On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:12:56 -0800, Joerg wrote:
I'm careful. I don't take chances. I spend time outside at latitude
45N or northward (or nighttime!)Speaking of which, my most energetic time ... the moments outside when I'm at my peak and absolutely loving it is when there is a deep layer of snow (three feet or more) and ice about and it's a semi-clear night with just a few clouds and some brisk winds blowing about, with ambients from about -5C to +4C. I consider 4C to be t-shirt weather and often go outside with shorts and t-shirt at those times.
I'm basically "at home" with snow and ice. It's my element.
hehe. Well, I think these letters were private, as well. I use such lingo all the time with folks I know well and personally trust. If some of my private emails to companies were released, there are some I'd definitely wish were better expressed.
I read the same text (well, I don't really know that... did you read the emails in their fuller context or did you read someone else's "selection" of them?) And as I said, there were two things that bothered me. But none of it changed the attribution of 'recent' climate forcing, in my view.
You mention "sounded like," above. I really don't want to get into the details for reasons I've already stated, but I would just like to suggest that 'sounds-like' does not mean 'is.' You may feel there is a strong argument in there. I don't, after having read a lot of it.
I think the only way to find out about their motivation is to ask them about it. And you've already said as much as the fact that you wouldn't trust their responses to such questions. So that pretty much leaves this discussion at a stand-still.
I find that surprising. I'd have to read your exchanges, though.
Hmm, would you like to make _them_ public, just as this recent disclosure seems to have done for others? (Do you feel confident enough about your communications here that they could survive my scrutiny in this public forum? Or would you feel a lot like some of these scientists may?) Just teasing, really.
But I have to say that the worst I've experienced from a scientist is being ignored. And many of the papers have multiple authors, so I'm always able to secure papers I want without paying for them. Also, I can get the conversations I want.. just not always _when_ I'd like them. An example I remember well was a case where the scientist had been off in Japan for a month and I felt ignored. But when he got back, I got a phone call and we talked for a while -- both about his trip and what he felt was brewing as a result, as well as what I'd originally been asking after.
I simply lack an explanation for your experiences, given mine.
In general, there is no profit for a science team to duplicate work. If they duplicate the work and get the same or similar results from it, they've merely stared at their belly buttons and wasted a lot of money in the process. If they duplicate the work and find an error, then a correction is made and science moves on. But the team doesn't really get much credit for it. It reflects more upon the team that made the error. The ones finding it merely did a 'clean up' job that shows they can follow procedure like they should be able to and really doesn't reflect on their creativity and ability to "do science." So again, they wasted their time even if they helped fix an error that someone else should have caught.
An example of this later case is the artifact of the diurnal correction that had been incorrectly applied to MSU T2LT raw data by Roy Spencer and John Christy. For years, scientists outside this inner circle had been "clubbed" by the University of Alabama's results that conflicted with pretty much every other approach by teams all over the world. Both Spencer and Christy were repeatedly asked to go back through their methodology to see if they could find an error. Over and over, they insisted they didn't need to do that. Finally, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz apparently got sick and tired enough with the continuing conflict that they decided to waste their own precious time to duplicate the efforts by Spencer and Christy. That effort, by all rights, should have been Spencer and Christy's efforts. But since they weren't taking action, if finally all came to a head. In any case, Mears and Wentz went through all the trouble to secure the data sets and then attempt to duplicate the processing. In the end, they discovered an error in the diurnal correction used by the Alabama team. Once shown their error -- and it took them four or five months to admit it -- they publicly made corrections to their processing and republished old data which then, while on the lower end of the spectrum, was "within" the range of error of the results of other work long since published. At that point, though, Spencer and Christy's work had been tarnished and Remote Sensing Systems began publishing their own analysis in parallel. It happens. But there isn't much credit given for this. Just credit taken away.
Most scientists want to find creative new approaches to answering questions that will confirm or disconfirm the work of others -- not duplicate the exact same steps. Or they want to solve new problems. That illustrates creativity and leads to a reputation. Novelty is important.
_Methods_ and _results_ are disclosed, though. But software programs and interim data aren't that important. If you are going to attempt replication (and sometimes you do want to, as mentioned), you want to do it with a "fresh eye" to the problem so that you actually have a chance to cross-check results. You need to walk a similar path, of course. To do that, you want to know the methodology used. And of course you need the results to check outcomes in the end. That's all anyone really needs.
If you are creative enough to take a different approach entirely in answering the questions, then you don't even need that.
