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”

Russ

30 March 2010

Ever since I started blogging in August of 2004 and started supporting the idea that global warming was the result of natural cycles, I have been sparing with Anna Haynes. Initially as an unknown person, with just a obscure avatar for a name, then eventually as Anna Haynes.
She came and went on my NC Media Watch blog over the years, challenging me to prove I was not funded by evil “big oil companies.” When she could not respond to my scientific questions, I was soon banned from posting on her blog NC Focus, especially after following up with global warming facts for her consideration. Soon she post a notice there were no skeptics allowed at NC Focus blog.
Recently she started stalking Ellen and I at our local coffee shop hang outs. We were forced to change our regular routine to avoid Anna. Then she started asking personal questions about my family in posts on NC Media Watch. Other Media Watch readers thought this was another form of stalking. Finally, when I would not respond to her directly, she started calling our house, asking why my family supported global warming.
Still not satisfying with my responses she started attacking SESF which I am a Board Member and currently the Executive Director. Why? For what purpose? She had made queries to the State Attorney General’s office and the Internal Revenue Service several years earlier. Neither agency could find any reason for her queries. SESF had meet all state and federal requirement as a qualified non-profit organization.
Anna’s stalking history indicates to me that she needs some professional help in resolving her obsession to prove that SESF and its Boards of Directors are being funded by oil companies to be global warming skeptics. Her obsession has become so pervasive that she is intruding into the personal live of our family and friends. This is unacceptable behavior. If you are a friend of Anna Haynes please council her to seek some professional help with this obsession.

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Martin Light

31 March 2010

On Tuesday afternoon, March 16th, Ms. Haynes called me at my home to interrogate me about CABPRO (California Association of Business, Property and Resource Owners). I spent a few minutes answering Ms. Haynes’ questions which appeared to be biased towards a direction that clearly showed she had not done her homework prior to calling me. She was very confused as to what CABPRO’s legal status is and thought it her right to access privileged information about CABPRO. Ms. Haynes said she had driven by CABPRO’s office 5-6 times in days prior when it was not open and therefore found it necessary to call me at my home. Ms. Haynes’ negative opinions about CABPRO are protected by the First Amendment however, her “code pink” like tactics of trying to bushwhack people at their offices and at events and then, when not satisfied, to call their homes to harass is crossing a line that could lead to a variety of legal actions.

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Dick Marshall

31 March 2010

So sadd thaththe Bill of Rights applies only to liberal folks and not those of us who have a different opinion. The difference is that we would defend their right to voice their opinion,but they engage in questionable tactics to stifle ours.

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Anna Haynes

01 April 2010

George, first some basic netiquette: when you write a critical post about someone local, you really should notify them, e.g. by leaving a comment or sending an email. Perhaps you did this and it went astray?
Martin, you’re executive director of CABPRO; if you had returned my phone calls, or ever been in the CABPRO office the 5+ times I stopped by, I would not have resorted to your home number.
(I’d still like to meet you in the CABPRO office, at your convenience; please let me know when you will be there, since the office seems to be invariably closed.)
Russ, I believe I’ve called your home twice, in five years now?
George, I believe I’ve called your home once, during the same period.
Since you prefer not to be disturbed, from here on I’ll email asking to speak with you, so we can arrange for a convenient time.
And Russ, you and George are welcome to comment on my blog anytime, as long as you do so under the guidelines I’ve set up:
“Don’t espouse climate-denial crankery unless you’re local and willing to stand behind it.”
You haven’t been willing to stand behind yours.

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Anna Haynes

01 April 2010

p.s. Dick Marshall, I’d love to meet you for coffee and talk sometime; we have a mutual acquaintance who holds you in high regard.

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Anna Haynes

01 April 2010

p.p.s. George, another bit of blogger netiquette – try to link to what you’re criticizing, since it helps readers to calibrate your judgment.
e.g. here’s my March 27 TechTest post:
http://ncfocus.blogspot.com/2010/03/true-purpose-of-techtest-from-sierra.html

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Anna Haynes

01 April 2010

George, did the proposed SESF high school student mentoring project come to fruition? If so, I’d like to talk to you about it.

