean about equilibrium climate sensitivity.
Greg,
It is one of the more common tactics of denial to take one small quote out of context from a scientific study, interpret it to mean something other than it does, and tout that interpretation as a complete refutation of the entirety of the study.
The ultimate killer of the cosmic ray hypothesis to explain modern warming is: There hasn’t been a correlating decrease, or increase, in cosmic ray intensity over the period of modern warming.
I can only feel sorrow for your poor brain being subjected to such self abuse.

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George Rebane

24 June 2010

Ms Luminous – you and I have clearly received our training and practiced our crafts in different universes. If not, then at least one of us can make a good case with our university for a full tuition refund on the grounds that they taught us nothing. But thank you for contributing to this comment thread.

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Anna Haynes

24 June 2010

Thank you luminous and Eli; it’s refreshing to see the big dogs take down the local folk.
(…who seem wholly unaware that it’s possible they could be wrong & the climate science community be right.)

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Dixon Cruickshank

24 June 2010

(…who seem wholly unaware that it’s possible they could be wrong & the climate science community be right.)
aaahhhhhh – No —– since the cold period of 60’s and 70’s and the advent of ther warmers warmimg period (mid 80’s )was 20 yrs
No warming in the last 15 and counting – Per – Dr Phil Jones CRU 2010 – so about the same length of time, so why wouldn’t we be expecting a return to colder temps – makes more sense than claiming we’ll burn up in the next 20 – just say’in

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Jon P

24 June 2010

Eli,
Until you can accurately describe events when you write a post on your website, then perhaps people might be interested in what you have to say. You are starting from a position of being mistaken or lying. I prefer not to believe people who post inacuracies and ignore requests to correct them.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/06/eli-is-friendly-bunny.html
So is it a mistake or a lie?

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Jon P

24 June 2010

Misspelling “inaccuracies”, Jon you are killing me here!

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Anna Haynes

24 June 2010

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/

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Greg Goodknight

24 June 2010

“The ultimate killer of the cosmic ray hypothesis to explain modern warming is: There hasn’t been a correlating decrease, or increase, in cosmic ray intensity over the period of modern warming.”
And which cosmic rays are those? I note you didn’t actually acknowledge that politics killed the CERN CLOUD experiment funding sometime around 1996 because Dr. Kirkby and other CLOUD collaborators were guessing the cosmic ray connected could account from a half to all of the 20th century warming. The funding got reinstated only recently, in 2006. The experimental apparatus is in place, data is being taken.
I’ve no doubt all the alarmist sock puppets would be up in arms had politics killed any of their major experiments.
Per Solanki, the 20th century saw about a doubling of solar magnetic flux and solar wind, to about an 8 to 10 thousand year maximum, and the start of this was before we could directly measure such things. Now we’re in a significant solar minimum and GCR are at their highest since the space age started. We’re in the midst of the experiment, and, as one prominent scientist and celebrated environmentalist recently stated,
“The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven’t got the physics worked out yet.”
-James Lovelock, March 2010.
Keep the stiff upper lip, Dr. Joshua Halpern aka Eli the Bunny. My life will take much less of a hit if the GCR link is disproven than your life and reputation will take a hit if the Lindzens, Svensmarks, Friis-Christensens, Shavivs, Veizers and a number of others turn out to be right. And, with a fraction of the funding, they’re still on their feet and you’re reduced to insulting guys with BS degrees using your sock puppet front. You really should be ashamed of yourself.

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anonymudder

24 June 2010

I like my anonymity more than I like any of you characters, but I can assure you that Greg Goodknight’s description of HMC fits exactly with my own experience there in the late 70s and early 80s. Down to academic requirements for everyone regardless of major, down to knowledge of the dorms, and our various cultures and stories of each dorm, and down to knowledge of their rather obscure flying program, tail number of aircraft, field most people soloed at, who the program hero was — and what a great program it was — and run by one of the most inspirational woman I ever met, Iris Critchell (32 Olympics, WWII WASP P-51 Ferry Pilot, Powder Puff Derby winner, ….)
Why he would somehow obtain that knowledge just to fake out you dumbasses is beyond me.
HMC was a school that heavily emphasized that us geeks should understand the role of science in society. To that end, all of these former Manhattan Project scientists taught us not only the math, physics, chemistry, but also the stories of the scientists who could stand up and say no (or no thank you.)
I read what he wrote about the two semesters of physics, and then I read how lots of people misinterpreted that — and what was that, some example of intellect by tamino and all? Or just the usual arrogant twittery of so many ph.d buffoons?
Okay, I feel an obStandByMe coming on because of the HMC nostalgia:
obStandByMe: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was ~~twelve~~ nineteen, went away to nerd college, drank beer, and failed out with girls. Jesus, does anyone?