The methods and sources used are an important trail to leave. And they leave that much, consistently. Beyond that, it's really just too many cooks in the kitchen. If you can't dispute or replicate knowing methods and sources, then perhaps you shouldn't be in the business at all.
When you say "underlying data," I haven't yet encountered a case where I was prevented access if I were able to show that I could actually understand their methods and apply the data, appropriately. That's rare, in my case, of course. But in the few cases where I've asked, I have either been provided sources for the data (without question) or else, when asked, it was clearly not with an eye to block my access but really to ascertain whether or not I was able to understand it. It takes time to explain things and they have a right to weigh if it is worth their time and effort trying to educate every tom, dick, and harry that comes by their way. But I can't recall ever being denied something that I actually wanted. Perhaps, because I know my limitations and don't ask for something I'm not prepared to use (or learn about before asking for it.)
Not in my experience.
If you want to point out the specific letter that bothers you (quote a significant sentence or two so I can find it in my saved copies), I'd be happy to look at the case and see what I think of it. I might even write and ask about it -- though I won't necessarily expect an answer. Might get one, though. But I could at least offer my take on it, if I knew a specific case you were considering.
I think one most sensible people distinguish when to spend their time and when not to. You do that. So do I. Some people writing in this group (and other groups) are both ignorant AND willfully so AND where it is clear they won't spend their own time "getting better." If you decide that is the case, you don't write. Why should you? We all have better things to do. On the other hand, if you have a serious inquiry from someone who _is_ ignorant but at least shows some earlier work -- even if that effort was in the wrong direction, it was engaged seriously -- then you may feel better about trying to correct them or point out some thought of yours that may help them.
Climate science is fraught with well-funded confusion, discord, and the sewing of far less certainty where there is far more available. Some scientists are ... wary. They've been caught flat-footed. (I have been, too.) They might imagine a sincere request, respond in a fair minded way, and have it cherry-picked and plastered without context or understanding. At some point, one gets kind of sick and tired of that, you know?
I do my diligence, first. By reading their recent work and related materials, for example. When I write to them, I almost always have something to say that shows them that I've done some work on my own. That always seems to help a lot. It shows I respect their time by first spending my own and therefore am obviously not out to just waste theirs. A dialogue can start from there. But it really helps to not ask others to spend their time when you haven't spent your own, first.
In a similar way, it helps to know that someone has at least tried to understand a BJT and maybe even build some things they want to understand a little better, but don't, when posting a BJT question. If a poster hasn't ever read a single page of a single book on the subject, never tried anything, and just jumps in with some completely random request for "plase expln me how the bjt wroks?" question, well... yeah.. it's not likely to get anything but suggestions to go put in some time first (and maybe even learning some English, too.)
Scientists are people.
Well, between you and me, I bet you do. Climate is _very_ difficult to master. Science breaks down into two main approaches -- reductionism and large number statistics. Reduction works great on problems where ignoring small influences leaves a "good enough" understanding. Statistics work great in large numbers of events. But for systems with large numbers of highly correlated, but complex interactions then neither reduction nor statistics work all that well. Disease flows through populations fit this latter case. There are well known processes by which disease passes from person to person, but the processes by which people interact are... difficult to fully master. Statistics doesn't work nearly as well as you might imagine because these processes don't fall into nice Poisson events that integrate into nice gaussian bell shaped distributions. And there are so many important factors that reductionism is tough going, as well.
For a time, climate science was more like that Gordian Knot. Data was scarce, theories were available but nowhere near enough of them, etc. But as time went by, those large-scale important interactions were gradually teased apart. Today, it's still very difficult work but at least more tractable than before. I don't want to minimize the difficulties. But I also don't want to suggest that they haven't been addressed with hard and largely successful work.
Well, you can make the point. But you really have no idea because you haven't put in the work required. So how should I take this 'point'? It really isn't made until it is made from an informed position. Otherwise it's just a random shot in the dark.
Well, I'm not going to argue much here. Nuclear power can be safe -- the problems are mostly with people, not technical ones. A totally safe reactor (you could use dynamite to blow the control rods out of it) was demonstrated back in the 1950's. It's old news. But the politics and profit motives are another thing. I completely agree on the electric car point you make. On the carbon credit/tax/whatever issue, I think we are sadly stuck with the politics of power and capital and I don't know what to do there. We should have a carbon tax and ALL of the money received from it should go straight back to the public and NOT into the pockets of politicians and capital. But the problem is, while we may be able to pass laws here, money and power will make damned sure their pockets are lined and that everyone else loses out. And the public will NOT support graft like that. So until they can find a way to get that back into _our_ pockets and not relining the pockets of those already lined with gold... I don't think the public can get behind the idea. Yet everything else will fail to achieve the needed results. Oh, well. Life (or the lack of it) in the real world.