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Russ

01 April 2010

Anna,
“Stand behind.” I stand behind every thing I write. You have failed to refute the data I present in my posts, so you raise artificial barriers by making stupid demands that “I stand behind what I write.” Under your rules you get to pick the standard and then decide if I met your dumb standard for “standing behind” my writing. It is a loosing game that I am not going to play. Read NC Media Watch for the facts on climate change and global warming. I have no need to post on your blog.

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Anna Haynes

02 April 2010

Russ, when you’re ready to stand behind your words to the point that you’ll make a one dollar bet that the point you’re making is bogus, you’re welcome to come & comment on my blog.
But you aren’t even willing to do that, and you forge ever onward in a blogger’s Gish Gallop, not acknowledging nor learning from past mistakes.
That makes engagement with your writing an all-consuming, and very low return on investment, activity.
Let me know when you’re willing to bet me $1 that your arguments have merit. You’ve never even tried this.

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Anna Haynes

02 April 2010

s/make (a one dollar bet)/take/

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George Rebane

02 April 2010

Anna, your continual return to these and NC Media Watch pages is an odd way for you to claim such efforts to be “very low return on investment”. If this is so, you must be contributing novelettes to blogs whose contents are more in tune with your beliefs. Perhaps a respite is in order.

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Anna Haynes

02 April 2010

George, did the proposed SESF high school student mentoring project come to fruition? If so, I’d like to talk to you about it.

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Sarah

02 April 2010

Anna, I think George and Russ are politely asking for you to leave them alone. It is pathetic to see you continually BEG them to comment on your blog.
Here’s a bone: http://www.junkscience.com/

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papertiger

02 April 2010

This is just a test post. I want to see if my gravitar tiger photo appears.

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Anna Haynes

03 April 2010

Also George, just to be absolutely clear about this:
Did you make any attempt to notify me that you’d published this post?
(and if the answer’s yes, could you also say roughly when (an hour later? a week?) and by what means)
Thanks much –
Anna

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Dixon Cruickshank

04 April 2010

sad

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Anna Haynes

07 April 2010

More help for readers who want to calibrate –
Exchange with George Rebane from back in January.

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Anna Haynes

24 May 2010

Here’s more info for readers who’d like to calibrate, since this post is showing up in searches for my name –
Dick Marshall commented above in support of the poster. To calibrate Mr. Marshall: in his May 14 “CABPRO Report” post “As California goes, so goes the nation” ( http://cabproreport.typepad.com/weblog/2010/05/as-california-goes-so-goes-the-nation.html ), he asserted that “[California’s] school system spends more money per student than any other state…” – but has ignored repeated requests that he provide a reference for this assertion.
(& since comments there are pre-moderated, it’s not because the queries weren’t seen.)
That is all…

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Anna Haynes

08 June 2010

Oops, I seem to have forgotten my CABPRO post that Martin Light alluded to above:
Q&A with Martin Light, executive director of CABPRO
(and thank you George for permitting these comments)

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Anna Haynes

08 June 2010

oh, and one more, from this esteemed blog –
“No Anna, in spite of your persistent questions whenever we meet, you have always been a lady.” (link)

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beam

09 June 2010

Anna,
I think if I were any of the people you are harassing, you would have a lawsuit AND a restraining order against you. Give up. It is people like you that cause me to NEVER use my real name when commenting.

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Greg Goodknight

10 June 2010

For those of you who might need to “calibrate” Anna Haynes, she’s made a splash recently:
wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/07/a-note-about-boundaries/
tamino.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/your-right-to-say-it/
ncfocus.blogspot.com/2010/06/encounter-with-anthony-watts-side-two.html
Before Anna claimed responsibility yesterday, I’d written Russ Steele using a two year old email address (from the last old Telecom-list post) asking if he knew if Antony Watts’ visitor was from Nevada County. The tactics sounded so familiar…
Anna, you still owe me a dollar after losing our bet.

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Anna Haynes

16 June 2010

Of the three links Greg provided, you’ll learn the most by reading the comments in the Tamino post.