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papertiger

25 June 2010

[“Thank you luminous and Eli; it’s refreshing to see the big dogs take down the local folk.”]
ANNA. I take it you have revised your previous disdain toward anonymous commenters who hide their identity. As long as they spout your brand of dogma, they are “big dogs” (assuming that is a compliment) and “refreshing”.
How illuminating.

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bluegrue

25 June 2010

Greg, I’d like to take you up on your description of GRC issues.
Greg:I’ve no doubt all the alarmist sock puppets would be up in arms had politics killed any of their major experiments.
Here’s one I would have liked to see go up, by now we would have had 10 years worth of reliable albedo data and cloud cover. I take it you would agree that having that data would be a Good Thing (TM).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory
Greg:that politics killed the CERN CLOUD experiment funding sometime around 1996
Two years before the original concept? Dr. Kirby: Original CLOUD concept: Beam measurements of a CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) chamber, 24 February 1998, CERN-OPEN-2001-028.
Greg:Per Solanki, the 20th century saw about a doubling of solar magnetic flux and solar wind
Per Solanki, the very nature letter where Greg got this data from:

Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.

Furthermore, Solanki and Krivova 2003 “Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?”

This comparison shows without requiring any recourse to modeling that since roughly 1970 the solar influence on climate (through the channels considered here) cannot have been dominant. In particular, the Sun cannot have contributed more than 30% to the steep temperature increase that has taken place since then, irrespective of which of the three considered channels is the dominant one determining Sun-climate interactions: tropospheric heating caused by changes in total solar irradiance, stratospheric chemistry influenced by changes in the solar UV spectrum, or cloud coverage affected by the cosmic ray flux.

I’m still looking forward to the CLOUD results, as they will likely improve our understanding on cloud formation.

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luminous beauty

25 June 2010

George,
I don’t doubt that you might be a competent systems engineer. However, the modeling methods used by engineers are not exactly the same as those used by climate scientists. It is wrong to assume you can simply transfer knowledge from one field to another.

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George Rebane

25 June 2010

On the contrary Luminous, having spent my life in engineering and science, I can reliably tell you that there are no ‘modeling methods’ that are unique to engineering and others unique to climate scientists. Both fields use the best that is available, and the techniques of large scale numerical models of the kind we are discussing are common to both. And the power and glory of the mathematically based domains of knowledge is that you can transfer knowledge from one field to another. Finally, over the last fifty years it has been the tools and techniques (especially modeling methodologies) of the systems sciences that have spread uniformly and deeply into EVERY other field ranging from financial engineering, through genomics, sociology, econometrics, astronomy, …, and now especially climate science.
I have been privileged to have worked in both governemnt research and private sector technology developments and have contributed to the expansion of human knowledge in both areas. Not to wave degrees about, but mine are in physics, control/estimation theory, and a dual doctorate in complex dynamic systems/computer science (machine intelligence).
One of the more active topics of research in the system sciences is the extent of our ability to predict futures which has deep philosophical implications as to what kind of universe we live in. We believe we have already hit the limits of predictability in an intrinsically stochastic and chaotic world. There probably exists a deep principle of future uncertainty equivalent to the various forms of present uncertainty represented in Heisenberg. All we currently see is that all of our numerical extrapolations have attendant dispersion measures that explode as we bravely stride into computational futures. Even the attractors that we have discovered turn out to be intrinsically unreliable upon deeper study.
In sum, basing what might be draconian public policy on this ‘science’ is something that we should do very carefully because we really know less than the little read and the politicians think we know.