The only thing left is to do what you suggest... roll up our sleeves and work at real issues facing us. I think those nearer the top of the food chain will keep fighting each other and the rest of us so as to see who is left in the game of "musical chairs" they are involved in right now. It's up to us, or not.
Hmm. I hadn't read this, earlier. ;) You anticipated my reply and I anticipated yours, too. As I said, the public won't get behind a carbon tax that will merely line the pockets of power or capital. So we agree there.
Nuclear power has a number of very good alternatives, if we can just get around to fashioning the right people-mechanisms around them. I've written at some length on these subjects and won't bore you with that unless you ask. But suffice it that I see the nuclear power problem as essentially a human one. Solve that and the rest unfolds. Technical and science knowledge is already there, ready to go. (And there are human systems that can work... I know of a few... but enough people with opportunity to move on this simply won't go there because of some handcuffs that may mean to them, so we collectively remain at square one.)
Do you remember watching "China Syndrome?" Jack Lemmon played a character who _knew_ things cold, but couldn't communicate the technical issues to a listening public who wasn't ready to understand them and could only see a "crazy man" talking. Yet he was right. The problem was that the issues themselves required education and training to fathom well. And the public couldn't follow.
Suppose, just for argument's sake, that there is a group of people with a lot of capital at risk and a sincere desire to control the voting public on an issue.
People respond well to the science of emotional appeal and propaganda. (In fact, the science is so well refined now that it is sometimes scary.) Sound bites are easily manufactured and played. Emotional wedges found and used. Images, not facts, presented.
An example is McDonald's ads. They show happy faces on a beautiful family, with nary a care in the world between them. Not a word about the quality of the food, what nutrition is provided, etc. Nothing technical, at all. No evidence presented. Just pretty images that convey emotional well-being and goodness. And it works. Well.
Now, for argument's sake, let's say there is a group of scientists who have a very difficult, very technical subject that taxes the very state of human science. It's not even easy if you are trained in the subject to get your mind wrapped around the bulk of it. These scientists have two choices. They can face the pretty images and nice platitudes with more of their own and just play out the battle on the same propaganda battleground and forget wasting any effort on the facts. Or they can focus on the facts... and lose the audience in the process. Either way, they lose. They lose the audience if they try to convey the complex issues, the knowns and unknowns, etc. And in losing the audience, lose the war. If they choose to go with the propaganda approach and do the pretty picture and sound bites crap, they fail because they lose the one advantage they actually OWN.... the science facts in the situation... the one, single thing that actually separates them from the public fray of every other political issue. And when they sink to that level, they will get uncovered for their perfidy. And even if their competition is equally guilty, the public won't care because the scientists will have lost their respect.
If you haven't gotten it yet, I think almost all of the chips are on the side of those willing to use all means necessary. The scientists can't let themselves slide to that level. But in refusing to be just as bad, just as willing to use any tool that works, they bind their own feet and give the other side no contest at all.
The only real choice they have is to stay the course and retain the one thing they have -- science fact. But that means they are running a race with a gunny sack tied around their feet and the other sides are having a hay day with that. Oh, well. They can only hope that they can run the turtle's race and believe that slow and steady will win. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
Yes, it is frustrating. And yes, sometimes that frustration reaches out in letters. Oh, well.
They do, really. Have you ever cracked open a book on these subjects? Try, "Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics," for size. Then repeat yourself above. It's there, Joerg. It's just damned hard to master well. You need to work. That's the problem here.
Again, we are going to go back and forth. Make a commitment to gain a comprehensive view here. Until then, I've nothing to add. I'm ignorant on the subject and I'm not willing to work for a serious opinion here if you aren't, too. One good turn deserves another. But if you won't work for it, why should I?
I don't think anything has been papered over. Climate scientists are always working at difficulties and trying to find answers. Same with evolution, though I don't mean to suggest that climate science is as well understood, yet.
I don't know anything comprehensive about that. So no real opinion about it.
Well, that is a point you can always keep. It's not a discerning one, though, because it is "always true" and makes no distinctions.
You are wrong on this. You really need some thick callouses developed from real, hard work of your own. And that's where I'll leave that.
Thanks. I've enjoyed your replies, as well.
Jon