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Greg Goodknight

18 June 2010

Anna probably likes the “tamino” thread the most because “tamino” (actually one Grant Foster, a minor Climategate figure) got a couple of nice libels in against me, which WordPress assures me he has been directed to remove. It’s nearly as safe as Anna’s blog for Anna, though Tamino did ream her pretty good about her antics at Antony Watts’ office.
Anna has asked multiple times for my permission to do one of her famed confrontations with her audio recorder on me, and despite being refused in writing at least twice, she keeps asking. While a popular definition of insanity is repeating the same action multiple times while expecting a different result, it may be Anna’s lucky day. I’m hoping to get approval of a local law enforcement official for use of their facility, and for them to provide copies of their recording to both of us; if that can’t happen, perhaps just with law enforcement there just to keep the peace. What do you think?
Some questions I’d have for Anna, some of which are new:
1) I understand you majored in Genetics at Berkeley. My contacts there confirm life science majors at Cal generally pass up the real Physics and Chemistry classes in order to take the watered down classes acceptable to their departments, and not risk a hit to their GPA. Which did you take? Did you take any real classes in the physical sciences in your college career, or any real (ie major track) math beyond a possibly obligatory calculus of one variable class? Statistics doesn’t count in this context. It does appear from the Cal web pages that only physics appreciation and chemistry appreciation is actually required of Genetics majors. In fact, if not pre-med, they only need take one semester of physics appreciation.
1a) Did you apply to any medical schools? If so, did you get any acceptances? If not, current Cal Genetics majors are only required to take one semester of physics appreciation.
2) You mentioned in a post of yours at Tamino (“The Open Mind” is such a misnomer) that your slamming of the door into Brad was coincident with some sort of “toxic” problem with a medication. Was that a psychiatric drug? Just asking, Anna; it’s a fair question. Until you posted that, I don’t think anyone here had a clue.
3) What do you do for a living? No one I know has an inkling. Did you ever have any position that took advantage of your Biology degrees? Besides your 1988 dissertation “Developmental constraints in the Drosophila wing” I can’t find any evidence of you in that world.
4) Just what sort of software do you write, besides perhaps html to drive your ncvoices.us page, which has a homebrew look to it? Do you have formal education in computer science or software engineering, or are you an autodidact in that realm?
5) Have you taken any class in a physical science at an accredited baccalaureate or graduate institution since your freshman year in college? Any class directly involving meteorology or climate? If so, what and where?
6) When will you pay me the dollar you owe me from your little bet challenge (our first meeting, when you broke into my conversation with a friend) that you expected to just give you cover to leave, rather than discuss the climate science you claimed to understand?
Looking forward to it. However, I’d look forward even more to you dropping this junior 60 Minutes reporter persona and have you let all of us live in peace in our nice little town.
PS Despite Tamino’s libels to the contrary, like “Ask Dr. Science”, “I have a Masters degree… in Science!”. Also a BS in Physics. From a college
PPS Can anyone here relate just what Tamino/Grant Foster’s academic credentials are? I’ve not found any authoritative, just hints here and there that he’s a statistician, perhaps self taught, and a mention of civil engineering, perhaps self taught. One supporter of his just says he has a “math based” degree, which almost fits civil engineering…

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George Rebane

18 June 2010

Greg, we all look forward to Anna’s answers to your questions.

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Greg Goodknight

19 June 2010

Upon my documented complaint of specific libels and libel per se, WordPress gave “tamino”, a minor Climategate figure named Grant Foster, a directive to delete his libelous comments from my posts to his blog, with the option of deleting my posts, too. He choice to delete it all. It may well be the first time his blog had some adult supervision.

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Anna Haynes

20 June 2010

George Rebane, some individuals forget to draw a distinction between the personal and public spheres. And some individuals find it difficult to report accurately.
I asked Lucia to remove this comment of Greg’s (posted here on your blog at 18 June 2010 at 02:56 PM ) because it constitutes libel at worst and invasion of privacy at best. I request that you remove it too.

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Anna Haynes

20 June 2010

p.s. for the record, I did not receive any notification from Greg Goodknight or from Dr. George Rebane that Greg’s comment – dated two days ago – had appeared here.