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luminous beauty

25 June 2010

George,
Common methods of interpolation via statistical regression used in the usual engineering studies are eschewed in climate models, specifically because they are useless for the explicit purpose of the exercise. You are making the incorrect assumption that is what is done in GCMs.
As for your broad hand-waving rhetoric about ‘attendant dispersion measures that explode as we bravely stride into computational futures’ and ‘attractors that we have discovered turn out to be intrinsically unreliable’, that may be reasonable in abstract musing of some unquantified distant future or unphysical speculation about unforseeable emergent properties, but that doesn’t mean GCMs don’t have any utility within limited time spans.

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George Rebane

25 June 2010

Luminous, I wasn’t referring to “common methods of interpolation via statistical regression”, in fact I wasn’t referring to any “interpolation” per se at all. And your disparaging “broad hand-waving rhetoric” remarks while at the same time ascribing my comment to be an “abstract musing”, and concluding from my compact summary that I have claimed “GCMs don’t have any utility within limited time spans” persuades me that this conversation may be over because you may have an agenda to promote, and/or that our knowledge bases don’t have a large enough intersection to make future exchanges in this format productive.
You see, I don’t know anything about you or your background, and the occasional insertions of technical language in your comments made me believe that I could talk to you as a fellow professional. But that clearly is not the case. Anyone who has developed GCM models would instantly understand my remarks and build upon them, but would not consider them to be “broad hand-waving” since they address the heart of the matter.

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luminous beauty

25 June 2010

George,
I admit you haven’t referred to statistical interpolation explicitly, though you have implied as much. Would you like to re-phrase this statement?

Instead, the large scale model or (under dubious assumptions) its submodels must be identified through a process of numerical estimation (glorified regression fits) that use measured and presumed observations of the past behavior of the process to be modeled.

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Jon P

25 June 2010

Anna Haynes | 24 June 2010 at 06:34 PM
Good catch that must be Eli’s problem. Have you told him yet?

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George Rebane

25 June 2010

Luminous, (near) linear systems can be identified (ie. their transfer functions computed) through a process of convolving its output and input series. Convolving actual data streams can viewed as a ‘glorified regression fit’ although it is much more. Complex non-linear processes are often modeled by generating their response surfaces through some pretty intensive number crunching. Such highly dimensioned response surfaces map input vectors into output vectors. BTW, the response surface itself may be expressed as a high-dimensioned distribution, and the resulting transfer function implemented through a process of stochastic sampling.
This process is very general and very powerful, and very computationally intensive. The alternative is to implement sub-process analytical models using, say, known physics and chemistry. But for complex processes like the earth’s atmosphere interfacing with ground, water, and space energy transfers, such analytical models are either not known or are (dubious) analytical approximations revealed by the most recent research. An example of this is central to discussing global GCMs is the current state of ignorance about the global carbon budget and, specifically, flow of CO2 dynamics which defines the oft bandied carbon cycle. There are many other similar and significant sub-processes that involve everything from solar wind, to cosmic rays, to even quantum effects – all of which are described fairly well by local analytics, but poorly understood in the large scale (where even more dubious assumptions are made to cobble together the sub-processes). Anyway, here’s a link that gives a high-level indication of these kinds of problems. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070509161113.htm

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Greg Goodknight

25 June 2010

Thank you to the “bluegrue” sock puppet for finding a nit to pick; yes, the ‘around 1996’ was indeed 1998. And I note bg does not dispute that it was shameful and partisan IPCC politics that killed CLOUD the first time around… Folks who think much like the big bunny just knew CLOUD was a waste of time; it’s important to have big rodents around to tell the small rodents what to think if they want to have any chance at getting the proper results, a tenure track position, funding and papers published.
No one thinks the GCR flux is the only driver that matters; I’ve not seen anyone with a claim on having a valid model of the great oceanic oscillations and there are reasonable claims that most of that warming was due to those natural factors. I note ‘bg’ doesn’t dispute the meat of Solanki’s Nature letter, that the 20th century saw a solar grand maximum. The latest I’ve seen from Solanki (the AGW talk in December) is that he now sees our Sun is most likely entering into a Dalton-style minimum.