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lucia

21 June 2010

George/Anna,
I don’t see anything in what Greg wrote that represents libel of any sort or invasion of privacy in Greg’s comments. Although if you wish, you could explain what might be libelous– why don’t you write something about it at your blog? Then we will all know the truth about whatever it is he said you think might be false.
At worst, Greg’s questions might be obnoxious. Since they may be seen as obnoxious, and Anna requested I remove them, I did.
P.S. I see no idea why George would be required to inform you that Greg posted a comment– no not even if Greg mentions your name. I don’t see why Greg would be required to do so either. In fact, I don’t even see why he needs to give informing you a second thought.
P.P.S.:
Also, after the incident, I wrote a brief email to Eugene Volokh about this incident. He made me aware of 7 USC sec. 230 which he describes as giving “..pretty good protection against possible lawsuits based on comments posted by readers”. Of course, I don’t know the full ramifications. (I’m not even sure anyone does!) See http://www.lctjournal.washington.edu/Vol3/a014Horowitz.html

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Anna Haynes

21 June 2010

A “diatribe” (Mr. Goodknight’s term) at:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/silence

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George Rebane

21 June 2010

Thank you for the clarification Lucia. I’m sure I don’t quite understand what Dr Haynes is about in these comment threads and in her extended quest. But they do corroborate my posted assessment and reinforce my recommendation. In the interval I am happy to see that the discourse is kept civil.

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Jon P

21 June 2010

Don’t bother going to Tamino’s. He deletes what he does not like. And he obviously has broken some WordPress rules. What’s the point of having a conversation if Tamino is using “cones of silence” over many opinions. You only read what he WANTS you to read. I just told him he should rename his blog to “Closed Mind” as he does not have an open one.
Anna,
You seem to be to be rather obnoxious and give very little respect to people’s personal wishes about their space. How can you expect any respect in reutrn? Baffling.

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papertiger

21 June 2010

This just keeps getting better.
Love it.
You know Anna deleted a couple of my posts from her blog. I expect that sort of behavior from strangers but it really hurt my feelings when Anna did it.
My standard practice is to feel out an alarmist blog with a short pithy comment, see if it survives the moderation. If it does then I move into more detailed and time consuming posts.
So Anna comes over to NC Media Watch posts a link to her omnibus of alarmist science links. I visited her link and took the time to show her the error of her ways, linking back to a Lubos Motl post. Kept it pithy and sweet.
Anna comes back at me with insults , talking about me and questioning the qualifications of Motl, couched in the third person in coversation with her presumed legion of like minded readers.
Note that she didn’t inform Prof Motl or me of her disparagements, instead leaving it for me to discover. ( I searched for the post, but couldn’t find it. Maybe she deleted the whole thing? It was a long time ago.)
I noticed that the “legion” failed to comment, so I said to Anna “if you have questions about Lubos’ post please feel free to ask him. He is always happy to explain these things.”
That post and all subsequent comments by me , have been left in moderation by Anna.
Anna, if you are going to walk that walk, demanding notifications, courtesies, fair hearings, and things of others, first you have to pluck the mote from your own eye.

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Greg Goodknight

21 June 2010

Here’s the first post that I made to the misnamed “The Open Mind”, but without Grant Foster’s additions… now that Tamino took down the thread, it needs a home:
Here’s a story that’s apropos. First, some background; I’ve a BS Physics from a college that included two semesters of physics (major track classes), three semesters of chemistry (also major track, including one physical chemistry) and systems engineering as general ed requirements; and also an MSEE that today would probably be deemed an MS Computer Engineering.
One morning late last November, I found myself chatting on the subject of the breaking Climategate news over morning coffee with a friend of mine at a local cafe’. A woman sitting at another table whom I had never met broke into the conversation offering, when and if we decided to seek understanding, instruction on the science involved. She didn’t have the common courtesy of introducing herself.
I asked what her qualifications were…
‘I have a Ph.D. from Harvard’.
This was about 30 seconds after we sort of met, I didn’t know her name nor did she know mine.
I asked what subject…
‘Biology’
That doesn’t sound very applicable to climate science…
‘I know how science works and I can judge who to believe’
She was also as condescending as I can ever recall ever being witness to.
I then let her know my educational background and got a delightful ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ gobsmacked stare back. I then tried to engage her in a discussion of the science involved, and it was clear she did not have much understanding of any of the physical sciences. I’m particularly impressed by the 2003 Shaviv & Veizer “Celestial driver” paper; the Solanki letter to Nature in 2004 on “Unusual activity of the sun”; Svensmark’s works including the Cosmoclimatology paper, the SKY experiment and the Forbush event paper of last Fall; and the CERN colloquium given by Dr. Kirkby a year ago. I gave her an outline of why I believe the theories I’ve found to be compelling, but she was not willing to talk about any of it. In fact, she had to leave. Had no time at all, but challenged me to a $1 bet to back up what I had claimed. And she left.
My friend did know who she was, and when I got home, I googled her and found her blog. Perhaps an hour after she walked away from the conversation that she had no time to continue, she had posted 500 words about climate cranks and that the best way to handle them is to challenge them to a $1 bet to prove it, and walk away with the knowledge that they’ll never be able to do it. She also observed that climate cranks tend to be working class guys, and guys with physics or engineering degrees, which was a pretty good description of the folks she had offered to give climate science instruction to just minutes earlier.
In short, she told a fib to get away rather than to discuss the climate science she claims to be so passionate about, not exactly intellectually honest, or honest in any way. The next day I had a stack of the above papers to give to her and to discuss; it took a couple days for her to return, but faced with the papers, all from respected journals, she was entirely uninterested in actually learning something about atmospheric physics and walked out rather than continue a conversation that was obviously not going to end in her favor. She wouldn’t take the papers.
She once ( a few months ago) harassed, audio recorder in hand, a friend of mine in a local theater before the film started, to the point that he had to either leave the theater or react to the provocation as if she was a guy. I saw him moments later at our favorite Irish bar, and he was followed by his wife who had choice words about the mental stability of the harasser. In fact, that’s a fairly common comment by locals.
She once sent me a message that she’d like to know about my late wife. How did she die? I made it clear I did not consider her to be a friend, and I would not share that information. She then started asking friends of mine about my dead first wife, and they all told her off for even asking.
She also once, witnessed by multiple people, intentionally slammed the door (of that same cafe) into the back of a climate skeptic (and, gasp!, a Republican) who was sitting by the door, as she angrily left one conversation of the usual morning martini gathering. It’s my understanding that both hurt and left a bruise.
Anna Haynes, you still owe me that $1. And no, you’ve asked multiple times and I do not consent to one of your recorded inquisitions, or any recording of any reasonably private conversation of mine, period. If I ever address a crowd over a loudspeaker, feel free to capture that moment.

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Anna Haynes

22 June 2010

“BS Physics from a college that included two semesters of physics”
Greg, if you’d like us to know what additional physics education you’ve had beyond just these two semesters, please do share…

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Anna Haynes

22 June 2010

and re Greg’s “It’s my understanding…” – as I’ve previously explained (after asking the party who was present), this “understanding” is incorrect.

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Greg Goodknight

22 June 2010

Anna, I think in the months you’ve been hassling me, you’ve not answered any question of mine besides the subject you studied at Harvard, and mutant ninja fruit fly wings really have no bearing on physics, do they? And climate science is a branch of applied physics.
The current Cal Genetics majors don’t take a single major track chemistry or physics class, no multivariable calculus or linear algebra, nor any differential equations. Even at your alma mater, pretty much all the chem, physics and engineering students do. You don’t even know what you don’t know, do you?

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Eli Rabett

22 June 2010

Rather curious that Greg Goodknight brags on undergraduate physics at Harvey Mudd while Tamino has a doctorate in same.

Perhaps two comments from that lost thread would help here. The first from Ray Ladbury goes

Greg,
See, this is exactly the sort of problem I have with confronting denialists directly in public venues. It makes the issue personalities rather than evidence.
Greg, I am afraid I am not impressed with a Bachelors degree in physics when it comes to understanding the science of climate change. See, I know how hard I had to work to understand the science even with a PhD in physics and 15 years working and publishing in the field.
What would impress me is a cogent explanation of a mechanism whereby you turn a tiny modulation on a background signal of 6 particles per square cm per second into a global climate driver. It would be especially interesting to understand why the effect would be delayed by longer than a week!