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bluegrue

26 June 2010

Greg, you are welcome to interpret data in a way contrary to the opinion held by the original author, as in the case of Per Solanki. However, in general when people cite a paper to support an argument they also roughly agree with the interpretation of the data as given by the author. Therefore it is common curtesy to make readers explicitly aware, if you reinterpret data in a way contradicting the original author. That’s at least the case in my circles, your milage may vary.
As for CLOUD, there’s that CLOUD proposal of April 2000. Prominently in figure 2 they use the Friis-Christensen and Lassen 1991 correlation of sunspot cycle length and Northern heimisphere temperature. They ignore the Lassen 1999 (December) paper, which highlights the break-up of the correlation past 1990. Three months time to recognize and put it into context in the proposal, but nothing of the sort is done. Do you really think, that such an omission goes unnoticed in the grant application process? Oh, and as I’ve stated in my previous post, I look forward to see the results.

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Greg Goodknight

26 June 2010

Solanki, in his original letter, made the comment “…we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades”.
I do not disagree nor am I aware of others disagreeing with that too strongly; good cases have been made for oceanic oscillations being the dominant cause. There are a number of other forcings, and all the GCR-cloud link needs to do is account for about one-third of the 1.7W/m2 attributed to fossil fuel use to allow the current GCMs to balance with no positive feedback terms for CO2 and water vapor, and therefore no chance of a “tipping point” due to increasing CO2. No positive feedback, no tipping point, no chance for catastrophic warming and no justification for reparations from the first world to the 3rd world or need to immediately scale back carbon footprints in the USA to per capita levels not seen since Lincoln was President.
Please, name one runaway positive feedback warming event in the geologic record.

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Al Tekhasski

26 June 2010

Eli “Rabbett” Halpern wrote: “Rather curious that Greg Goodknight brags on undergraduate physics at Harvey Mudd while Tamino has a doctorate in same.”
I don’t see his degree mentioned in this announcement of the first fellow recipient of prestigious [eh] Janet A. Mattei Research Program,
http://www.aavso.org/news/foster.shtml
with generous funding up to $55,160 as per 1/12/2010.
Eli, would you care to support your statement with some evidence? Does the HMC even have a PhD program?
P.S. I really wonder why computer programmers tend to lose screws at the end of their software career and turn to climatology? Tobis, Grant, Mashey, Pratt, the list never ends… Same goes for many people who turn into vocal global warming groupies while having no foggiest clue about fluid dynamics or anything else …

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bluegrue

26 June 2010

Solanki, in his original letter, made the comment “…we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades”.
Congratulations, Greg, you’ve found the exact place, where Solanki cites his 2003 paper “Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970?”, which I quoted above.
Oh and the goal poles have just been moved by a few miles. Now it’s no longer AGW that may be dangerous, no, you claim that only run-away AGW can be dangerous to mankind. Great. Allow me to decline your gracious offer of goal-post-chasing. Farewell.

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Greg Goodknight

27 June 2010

‘BG’, I’ve not moved an inch, you apparently completely misunderstand the issue and the Solanki opinion is immaterial, except perhaps as a genuflection to alarmists that might otherwise be wanting to interfere with his grant applications.
Without positive feedbacks, there is no danger, and AGW is small when compared to natural variations. And the only experimental/observational evidence that CO2-H2O positive feedbacks exist (that I’m aware of) are the GCM simulations that are made to fit the 20th century warming by turning that feedback ‘knob’ within the models.
However, with negative feedbacks, which appear likely to be the case, there is less than a degree of warming per doubling of CO2. Very much no danger, and AGW very much being lost in the noise of natural variations.
It’s now about 10 1/2 years since the maximum of solar cycle 23, our Sun remains in a deep minimum, and there’s been no statistically significant warming in about 15 years. We live in interesting times.