I am afraid, though that you are rather unlikely to be up to the task, since your undergraduate degree in physics did not even equip with sufficient understanding to grasp why the experts in a field who publish most actively and are held in highest esteem by their peers are most likely to have real insight into their subject matter. I’m afraid that is rather basic.

But Horatio nails is
Don’t be silly, Ray.
Anyone who has completed the 2-semester freshman physics sequence at any college on the planet KNOWS that they know more about everything than anyone else (with the [possible] exception of Steven Hawking).

And way more than all those biologists (put together), who are actually under the silly misapprehension that living things have some impact on climate by virtue of some imaginary impact on the carbon cycle.

All the best

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Gregory

23 June 2010

I did my best not to get into where my education was, but “tamino’s” libels (WordPress agrees) is what focused it on my education rather than Anna Haynes lack of any physical science in hers. And because I’ve been posting under my own name (try it sometime), my sordid past leaked into these threads.
First, as far as I can tell, you, “Eli Rabett” are actually a chemistry professor named Joshua Halpern from Howard University, with financial ties to NASA-Goddard, who likes to sling mud from behind a nom de net, and usually in forums that don’t actually allow a two way conversation.
http://www.coas.howard.edu/chem/jhalpern/index.html
If this isn’t you, my apologies, but many seem to believe this to be true. I am flattered you felt a need to follow me to Nevada County to repeat ad hominems that I was unable to respond to in the closed forums they from which they came.
Of course, the “Horatio” dig ignores the reason for the mention of real physics, real chemistry, real engineering and real math (and now real biology) as general ed requirements; you don’t end up with one trick ponies like Anna Haynes who think that a Ph.D. in Biology gives them the tools to pick experts to believe in from entirely different fields despite never being in the same room with those folks and having no language in common. And it continues the corruption of my message into the one that stuck in the tamino thread, that I was claiming to have a BS in Physics with only two semesters of the subject under my belt, rather than my actual message that all of my classmates had two semesters of major track physics by the end of their freshman year whether they were chemistry, physics, math or engineering majors.
Ray Ladbury has recycled that same basic attack multiple times from behind the RealClimate moat. Regarding his detailed question of how cloud nucleation could possibly be delayed for a week, well, that is what the current CERN CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment should be shedding light on sometime soon, isn’t it? It could have been done a decade ago, but IPCC partisan politics ripped the funding from that inconvenient experiment circa 1996… until the Copenhagen SKY experiment got results that put CLOUD back on the front burner in 2006. In the meantime, we have computer simulations that predicted about the same delay between GCR and significant cloud condensation nuclei changes, and the Danes have published their having actually found a significant worldwide dip in cloud moisture about six or seven days after large Forebush events, ejections from the sun that significantly sweep away the galactic cosmic rays that seem to be significant factors in cloud nucleation.
Rather than putting the cart before the horse, demanding I predict the outcome of research that is underway, let me ask you this: why, over a 500+ million year period, are average ocean temps in synch with proxies for galactic cosmic rays and not CO2? Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and geochemist Jan Veizer both worked independently from the vantage point of very different fields and independently came up with the same periodicities of ocean temperatures and galactic cosmic rays. If GCR can be associated with what sure looks like a oscillation bound by negative feedbacks with maybe a 5 degC swing in ocean temperatures, driven by GCR, why would it be so hard to imagine there is a physical process that is linking the two?
The cleanest graph of the Shaviv & Veizer result is included in the Svensmark Cosmoclimatology survey article in Astronomy & Geophysics; check out Figure 8 on page 5…
http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf
The originals are even better, just harder for the non-technical to grok.
http://www.juniata.edu/projects/oceans/GL111/celestialdriverofclimate.pdf
See figure 1 for the non-correlation between CO2 and temp, and figure 2 for the correlation between temps and GCR flux.
So, can we agree the sea temps can’t be affecting incident galactic cosmic rays, it has to be the other way around? And there must be a physical mechanism to account for that correlation?
Finally, thanks for the information that “Tamino” has a Ph.D. in Physics; . Can you also verify his name as being Grant Foster? If you would, I also need his address and legal contact information for my records.
cheers
Greg Goodknight

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Enonym

23 June 2010

Mr. Goodnight:
I believe it’s quite unaxeptable to be “outing” people like you continuously do in this thread. Besides, it’s only emphasizing the impression a cry-baby. There are very good reasons for blogging under a pseudonym. You should consider them.

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Chris S.

23 June 2010

I’ve looked up the alumni of Harvey Mudd & can’t find a ‘Greg Goodknight’ in their lists, I’ve also checked the ISI Web of Science – none there either. Could it be that this august personage is opereating under a “nom de net”? An interesting position given his comments about Eli Rabbett & tamino in this thread…

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Florifulgurator

23 June 2010

Greg, if you’re so good in science: any comment at the (apparent) debunking of Shaviv & Veizer given in http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html ?
“Conclusions
Two main conclusions result from our analysis of [Shaviv and Veizer, 2003]. The first is that the correlation of cosmic ray flux (CRF) and climate over the past 520 m.y. appears to not hold up under scrutiny. Even if we accept the questionable assumption that meteorite clusters give information on CRF variations, we find that the evidence for a link between CRF and climate amounts to little more than a similarity in the average periods of the CRF variations and a heavily smoothed temperature reconstruction. Phase agreement is poor. The authors applied several adjustments to the data to artificially enhance the correlation. We thus find that the existence of a correlation has not been convincingly demonstrated.
Our second conclusion is independent of the first. Whether there is a link of CRF and temperature or not, the authors’ estimate of the effect of a CO2-doubling on climate is highly questionable. It is based on a simple and incomplete regression analysis which implicitly assumes that climate variations on time scales of millions of years, for different configurations of continents and ocean currents, for much higher CO2 levels than at present, and with unaccounted causes and contributing factors, can give direct quantitative information about the effect of rapid CO2 doubling from pre-industrial climate. The complexity and non-linearity of the climate system does not allow such a simple statistical derivation of climate sensitivity without a physical understanding of the key processes and feedbacks. We thus conclude that [Shaviv and Veizer, 2003] provide no cause for revising current estimates of climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide.”

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Anna Haynes

23 June 2010

“…months you’ve been hassling me”
Never mistake a mirror for a window. And vice versa.
Case in point: Gentle reader, you can calibrate Mr. Goodknight’s recent powers of perception by reading Tamino’s post “Silence” (reporting Mr. Goodknight’s recent actions) – which is a diatribe, according to GG – and consider whether his characterization is accurate.
It shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds; it’s a good investment.

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George Rebane

23 June 2010

Gentle readers, into this discussion of climate change and AGW I would like to point you to ‘Climate Change – A Format for Reasoned Dialogue’ that offers a perspective from the systems sciences.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2008/01/climate-change.html

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Eli Rabett

23 June 2010

It would be hard to add to what Anna just wrote at @9:31, but allow Eli to try. Greg is actually quite easy to deal with, he keeps posting the same nonsense and Ray and Eli and Horatio and others keep posting the same refutations. It sort of conserves electrons.

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Gregory

23 June 2010

Checking my driver’s license and looking at my diploma and the program from my graduation, it would appear I really am who I thought I was. For good or ill, I’ve been using my own name since the ARPAnet days, save for posts at one particular far leftwing magazine’s blog.
Yes, there are fine reasons for blogging under a pseudonym, mostly to be able to defame others while retaining plausible deniability and lack of web hits when people start looking for dirt. Fabricated Americans like Eli Rabett, in positions of some power in their alter egos at NASA Goddard, should have better things to do with their time than chase after the likes of me while hiding behind a sock puppet.
Joshua Halpern, if I was that easy to dismiss with you’d come up with something, or someone, original.

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luminous beauty

23 June 2010

George,
I took a quick look at your thesis and quickly discovered this glaring misapprehension:

All currently known general circulation models (GCMs) or climate models are chaotic. This
means that their algorithmics[sic] are such that small variations (or errors) in their input parameters,
or restrictions on the precision of their internal computations will yield wildly varying futures of earth’s climate.