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Russ Steele

27 June 2010

The Reference Frame has some information that readers might find interesting on the influence of the sun.
The analyses of the influence of the Sun on the climate in the latest IPCC report relied on one solar physicist, Dr Judith Lean. Ms Lean is a co-author with this paper:
Lean J., Roltmann G., Harder J., Kopp G.: Source contributions to new understanding of global change and solar variability, Sol. Phys., 230, 27-53, 2005
The paper claims that the solar activity didn’t rise when the global climate was heating up a little bit in the recent decades. There were no other solar physicists or astrophysicists in the IPCC.
The influence of the Sun is a pretty important question, isn’t it?
Isn’t the Sun a conceivable factor that could influence things? Even the people who like to believe the IPCC conclusions seem to agree that it’s very bad if such a report depends on a single paper and a single IPCC author who actually finds herself in a conflict of interest because she’s a co-author of the single paper that the IPCC evaluates.
You will find out that a total of six “solar” papers were suggested for inclusion in the IPCC Report, like a couple of people who understand cosmic rays. But the proposal was rejected – so the IPCC only relied on a single “solar” paper and a single solar/astro physicist.
This task for Ms Lean was determined from the very beginning: after all, this task is what the IPCC is all about. She was selected for her ability to fulfill this task in a disciplined way which is what she has done, indeed. She may be a fine scientist. But the way how she was chosen – and the fact that no one else was added – speaks volumes.

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Florifulgurator

28 June 2010

Gregory, 1) I don’t get the point about Bartlett’s formula. 2) What about Veizer’s later reinterpretation of paleo temp data? Cf.: Came RE, Eiler JM, Veizer J et al (2007) Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era Nature 449, 198-201.
(“Our results are consistent with the proposal that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations drive or amplify increased global temperatures”)

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Greg Goodknight

29 June 2010

“Flori”, I doubt Veizer would consider that as a “reinterpretation” and I can’t think of a single scientist who doubts a doubling of CO2 would increase temperature. The issue is whether it’s very little or a whole bunch.
Without any feedbacks, it would be about a degree C. Some have found evidence of negative feedbacks (more heat evaporates more water but more clouds reflect more sunlight) and perhaps a half degree C for a doubling; MIT’s Lindzen found evidence for that from ERBE satellite data. The general circulation models, which assume a positive feedback loop with water vapor (the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere) were apparently fitted to the 20th century surface record by plugging in something closer to 2 to 4 degrees C for a doubling of CO2. The GCM also predict a hotspot in the atmosphere above the equator as a result of that positive feedback warming, but that hotspot doesn’t exist.
ANY newly discovered forcing that can account for the 20th century warming decreases the possible feedback coefficient and reduces the justification for haste in formulating public policy, which is why the link to galactic cosmic rays is contested so vigorously.
If you want to discuss technical details of Nir Shaviv’s defense of SV03, I’d suggest asking him about it. Try http://www.sciencebits.com

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Anna Haynes

29 June 2010

“we all look forward to Anna’s answers”
Mr. Rebane professes to want to know my answers, yet is refusing my request to meet in person or to speak on the phone. It’s quite odd.
Some other adjectives also come to mind.
(and no Greg, it wasn’t a “psychiatric drug” as you so charmingly put it. And yes, I would like to go back to for-pay work, but the economy’s not so hot right now, plus there’s a fellow defaming me online.)
OK, ’nuff said. Perhaps too much, but there comes a point when you do have to counter the really sleazy stuff.

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George Rebane

29 June 2010

Dr Haynes, I believe it was Greg Goodnight’s questions to which the interest in those answers referred. And why all this ‘Mr’ Rebane condescension?

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Greg Goodknight

30 June 2010

Anna, Lucia and I both asked you for specifics regarding your claims of defamation and invasion of privacy, and you declined to answer. I freely admit the question I posed was obnoxious, and it, along with the other questions, was intended to give pause to your harassment and name calling. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I’ve been driven to countering your sleazy stuff since last November; like you, I have had a choice of either countering the attacks or slinking away. For good or ill, I prefer Pyrrhic victories to slinking away, and unless you wish to call a truce and stop your denunciations of me such as “crank” and “intellectually dishonest” (or even autodidact, which calls into question my education), the unpleasantness is unlikely to stop.
Diatribe, n, 1) A bitter, abusive denunciation. … Yes, that does fit the referenced tamino thread perfectly. It may be time for another recreational impossibility.
Regarding the drug query, made after you had mentioned some medication was involved in that prior incident, either “yes”, “no”, “none of your business” or “I won’t dignify that with an answer” (either explicit or implied) would all have been acceptable answers.
Since “Eli Rabett” (aka Dr. Joshua Halpern) mentioned “tamino” (aka Grant Foster of Portland, ME) and his Ph.D. in Physics, whether real or imagined by some of his followers, it is interesting to me that it looks like tamino also has time on his hands:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/grant-foster/16/524/595

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DAV

01 July 2010

There seems quite a bit of childishness running through these posts. The topper is the poster whose sense of self-importance must be enormous to repeatedly and actively demand real-time interaction. Every post from this person seems to revolve around the refusals to grant this demand. I have to wonder why written communication won’t suffice. Is the reason merely arrogance in demanding one’s own way?
What is the best course of action when confronted by a petulant tantrum thrower? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

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George Rebane

01 July 2010

DAV – I believe the most likely reason for this unrelenting behavior is given in the original post; this comment stream merely serves to corroborate it. But as for the “best course of action” as a response to this “petulant tantrum thrower”, please don’t abandon us to exercise of its discovery without your help.

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DAV

01 July 2010

George, too bad the remedy for mosquitoes and similar is considered unacceptable. A good whack can work wonders. Lacking that, I believe you said it yourself, don’t respond. Forbearance can be quite a penance, though. My sympathies.

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Anna Haynes

01 July 2010

Re Mr. Goodknight’s “I’ve been driven to countering your sleazy stuff since last November” – for the record, he’s referring to this Nov 2009 post.
Feel free to assess for yourself.

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Greg Goodknight

01 July 2010

Yes, Ms. Haynes, it’s sleazy to lie about needing to leave a conversation that you started, making a bet you apparently had no intention to pay off because you never had before, and then running off to make a blog post about a person you didn’t even have the courtesy of introducing yourself to as you were offering to lecture them on the science you didn’t have any understanding of yourself. Or to get their name.
You still owe me the dollar. Everything I said to you that November morning was backed up by research published in established and respected journals, and none of it has been falsified to date. You could have walked away with copies had you had the courtesy of being interested in the information you said you wanted.

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hunter

02 November 2010

Anna,
You are a kook in word and deed.
Cheers,
hunter

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Anna Haynes

26 July 2011

“when a man publicly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of the [high Google rank blogpost], he should be answerable for it, at any rate with his honour, if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralise the effect of his words.” – Arthur Schoepenhauer

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Douglas Keachie

26 July 2011

Oh my, what fun we have going on here!

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Douglas Keachie

26 July 2011

Perhaps all this explains where “Forbrunator,” came from?

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Greg Goodknight

20 November 2011

I didn’t notice this all too typical post of Anna’s in a timely fashion, nor did Anna notify me she was doing so, not that I’d expect it. I’m not surprised she manages to misappropriate Schopenhauer in her attempt to lead the reader to decide her earned torment is due to some lack of honor among those who oppose her.
Anna first interrupted a conversation of mine, a complete stranger, in order to offer to instruct me on climate science. I had the opportunity to ask her a question on the record last August in a local cafe, and the question was, “what is ‘temperature’?”. She didn’t have a clue besides that it’s what thermometers measure. That is below the level of a high school introductory chemistry class.
A mutual friend sitting at the table, a local defrocked commercial pilot and local bon vivant who scrapes by while enjoying drink and good company, knew it had to do with the energy of the air, a far better answer than ‘it’s the number on the thermometer’.
It’s unfortunate the local progressives rally around Anna as their climate science expert. No, a Ph.D. in a completely unrelated “life science” does not mean the person can out think a high school kid with a 3 on their AP Chemistry exam on a truly basic physical science question.

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Anna Haynes

03 February 2012

My response to this post.
(and apologies; I hadn’t realized until now that Mr. Goodknight had left the above comment. I’m sure he can run rings around me in basic physics, & assumed he’d expected a more complex answer.)

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Gregory

09 February 2012

Ms. Haynes, there isn’t a complex answer for that question. “A measure of the kinetic energy of matter” is all that would have been needed to demonstrate a good understanding of what temperature is. A discussion of the different types of kinetic energy that might be involved would have demonstrated a deeper understanding but isn’t something I was expecting.
Your response along the lines of ‘It’s what the numbers on a thermometer show’ demonstrated something else entirely, was about what I expected from you and indicates the depth of instruction you were offering when you interrupted me that day.

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