It is short term weather models that are subject to initial condition chaotic behavior. It is from studying empirical weather data and models that Ed Lorentz discovered what has become to be known as ‘strange chaos’, where the chaotic behavior of a closed system diverges and then converges in a repeating pattern around a strange attractor; what is known as ‘boundary conditions’. It is this behavior that gives GCMs a degree of long term predictability (climate) that doesn’t exist for short term (weather) predictability.
When skepticism is based on such basic misunderstandings it is difficult to give it much credence.
And for Mr. Goodknight, some analysis that reveals his hobby-horse theory isn’t quite up to snuff:
http://www.eawag.ch/organisation/abteilungen/surf/…/2010_calogovic.pdf

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George Rebane

23 June 2010

Ms? Luminous beauty – I agree about the existence of a “glaring misapprehension”, but on whose part I am not certain. All large, stochastic, multi-dimensional, non-linear, dynamic, and numerically complex models of realworld processes are by their very nature chaotic, GCM’s included. Lorentz was the first to discover a relationship between the analytics of such models applied to natural phenomena.
The states of such models have very complex trajectories through their respective state spaces which may or not ‘converge’ to a useful manifold (subspace) and reside there for some time. Such manifolds are known as attractors, which is a generalization and expansion of the notion of limit cycles described in classical non-linear systems theory. Lorentz had a class of such attractors named after him. There are no attractors named “boundary conditions” which term is used to describe the (usually) higher dimensional limits to system state, control (exogenous forcing) inputs, (endogenous) transfer function dynamics, variable probability distributions, and/or (exogenous) environmental parameters.
The derivation of the system transfer function is a process known as system identification. For large scale systems such as GCMs, identification is not possible through analytical approaches. 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. Unfortunately the identification is even more complex than this since in such estimation schemes the model flow topology is also a ‘variable’ in addition to the order of perhaps a hundred or more system ‘constants’. All of these must be systematically varied as thousands of computationally intensive iterative runs are made to attempt to retrodict the input data.
At this stage of human evolution, we do not have the necessary processing power to carry out this identification process systematically for such large scale systems as GCMs and other so-called climate models. Instead, we proceed with a large dose of heuristics and humility if we know what we are doing. (The humility part seems to have gone by the board in the IPCC work.) But positing a resulting model that allows us to keep a straight face, we must then make the audacious assumption that the process we have retrodicted will remain sufficiently constant over the future time horizon over which we desire to predict the values of (climate) state.
At this point we now ‘integrate’ forward hundreds (thousands) of times for EACH set of endogenous and exogenous input variables numbering at least in the hundreds to generate probability distributions for the output variables of interest. I can guarantee you that this has not been done for any such model, simply because it is yet not feasible. And it is the ‘shortcuts’ which raise knowledgeable eyebrows and give lie to ‘the debate is over’.
And I have not yet begun discussing the holes in our knowledge of the fundamental physics and chemistry and … required to accurately understand, let alone model, the sub-processes that make up such large scale models of the top layers of earth. Since the system (real process) is chaotic, here we don’t even know what we don’t know. This is the substance that gives rise to the humility that a growing cohort of climate scientists (and all systems scientists like me) are attempting insert into this politicized issue of climate change, its causes, and its anthropomorphic control.
Yes indeed, there are glaring misapprehensions afoot here.

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Eli Rabett

23 June 2010

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.
Greg Good night. Sweet delusions.

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Russ

23 June 2010

The trouble with all of the 17 IPCC climate models is that they are base on assumptions of climate sensitivity, and the average cloud cover is the same all over the globe. According to recent work by Dr Roy Spencer, he found that none of the IPCC models came any where near the exhibiting the sensitivity or the real climate system, and that cloud cover varies across the globe.
The modelers claim that their models do a reasonable job reproducing the average behavior, but the real issue is how the average behavior changes over time. Spencer found by studying the radiative forcing of clouds, that the feedback can be negative making the sensitivity far less than that used in any of the IPCC models.
In his book The Great Global Warming Blunder, Dr. Spencer explains how using satellites we can measure the earths radiation budget, providing both forcing (warming) and negative feedback (cooling) information for a ten year period. This limited data indicates the climate sensitivity in the real climate system is far less than than used in the IPCC models. If this result holds up over time, we should have little concern over increases in CO2.
Let’s stop making climate sensitivity assumptions and start using real data in those pesky IPCC climate models.

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